Wes Kao
34 statements across 2 episodes · 10 bullish · 7 bearish · 1 people on the record · first statement Aug 28, 2022 by Wes Kao · said 10 times in 4 episodes since 2022 · across every show →
On the record as a speaker too: Wes Kao's record, appearances and statements → this page counts the times other people say the name.
Mentions by year
brought up most by Lenny Rachitsky (8), Alistair Croll (2)
tap a year for its mentions
2024 8 mentions in 2 episodes 4 per episode
2023 1 mention in 1 episode
2022 1 mention in 1 episode
Everything said about Wes Kao, oldest first
Aug 28, 2022 negative
Kao: Biased pros-and-cons lists destroy trust; state recommendations upfront
“So when you do pros and cons list, but they're skewed and you're leaving some things out of the cons list, it makes the reader suspicious and they can't trust you anymore. Right? Whereas if you do a pros and cons list, but at the top you say, my recommendation…”
Aug 28, 2022 positive
Aug 28, 2022 negative
Kao: Interspersing action items within background context confuses readers
“The worst, which happens a lot is mixing all of those things with the action item or decision. So the action items and decisions are kind of interspersed randomly throughout a bunch of context, thought process factors that you looked at downside. It's like, it…”
Aug 28, 2022
Aug 28, 2022
Kao: Communicating trade-offs protects bandwidth without saying no directly
“So by talking about trade-offs, you really get the outcome, which is you protect your bandwidth. You protect your bandwidth, you protect your mental health, you protect your, you know, ability to do great work without feeling overly stretched without actually …”
Aug 28, 2022
Aug 28, 2022 positive
Kao: Writers should study technical mechanics, not just mimic viral formats
“And I guess my spiky point of view is that more people should learn the craft of writing and the technical aspects of writing, not just you know, look at what other people are doing to try to get audience engagement, but to actually improve your ability to pre…”
Aug 28, 2022
Kao: Track involuntary audience engagement rather than polite verbal agreement
“So really the principle behind Eyes Light Up is don't be delusional in just taking people's, you know, what they're saying at face value, really look at their face, look at the, you know, look for other clues, the excitement in their voice and watch for these …”
Apr 6, 2025 negative
Kao: Professionals prematurely claim diminishing returns after mediocre tactic execution
“In my experience, I find that people claim the point of diminishing returns way too early. And this isn't just for communication. This is for strategies, tactics, et cetera. Like they'll try something once, you know, a mediocre attempt and be like, this channe…”
Apr 6, 2025
Kao: Preparing counterarguments prevents presenters from being blindsided in meetings
“Knowing your own argument in and out, including counter arguments becomes so important. So knowing your counter arguments as well as you know the arguments for doing the thing. When you do that, when you know, have prepared in that way, you're less likely to f…”
Apr 6, 2025 negative
Kao: The organizational blast radius of poorly written memos is heavily underestimated
“I think the blast radius of a poorly written memo is way bigger than most people think. So if you're just shooting off a message in a Slack channel with 15 other people, and it's confusing, and you didn't include information you should have included, there's g…”
Apr 6, 2025
Kao: Secure buy-in before sharing logistics to avoid low response rates
“A sales note is meant to get people excited to do the thing you want them to do and to agree to do it. And only then after they have bought in, does it make sense to share the logistics. So there's an order of operations here. If you switch the order of operat…”
Apr 6, 2025 positive
Kao: Poor delivery causes most workplace communication failures, not uncooperative audiences
“Instead of blaming other people for not understanding me, I think about how could I explain this more clearly? How can I be more compelling? How can I anticipate any questions that they might have? So I'm a big proponent of agency and realizing that we can onl…”
Apr 6, 2025 positive
Kao: Concision is driven by insight density, not absolute word count
“And being concise is not about absolute word count. It's about economy of words. It's about the density of the insight that you're sharing. And so you can have a 300 word memo that's meandering and long-winded and a thousand word memo that is tight and concise…”
Apr 6, 2025
Kao: Junior staff seek personal wins; senior staff prioritize company context
“I think actually this is a really big difference between more junior people versus more senior people. More junior people are like, I need a win. Like I need to get a yes for this proposal and I'm going to keep Advocating for it until I get a yes. Whereas real…”
Apr 6, 2025 positive
Kao: Mastering overlooked communication basics yields immense career alpha
“All the quote unquote big things everyone else is already doing. So there's not a lot of alpha in that. Whereas if you are paying attention to skills that people think are boring or too basic and realizing that there is, that's a lever that you can pull that, …”
Apr 6, 2025
