Using Radical Candor to Strengthen Relationships at Work and Home with Kim Scott

00:00:00.000 | You're so worried about not offending someone

00:00:02.700 | or not hurting someone's feelings

00:00:04.380 | that you fail to tell them something

00:00:06.000 | they'd be better off knowing in the long run.

00:00:07.740 | And that is what I call ruinous empathy.

00:00:10.300 | You wanna start out by making sure

00:00:13.220 | that you're soliciting feedback more than you're giving it.

00:00:16.540 | If I criticize you publicly,

00:00:18.620 | you're likely to go into fight or flight mode

00:00:20.980 | and then you physically cannot hear what I'm saying.

00:00:23.340 | We kind of have this bad instinct about disagreement.

00:00:26.500 | We think that a disagreement is gonna pose a risk

00:00:29.540 | to our relationship.

00:00:30.700 | - I imagine many people listening aren't familiar

00:00:32.980 | of your first book, "Radical Candor."

00:00:34.540 | So how would you introduce that concept to people?

00:00:37.500 | - One of the things about "Radical Candor"

00:00:39.500 | is that sometimes people hear the term

00:00:41.700 | and they assume it is licensed to act like a jerk,

00:00:44.780 | which it is not.

00:00:45.820 | - How do you start to make change?

00:00:47.380 | And then maybe after that, how do you help others?

00:00:49.340 | - So the thing that I have done

00:00:51.120 | that has helped me more than anything else is...

00:00:54.780 | - Kim, thanks for being here.

00:00:57.540 | I'm a big fan of your work

00:00:58.620 | and I'm excited to have you on the show.

00:01:00.420 | - Thank you so much.

00:01:01.420 | I'm really excited for our conversation.

00:01:03.580 | - Yeah, me too.

00:01:04.420 | So I imagine many people listening aren't familiar

00:01:07.280 | with the concept of your first book, "Radical Candor,"

00:01:10.220 | which I've heard you define as both caring personally

00:01:12.880 | and challenging directly at the same time.

00:01:15.100 | And then I've also heard you say

00:01:16.300 | it's best understood for what it's not.

00:01:18.280 | - Yes.

00:01:19.120 | - So how would you introduce that concept to people?

00:01:22.020 | - All right, so one of the things about "Radical Candor"

00:01:24.980 | is that sometimes people hear the term

00:01:27.140 | and they assume it is licensed to act like a jerk,

00:01:30.220 | which it is not.

00:01:32.080 | So if you think about caring and challenging

00:01:34.540 | at the same time,

00:01:36.060 | those two things, caring and challenging,

00:01:37.940 | they don't really seem so radical.

00:01:39.380 | So why do I call it "Radical Candor?"

00:01:41.660 | I think part of the reason is that

00:01:43.660 | everyone I've ever met struggles with feedback.

00:01:46.860 | They struggle hearing it and they struggle giving it.

00:01:50.760 | And so if you think about,

00:01:52.900 | I love a good two-by-two framework.

00:01:55.100 | So draw in your mind a vertical line,

00:01:57.900 | and that is the care personally dimension of "Radical Candor."

00:02:01.380 | And a horizontal line,

00:02:02.860 | that's the challenge directly dimension.

00:02:05.340 | In the bottom right-hand box where you are challenging,

00:02:09.020 | but you're not showing that you care,

00:02:10.540 | even if you do care, you're not showing that you care,

00:02:13.320 | that is what I call obnoxious aggression.

00:02:16.540 | And in the first draft of the book,

00:02:18.480 | I called that the "Asshole Quadrant,"

00:02:20.340 | 'cause I don't know, it seemed more radically candid.

00:02:24.020 | And I stopped doing that for a really important reason,

00:02:26.500 | 'cause I found that when I did that,

00:02:28.140 | people would start writing names in boxes

00:02:30.260 | in this two-by-two.

00:02:31.440 | And I beg of you and all of your listeners,

00:02:34.340 | please don't do that.

00:02:35.180 | This is not another Myers-Briggs personality test

00:02:38.680 | or something like that.

00:02:40.140 | Use this kind of framework to guide specific conversations

00:02:43.820 | with specific people to a better place.

00:02:46.260 | So you don't wanna be obnoxiously aggressive

00:02:48.500 | because it hurts other people

00:02:50.580 | and also because it's inefficient.

