TimeBuilder Companion

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TimeBuilder Companion
Manager

Weekly Reset & Coaching

A short weekly reset. We'll talk through last week and this week together, one thing at a time, then pull it into a day-by-day plan. The more context you add over time, the sharper the coaching gets, but it works from day one regardless.

Your context library

Optional, and only needs doing once. Upload or paste anything that helps the AI coach you better: quarterly priorities, a strategy document, your saboteurs profile. Skip this entirely if you'd rather just talk it through.
Strategy documents, quarterly priorities, 1-3-5 plans, saboteurs profiles, anything like that. Stored only on this device.

This week's reset

How this works:
  1. We'll look back at last week first
  2. Then talk through what's ahead
  3. You'll get a one-page plan with tick boxes for each day
Your weekly plan

One-to-One Guide

Your reference for running a great one-to-one. This is their time, not yours.

The mindset

A one-to-one is your team member's time. Your job is to create space for them to think, share and grow. Lead with listening. Ask before you advise.

Aim for 45 to 60 minutes. Protect the time. Cancelling sends a powerful signal about how much you value the person.

Before the meeting

  • Review your notes from last time. What did you agree? What were they working on?
  • Think about any feedback you want to offer, and whether now is the right moment.
  • Ask your team member to bring a prepared agenda. They can build one using the One-to-One Guide in their TimeBuilder Companion. A team member who arrives with a clear agenda makes the conversation sharper for both of you.
The agenda covers: wins and updates, challenges to explore, what they need from you, development, and any feedback for you. If they haven't done one, ask them to take five minutes before you start.

Opening the conversation

Start with a genuine check-in. Try: "How are you doing, really?" Give them time to answer. Don't rush to the agenda.

Good questions to use

  • What's going well that we should protect or build on?
  • What's feeling hard or uncertain right now?
  • What do you need from me this week?
  • What are you learning at the moment?
  • Is there anything you've been sitting on that you haven't raised yet?
  • What would make a real difference to how you're working?

Giving feedback

This is often the right space for feedback, but only when you're prepared. Use the Radical Candour tab to plan a specific piece of feedback before the meeting.

Closing the conversation

  • Summarise any actions, theirs and yours.
  • Ask: "Is there anything we haven't covered that you wanted to raise?"
  • End with something genuine — appreciation, encouragement, acknowledgement.

After the meeting

Write up your notes straight away. Follow through on anything you said you'd do. Nothing undermines trust faster than a manager who forgets what they promised.

One-to-One Guide

Prepare for your next one-to-one through a quick coaching conversation. The tool will help you think through what to bring, then produce an agenda you can use or share.

This is your time

Your one-to-one isn't a status update for your manager. It's time set aside for you. Use it to share what's really going on, ask for what you need, and have the conversations that don't fit into the day-to-day. Your manager's job is to listen, support, and help you move forward. Your job is to come prepared.

What makes a great agenda

You don't need a long list. Two or three clear talking points with specific examples will lead to a far better conversation than a page of notes. Think across five areas:

  • Wins and progress: What's gone well? Where have you made progress your manager might not have seen?
  • Challenges and frictions: What's felt hard, unclear, or stuck? Where do you need more support, clarity, or resource?
  • Growth and development: What skills do you want to strengthen? Is there something you'd like coaching on?
  • Team and collaboration: Anything about how the team is working that's worth raising?
  • Feedback for your manager: What's working well? What would help you more? This goes both ways.

One thing to remember

Your manager can only support you with what they know. Be honest. If something isn't working, say so. Naming awkward things helps: "This feels a bit difficult to raise, but..."

Prepare your agenda

Give a brief overview to get started: when is your next 1:1, and is there anything particular on your mind going into it? Don't worry about getting it perfect — the conversation will draw it out.
Your 1:1 agenda
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Radical Candour

Prepare a piece of feedback through a coaching conversation. The tool will ask you questions to help you think it through, then produce guidance you can use in the conversation.

What is Radical Candour?

Radical Candour is a feedback framework developed by Kim Scott. Great feedback requires two things at once: caring personally about the person, and challenging them directly. Most managers do one or the other. The best do both.

Ruinous Empathy Care ✓ Challenge ✗ Ignorance + little change Radical Candour Care personally ✓ Challenge directly ✓ Growth + profound change Manipulative Insincerity Care ✗ Challenge ✗ Mistrust + little change Obnoxious Aggression Challenge ✓ Care ✗ Defensiveness + little change Challenge directly ↑ ↓ Don't challenge ← Don't care personally Care personally →

How to practice it day to day

Radical Candour is not something you save for annual reviews. It's a habit built in small moments:

  • Praise immediately and specifically. Not "great work" — "you handled that difficult customer calmly and kept the meeting constructive."
  • Address behaviour early and privately. Small issues don't fix themselves. Raising them calmly and early is kinder than letting them build.
  • Ask for feedback first. "Is there anything I could do differently to support you better?" It builds trust and models the behaviour you want.
  • Stay curious before judgemental. Most performance problems come from lack of clarity, not lack of effort.
  • Focus on behaviour and impact, not personality. "You interrupted Sarah twice in that meeting, which made it harder for the team to hear her thinking" is coachable. "You're dismissive" is not.