Kao: Practicing pitches only with executives limits crucial communication reps
“And I just don't think that you're going to be able to get enough reps to actually get good at executive communication if you are only doing it with executives. Because many of us only present to execs once a month, right? Or a couple times a quarter. And that…”
Apr 6, 2025
Kao: Shorten delegation feedback loops by brainstorming next steps during kickoffs
“I am a huge fan of shorting the feedback loop as much as possible and then shortening it again. So even within that initial conversation where I'm delegating something, instead of waiting a week, What if we waited a day and checked in on the initial direction …”
Apr 6, 2025 positive
Kao: Probe the question behind the question during high-stakes meeting unknowns
“Being able to answer a similar question in the direction you think the person is asking about, and then validating why they're asking that question allows you to still continue that conversation in the moment. And so I call it the question behind the question.…”
Apr 6, 2025 neutral
Kao: Unclear thinking is the primary cause of long-winded communication
“And all of these pithy aphorisms assume that you actually know what your core point is. So you can't cut to the chase unless you know what the chase is. You know, you can't unbury the lead unless you know what the lead is. And so that I found is the bottom leg…”
Apr 6, 2025
Kao: Communication and critical thinking are deeply intertwined, not sequential phases
“I think communication and thinking are so much more interrelated than we think. You know, I think people think there's a thinking as phase one and then communicating the thinking, and the reality is a lot more intertwined.”
Apr 6, 2025 negative
Kao: Presenting uncalibrated hunches as certainties wastes organizational headcount and capital
“You can avoid a lot of problems if you speak accurately about your level of conviction and about the actual amount of evidence that you have for something. It's okay for something to be an initial hunch. Say it's an initial hunch. Don't act like this is someth…”
Apr 6, 2025 neutral
Kao: Deferring questions with 'I'll get back to you' wastes critical opportunities
“If you are more experienced and have some confidence in your subject matter area, just saying I'll get back to you is sometimes a missed opportunity. You can ask for a bit more information to be able to continue the conversation in that moment.”
Apr 6, 2025 negative
Kao: Understating conviction on strong, well-supported recommendations is professionally irresponsible
“If you have really strong reasons to recommend something to, you know, to cross-functional team, it's almost irresponsible to act like you are not really sure. And it's just this like random idea. Hey, try it if you want to try to, you know, like we might lose…”
Apr 6, 2025
Kao: Proposing proactive solutions is the highest-leverage way to manage up
“The more highly leveraged way to contribute and manage up is by being more vocal about sharing your point of view. When you just ask your manager, Hey manager, what should we do? You're putting a lot of cognitive load on your manager to need to think about the…”
Apr 6, 2025
Kao: Measure communication skills by the reduction in follow-up friction
“So I have a pretty first principles driven approach for this, which is to think about how long does it take me right now to get to the reaction I'm looking for from my recipient. If it takes a bunch of back and forth and a bunch of friction, then that's kind o…”
Apr 6, 2025
Kao: Vent frustrations to third parties before delivering workplace feedback
“I definitely think that having a space to vent and to share those frustrations is important. So you want to get that out before you go into the conversation with your counterpart. So whether it's talking to your therapist or your partner or friend, you want to…”
Apr 6, 2025 positive
Kao: Thorough preparation is the only reliable solution for meeting concision
“And so the only solution I found consistently to being concise is preparation. It's not a very glamorous solution by any means, but the clearer I am going into a meeting, going into a conversation, going into a pitch, the better I am at being concise and being…”
Apr 6, 2025 positive
Apr 6, 2025 negative
Kao: Bulleted fragments often mask unformed ideas and slow down readers
“It feels faster and more concise to put bullets and fragments, but a lot of times your reader on the other end of that is Needing to decipher and interpret and guess what you actually meant. So it net, net takes longer. And I also think that it can be a little…”
Apr 6, 2025
Kao: Constructive feedback must focus strictly on motivating future behavior change
“A better way of getting feedback is thinking about motivating the person's behavior change. The goal is behavior change. So if that's the goal, trim everything else that you were about to say, but does not actually contribute to that goal and only keep the par…”
Apr 6, 2025 positive
Kao: Always re-establish context and value before diving into logistics
“So I actually think that you should always do a little bit of selling even for situations where people have generally bought in because most of us have a lot going on and we're not actively thinking about whatever you're talking about. So even though I agreed …”
Apr 6, 2025