00:02:53.180 | Like if I'm a jerk to you, Chris,

00:02:54.940 | then you go into fight or flight mode,

00:02:56.520 | and then you literally physically cannot hear

00:02:58.700 | what I'm saying, so I'm wasting my breath.

00:03:00.820 | So I think there's also though,

00:03:03.220 | not only those two problems with obnoxious aggression,

00:03:05.580 | but there's a third more subtle problem,

00:03:07.420 | which is, at least for me,

00:03:09.060 | so you can tell me, Chris, if this happens to you too.

00:03:11.760 | But when I realized that I'd acted like a jerk,

00:03:15.060 | it's not actually my instinctive response

00:03:18.980 | to move up on the care personally dimension

00:03:21.460 | of radical candor.

00:03:22.420 | Instead, it's my response

00:03:24.060 | to go the wrong way on challenge directly

00:03:26.300 | and say, oh, I'm sorry, it's no big deal.

00:03:28.260 | I didn't really mean it, but it is a big deal,

00:03:30.420 | and I did mean it, you know?

00:03:31.500 | So now I'm basically lying.

00:03:33.100 | And so now I've landed in the worst place of all,

00:03:36.340 | manipulative insincerity.

00:03:38.860 | This is where passive aggressive behavior,

00:03:41.380 | political behavior, all of the things

00:03:43.800 | that really erode trust

00:03:45.700 | in any kind of relationship creep in.

00:03:49.060 | - And that's the bottom--

00:03:51.140 | - The bottom left quadrant, you know,

00:03:53.020 | where you're neither caring nor challenging.

00:03:55.620 | You haven't gone the right way on care personally,

00:03:58.020 | you've gone the wrong way on challenge directly.

00:04:01.420 | And if you think about what goes wrong in relationships,

00:04:05.180 | especially what goes wrong in relationships at work,

00:04:08.700 | you're gonna talk a lot about obnoxious aggression

00:04:11.180 | and manipulative insincerity.

00:04:13.100 | If anybody watches "The Office,"

00:04:14.700 | they're gonna see a lot of episodes

00:04:16.540 | about those two behaviors,

00:04:18.540 | 'cause that's where the drama is

00:04:20.260 | and the ridiculousness is.

00:04:22.980 | However, I don't think these are our most common mistakes

00:04:26.140 | in most relationships.

00:04:27.980 | In my experience,

00:04:29.220 | and I'd be curious to hear what you think, Chris,

00:04:31.700 | but in my experience,

00:04:32.740 | the vast majority of us

00:04:34.780 | make the vast majority of our mistakes

00:04:37.020 | in this last upper left-hand quadrant,

00:04:39.700 | where you do remember to show that you care personally,

00:04:42.620 | 'cause you know what?

00:04:43.460 | Most people are actually pretty nice people

00:04:45.140 | when it comes right down to it.

00:04:46.820 | So you do remember to show that you care personally,

00:04:49.940 | but you're so worried about not offending someone

00:04:52.820 | or not hurting someone's feelings

00:04:54.700 | that you fail to tell them something

00:04:56.340 | they'd be better off knowing in the long run.

00:04:58.060 | And that is what I call ruinous empathy.

00:05:00.900 | And if there's one big reason why I wrote "Radical Candor,"

00:05:04.460 | it's to help us all be less ruinously empathetic,

00:05:07.260 | 'cause it's not a good thing.

00:05:09.100 | It feels nice, but it's actually mean in the long run.

00:05:12.220 | Yeah, I think my wife has consistently given me feedback

00:05:16.180 | on my managerial skills of like, "You're being too nice."

00:05:20.220 | Yeah, yeah.

00:05:21.180 | And I feel like that's another way

00:05:23.460 | of saying ruinously empathetic.

00:05:25.460 | Exactly, sort of another way to think about it

00:05:28.300 | is to think about what's the difference

00:05:30.580 | between nice and kind.

00:05:32.460 | Nice usually isn't so nice in the long run,

00:05:36.420 | but kind is what we're really shooting for.

00:05:39.220 | And I want people to be kind, but kind is radically candid.

00:05:43.060 | When I think of too nice, I think there's,

00:05:45.180 | I grew up in the South, and there's this anecdote

00:05:48.940 | about someone went to finishing school,

00:05:52.860 | and they were taught to say, "How nice," instead of, "F you."

00:05:57.860 | And that's really what's going on often

00:06:02.540 | when people are being too nice.

00:06:04.100 | Not intentionally, but sort of unintentionally.