Why it matters

When you practise Radical Candour consistently, team members trust you more, problems get solved faster, and people grow instead of staying stuck. The whole team gets more productive and less anxious.

One thing to remember

Radical Candour is not the same as Radical Honesty. It is not permission to say whatever you think. Kim Scott's point is that you care personally enough to tell someone the truth in a way that helps them grow. That distinction matters.

The four quadrants

  • Radical Candour: You care about the person and you challenge them directly. This is where growth happens. It feels uncomfortable at first, but it builds real trust.
  • Ruinous Empathy: You care, but you don't challenge. You soften feedback until it loses its meaning, or you say nothing at all. The person never grows, and you've done them a disservice.
  • Obnoxious Aggression: You challenge directly, but you don't care personally. The feedback lands, but it damages the relationship. People become defensive rather than receptive.
  • Manipulative Insincerity: You neither care nor challenge. Vague praise, avoided conversations, no real feedback at all. Everyone loses.

One thing to remember

Most managers default to Ruinous Empathy. They care about the person, so they hold back. The kindest thing you can do is tell the truth — clearly, specifically, and with genuine care for the person you're speaking to.

What's the feedback about?

Give a brief overview to get started. Don't worry about getting it perfect — the conversation will draw out the detail.
Your feedback guidance
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Off My PLATE

A structured framework for helping your team own their problems and decisions — rather than bringing them to you for answers.

What it's for

Off My PLATE is a delegation and problem-solving framework. It stops you becoming the answer to every question. Instead of solving things for your team, you coach them to think it through, make a recommendation, and own the outcome.

The result: your team gets more capable, you get your time back, and decisions stick because the person who made them owns them.

The PLATE framework

P
Problem
What exactly needs solving or deciding? Push for a clear, specific definition. Vague problems lead to vague solutions.
L
Locate the root cause
What's actually driving this? Avoid symptom chasing. If they're solving the wrong thing, they'll be back with the same problem next week.
A
Alternatives
Ask for at least three options — with the pros and cons of each. This is where you stop them coming to you with just one idea and expecting a yes.
T
Tell me your recommendation
They must pick one and own it. Not "what do you think?" — they have to commit to a recommendation and explain why. This is the moment they step up.
E
Endpoint
What does done look like? Agree the success criteria, the deadline, and when they'll update you. No ambiguity at the finish line.

How to use it with your team

When a team member comes to you with a problem, resist the urge to solve it. Instead, use PLATE as the structure for your conversation.

  • Start with: "Walk me through the problem as you see it."
  • When they've described it: "What do you think is really driving this?"
  • Once you're clear on the root cause: "What are your options? Give me at least three."
  • After they've listed options: "Which one are you recommending, and why?"
  • To close: "What does success look like, and when will you update me?"

You don't need to follow the script rigidly. The goal is that your team member leaves the conversation owning the problem and the solution — not you.

A note on timing

PLATE works best when used consistently. The first few times, your team members may find it uncomfortable — they're used to you having the answers. Stick with it. Within a few weeks, they'll start arriving with a PLATE summary already prepared. That's when you know it's working.

Get your team using the tool

Your team members have their own version of Off My PLATE in the TimeBuilder Companion employee app. It coaches them through PLATE before they come to you — so the conversation is sharper from the start.

The next time a team member brings you a problem, ask them to work through it in the tool first and come back with a PLATE summary. It takes ten minutes and transforms the quality of the conversation.

Share the employee app link with your team to get started.

Off My PLATE

Work through a problem or task using the PLATE framework, then share your plan with your manager.

What is PLATE?

PLATE is a simple framework for thinking through a problem properly before you bring it to your manager. Instead of arriving with "I've got a problem", you arrive with a clear analysis and a recommendation. That's a completely different conversation.

Your manager will respect you more for it, and you'll feel more confident walking in.

P
Problem — define exactly what needs solving, clearly and specifically.
L
Locate — find the real root cause, not just the symptom on the surface.
A
Alternatives — think of at least three ways to handle it, with honest pros and cons.
T
Tell — give your recommendation. Pick one option and own it. Don't sit on the fence.
E
Endpoint — define what done looks like and when you'll update your manager.

The tool below will coach you through each step. At the end, you'll get a summary you can copy and share with your manager before the conversation.

What's the problem or task?

