Rock dust for sustainable farming, leadership coaching for your boss, and being radical

There is no shortage of fun discussions here!

It’s amazing to see the wide range of ideas getting implemented in the world to solve some of the biggest problems.

Engineers are at the heart of it all.

What big problems will you solve?

In today’s newsletter:

• 🌋 Volcanic rock and sustainable farming

• 🐍 What to do if your boss is toxic

• 🦁 Embracing Radical Candor

• 🔥 Hot Job – Senior Integration Engineer

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📚 MUST READ

🌳 Increasing farming yields and capturing Carbon at the same time

Rock dust might be the trick to better corn yield and lessen the amount of carbon in the air.

Weird right? But it’s exactly what a startup called Lithos is working on.

They are already operating on 80+ farms in nine states, and they also just inked a new deal with companies like Stripe, Alphabet, and Shopify - who committed to pay $57.1 million to remove 154,000 tons of CO2 over the next four years.

How does this work?

By speeding up a geological process.

When rain falls on certain types of rocks, a chemical reaction helps capture CO2. Lithos works to make that happen more quickly by spreading crushed rock across fields.

It seems to be working too, as one farm in Wisconsin reported removing 175 tons of CO2 from the air over six months, while also seeing yields increase by as much as 36%.

That last point may be as important as anything to get farmers to adopt this approach, as they’re unlikely to do something unless there is an economic benefit for them.

Of course, if this is going to be adopted widely, that’s a lot of crushed basalt to move around, especially if they are going to capture a billion tons of CO2 this decade - like they are aiming to do. The materials are available, they just need to be delivered and spread appropriately.

This might become an operations problem. Good thing great engineers can help with that too!

🏆 CAREER TIPS

☕ How to tell your Boss they need a Leadership Coach

What if it's not you that needs to change; it's the leader you are dealing with? Your boss is toxic, a jerk, or just otherwise unhelpful. Or they are just average. How do you approach the subject that they need some help? Because it's a given that improving their influence will benefit the whole team.

Did I just fire you up? Maybe you were saying - "Yeah, that's right! My boss is the worst! He/she needs some serious help!"

If so, let's talk about that. But full disclosure - we're going to talk about how you can improve, not just your boss…

Let’s step back for a moment. What we are really trying to do here is influence your boss to make an adjustment. That's not a simple task, but we'll cover some basic principles.

Leadership and influence are much more than official titles. Sometimes people with the greatest influence don't have any formal authority at all. Huge example - Gandhi. Simple example - I've had people in organizations that I've worked with that didn't manage anyone, but everyone respected them and listened because they had established themselves as knowledgeable, valuable, and seeking to benefit the organization. They weren't in it for themselves.

Increasing your personal influence beyond any formal authority can take time, but it's worth it. Especially if you are trying to work with your boss to take an action that they may see as uncomfortable at the outset. Here are a few ideas:

• Cultivate personal connections - If people really know the kind of person you are, they are more likely to assume positive intent (that is, if you're a good person, which I think you are).

• Serve others before yourself - Make your mission to help the team/organization rather than being self-interested. When you present new ideas, show how they benefit the greater whole.

• Extend trust - I wrote about this in a previous blog post, but in order to earn trust we have to be willing to extend it first.

• Help people win - You should literally provide opportunities to build people up. When people see that you helped them overcome a challenge, their desire to help you drastically increases.

In addition to the ideas above, there is a principle of influence called "Reciprocity." Simply put, people feel obliged to give back to others if they have been served or helped first. For example, if a friend invites you to a party they are hosting, don't you then feel obligated to invite them to something in the future? Or if a colleague does you a favor, you will often say "I owe you one" and truly mean it.

So what can you do to help your boss in a way that they feel obligated to help you? What would they truly appreciate?

Let me clarify - I'm not talking about brown nosing here. I'm talking about putting yourself in their shoes and understanding how you can make their life easier in a way they will truly appreciate. When you do that, you're doing good for the organization, and your influence with them will improve.

Recall Newton's 3rd law of motion - "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction." This has a huge application in the world of influencing others. If we try to push others to do something, they will often just push back and resist. If, instead, we can find something outside of your suggestion that naturally "pulls" them toward taking a certain step, they are much more likely to consider it.

In our current case, you are trying to suggest that your boss could use some leadership coaching. Well, in order to even suggest this, we need to be able to frame it in a way that puts it in line with something they want. What does he/she really want? What are they trying to accomplish? What career goals do they have? What metrics or KPIs are they judged on?

If you can connect how leadership coaching would help them reach goals or accomplish things they care about, you'll find that those desires they already have will "pull" them towards it much more effectively than trying to "push" them into coaching.

Maybe what they really need is an example of the effectiveness of coaching that they can see. So, perhaps you need to be the guinea pig and get coaching for yourself. This may be another win for you, as you get that coaching help to level-up your own leadership and career.

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 GADGETS OF THE WEEK

📚 BOOK RECOMMENDATION

😏 Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott

The idea is simple: You don't have to choose between being a pushover and a jerk. Using Radical Candor―avoiding the perils of Obnoxious Aggression, Manipulative Insincerity, and Ruinous Empathy―you can be kind and clear at the same time.

Kim Scott was a highly successful leader at Google before decamping to Apple, where she developed and taught a management class. Since the original publication of Radical Candor in 2017, Scott has earned international fame with her vital approach to effective leadership and co-founded the Radical Candor executive education company, which helps companies put the book's philosophy into practice.

Radical Candor is about caring personally and challenging directly, about soliciting criticism to improve your leadership and also providing guidance that helps others grow. It focuses on praise but doesn't shy away from criticism―to help you love your work and the people you work with.

Radically candid relationships with team members enable bosses to fulfill their three core responsibilities:

1. Create a culture of Compassionate Candor

2. Build a cohesive team

3. Achieve results collaboratively

Required reading for the most successful organizations, Radical Candor has raised the bar for management practices worldwide.