00:06:07.540 | You hurt people with that kind of ruinous empathy.

00:06:10.540 | Yeah, I think a lot of people have just been raised

00:06:12.380 | that like, you know, keep your mouth shut

00:06:14.140 | if you don't have anything nice to say,

00:06:15.380 | and all of these things that,

00:06:17.300 | I guess, leave us in that quadrant.

00:06:20.260 | Yeah, exactly.

00:06:21.100 | I mean, certainly my parents said that to me.

00:06:23.620 | If you don't have anything nice to say,

00:06:24.820 | don't say anything at all.

00:06:25.860 | And then all of a sudden, I was having this career

00:06:29.100 | where I was teaching people, oh, the problem,

00:06:31.540 | the thing that lands us in ruinous empathy

00:06:33.580 | is we have parents who say,

00:06:35.460 | "If you don't have anything nice to say,

00:06:36.820 | don't say anything at all."

00:06:38.300 | And then I myself had kids who would say

00:06:40.260 | these incredibly horrible things when they were two.

00:06:43.580 | And I found myself saying that to my children too.

00:06:47.220 | So compassion for my parents and all the parents

00:06:49.900 | who said that to their kids, but it doesn't help.

00:06:54.220 | And we've talked a little bit about work and managing.

00:06:56.980 | How important are these skills just in life,

00:06:58.940 | or is this really just a workplace skillset?

00:07:01.740 | This is all relationships.

00:07:04.380 | In fact, my publisher really wants me to write a book

00:07:08.220 | called "The House of Radical Candor,"

00:07:09.780 | where I talk about how important this is

00:07:14.340 | in your personal relationships.

00:07:17.260 | In fact, one time I was giving a radical candor talk

00:07:20.540 | and somebody came up to me afterwards and they said,

00:07:22.900 | "Oh my gosh, if I had heard this five years ago,

00:07:25.380 | I wouldn't be divorced right now."

00:07:27.300 | And that's true.

00:07:29.260 | I mean, in fact, I would say I wouldn't be married right now

00:07:32.540 | if it weren't for radical candor.

00:07:34.660 | You want the story?

00:07:36.380 | Yeah.

00:07:37.220 | So when I was dating this guy, who's now my husband,

00:07:40.860 | he had spent the night over at my house.

00:07:43.980 | And the next morning,

00:07:45.420 | I used to like to do yoga in the morning.

00:07:48.180 | And so I went into another room to do yoga into,

00:07:51.980 | I had a one bedroom and a living room.

00:07:53.380 | So it was like a two room situation.

00:07:55.060 | So I went into, he was still asleep

00:07:58.180 | and I went into the living room to start doing yoga.

00:08:00.940 | And as I was doing it, he came in and picked up the paper

00:08:04.660 | and started reading the paper.

00:08:06.820 | And in the same room where I was trying to do my yoga.

00:08:09.900 | And I was like,

00:08:10.740 | "Oh my gosh, this is why I can't be in a relationship."

00:08:14.140 | You know, and I was ready never to see him again.

00:08:16.060 | And then I'm like,

00:08:16.900 | "Why don't I just ask him to leave the room?"

00:08:18.980 | And I said, "You know, I really can't do my yoga

00:08:21.260 | with you sitting there reading the paper."

00:08:22.660 | And he said, "Oh, I'm sorry."

00:08:23.700 | And he left the room and I was like,

00:08:24.740 | "Oh, I could be in a relationship."

00:08:26.460 | So, and the rest is now there's two children

00:08:30.540 | and, you know, 16 years of marriage.

00:08:33.660 | Wow. Okay.

00:08:34.740 | And so that's one example,

00:08:36.620 | but if you think broadly about the kind of impact

00:08:40.260 | embracing radical candor could have on your life,

00:08:43.020 | your relationships, you know,

00:08:45.100 | is it more productive, you know, happier?

00:08:47.860 | How do you describe that impact?

00:08:50.100 | I would describe it as first,

00:08:52.060 | I mean, what's most important to me

00:08:53.820 | is a deep relationship with people.

00:08:56.460 | It's the relationships, I think,

00:08:58.500 | that give both life and work meaning.

00:09:00.980 | And so you have deeper relationships

00:09:04.340 | and there's plenty of evidence that shows

00:09:05.900 | when you have better relationships,

00:09:07.140 | you're happier in life, but also you're more productive.