Give a brief overview to get started. The conversation will draw out the detail.
Your PLATE summary
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Voice Tools

Speaking is three to four times faster than typing. These tools work across your whole computer, so you can dictate into any text field, not just this app. Prefer typing? That works just as well.

About the built-in mic button

The microphone buttons inside this app use your browser's built-in speech recognition. They're free and need no setup, but accuracy varies by browser and microphone. Chrome and Edge work best. For consistent, higher-quality dictation across your whole computer, one of the tools below is worth a look.

Voicy Recommended

Ben's top pick. Voicy works across your whole system: hold a hotkey, speak, done. In practice it's faster and more accurate than the more heavily marketed alternatives, and it's the tool Ben uses day to day. If you want one tool to try first, start here.

  • Platform: Mac, Windows and Chrome
  • Price: $8.49 per month or $82 per year
  • Free trial: 40-minute trial (no time limit, just 40 minutes of dictation)
Go to Voicy →

Typeless

Typeless takes a different approach. Rather than just transcribing what you say, it lets you define your personal writing style: your tone of voice, your preferred phrasing, how formal or casual you like to sound. When you dictate, it rewrites your words in your style. The result feels more like something you actually wrote, rather than raw speech converted to text.

If you write a lot of emails, proposals, or client communications and want the output to sound like you without editing, Typeless is worth exploring. It's still early days for this kind of tool, so it's worth trying to see if it fits your workflow.

  • Platform: Mac and Windows
  • Best for: People who want polished output that sounds like them, not just a transcript
Go to Typeless →

Wispr Flow

The most heavily marketed voice dictation tool right now. Wispr Flow works across any app on your computer and has solid accuracy. It also includes AI features so you can give spoken instructions like "make this shorter" or "turn this into bullet points." It's a polished product with a strong design, though you may find the experience is not necessarily better than Voicy in day-to-day use despite the bigger profile.

  • Platform: Mac and Windows
  • Price: $15 per month or $144 per year
  • Free trial: Yes, no credit card required
Go to Wispr Flow →

Privacy note

Each of these tools processes your audio on their own servers. Before committing to any tool, take a moment to review its privacy policy: what is recorded, how long it is stored, and whether it is used to train AI models. This is especially relevant if you dictate anything client-confidential or commercially sensitive.

Tool Guide

A quick reference to everything in this app. If you are not sure where to start, this is the place.

Weekly Reset & Coaching

A weekly check-in for resetting and planning. Talk or type through how last week went and what's on your mind for the week ahead. If you've added context, such as quarterly priorities or a strategy document, the coaching draws on it. If not, the tool still works, just from a blank slate. At the end you get a one-page plan you can download and print, and the tool remembers it for next week's recap.

When to use it: Once a week, ideally the same day each week, to reset and plan ahead.

One-to-One Guide

A structured reference for making the most of your one-to-one meetings. The manager view gives you a framework for preparing, running and following up on 1:1s with each team member. The employee view helps you prepare for your own 1:1s: what to bring, how to get the most from the conversation, and how to raise things that matter. This is a guide, not a chat tool: it gives you a structure to follow, not an AI conversation.

When to use it: Before a one-to-one meeting to prepare, or after to review.

Radical Candour (managers only)

A coaching tool for preparing a piece of feedback before you deliver it. Based on Kim Scott's Radical Candour framework, the idea is that the best feedback combines genuine care for the person with directness about what needs to change. The tool walks you through a conversation: what the situation is, what the specific behaviour was, what the impact has been, and how you want to frame the conversation. At the end it produces guidance you can use or adapt.

When to use it: When you need to give feedback that is honest, specific and constructive, and you want to think it through first.

Off My PLATE

A delegation coaching tool built around the PLATE framework: Problem, Locate, Alternatives, Tell, Endpoint. The manager version is a reference guide for coaching your team to own their problems rather than bringing them to you for answers. The employee version helps you think through what you are carrying, and produces a summary you can share with your manager.

When to use it: When your plate is too full, or when you want to get better at handing things over with clarity and confidence.

Voice Tools

A reference tab covering three tools that let you dictate instead of type, across your whole computer. Speaking is significantly faster than typing, and for reflective tools like this one it often produces better, more natural answers. The tab covers Voicy (the recommended pick), Typeless (for polished, styled output), and Wispr Flow. The mic buttons inside this app use your browser's built-in recognition, which is free but less reliable: the Voice Tools tab explains the alternatives.

When to use it: If you want to speed up how you interact with this tool, or with your computer generally.

A note on how the AI works

Each tool sends your input to Claude, Anthropic's AI, which generates a response tailored to what you have written. The AI is configured to be a practical, direct coaching partner: it will not flatter you or give vague advice. It aims to help you think more clearly, act more decisively, and get better value from your time.

Your conversations are not used to train AI models. Inputs and outputs are deleted after 7 days. Nothing is stored on our servers: everything runs through a secure API connection.