00:09:10.220 | I have found in particular at work,

00:09:12.700 | when we have a couple of good relationships at work,

00:09:15.660 | especially if that relationship is with our boss

00:09:18.660 | or our employee, like if it's in the context of a hierarchy,

00:09:22.380 | that is what unleashes our capacity

00:09:24.940 | to do the very best work of our lives.

00:09:28.340 | Because it's the relationships at work

00:09:30.220 | that often give the work its meaning

00:09:32.220 | rather than the work itself.

00:09:33.180 | I mean, for some people it's the work itself,

00:09:35.140 | but often it's the relationships at work.

00:09:37.500 | And I also think that when you have a bad relationship

00:09:40.740 | at work, especially if it's with your boss,

00:09:44.380 | it has a huge impact.

00:09:45.900 | I just read somebody posted on LinkedIn,

00:09:50.900 | a statistic, you know, I haven't validated this,

00:09:55.060 | but if it's not true, it ought to be.

00:09:57.780 | A statistic that showed that your relationship

00:10:01.660 | with your boss has a bigger impact on your health outcome

00:10:05.460 | than the quality of your doctor.

00:10:07.380 | And I certainly have found when I've had bad bosses,

00:10:11.980 | I don't, you know, I wake up in the middle of the night

00:10:15.860 | or at one point I had a boss who was sort of belittling

00:10:19.660 | and I literally shrank half an inch.

00:10:23.020 | My doctor was like, what is going on?

00:10:25.300 | You know, I was only 30 and I'm only five feet tall.

00:10:29.020 | Like I didn't have half an inch to give.

00:10:31.780 | And then I quit and I gained my half an inch back.

00:10:35.660 | It can, a bad relationship with a manager

00:10:39.540 | can really have a physical impact on your life.

00:10:41.980 | I worked with someone else who was working for a boss

00:10:45.340 | who was a bully and they broke out in hives.

00:10:48.700 | You know, they got like a physical rash.

00:10:51.300 | It's a big deal.

00:10:52.460 | There's also a lot of research that shows

00:10:54.660 | a bad relationship with your boss makes you more prone

00:10:57.460 | to have a heart attack.

00:10:59.100 | So it is, it really matters.

00:11:02.340 | It's not like something you just have to tough out.

00:11:05.660 | Okay, so it matters.

00:11:07.220 | I imagine for a lot of people it's uncomfortable.

00:11:09.700 | We talked about how a lot of people

00:11:11.060 | are kind of people pleasers.

00:11:13.140 | How do you figure out, you know, where you are?

00:11:15.700 | Is there some kind of diagnostic?

00:11:17.180 | How do you start to make change?

00:11:19.460 | And then maybe after that, how do you help others?

00:11:22.020 | Yeah, yeah.

00:11:23.140 | So I will say that you probably are in all of these boxes

00:11:28.180 | all of the time.

00:11:29.580 | So again, when I said

00:11:31.260 | this is not another Myers-Briggs personality test,

00:11:33.940 | like try not to write your own name in a box either,

00:11:37.620 | but just try to be aware when you've drifted into the box.

00:11:40.620 | So the thing that I have done

00:11:42.380 | that has helped me more than anything else

00:11:44.900 | is to think back over the course of my life

00:11:49.140 | about a time when I was, for example, ruinously empathetic.

00:11:52.540 | 'Cause that's, we'll start there

00:11:53.980 | 'cause that's the most common mistake that we make.

00:11:56.500 | And to give that story a name.

00:11:58.860 | And then when I'm tempted in the future

00:12:00.820 | to be ruinously empathetic, to think about that story.

00:12:03.260 | So let me, you want me to tell you a story?

00:12:05.420 | I'll lay it on you.

00:12:06.700 | So this happened.

00:12:09.180 | I had just hired this guy, we'll call him Bob.

00:12:11.860 | So this is my Bob story.

00:12:13.420 | His name was not actually Bob.

00:12:15.460 | And I liked Bob a lot.

00:12:17.420 | Bob was smart, funny, charming.

00:12:20.260 | He would do stuff like we were in a manager offsite

00:12:22.500 | playing one of those endless get to know you games.

00:12:24.820 | Ever played one of those?

00:12:27.060 | And Bob was the guy who had the courage to raise his hand

00:12:31.540 | and to say, I can tell everybody is really stressed out

00:12:35.140 | and that everybody kind of wants to get back to work.

00:12:39.300 | I've got an idea.

00:12:40.740 | It will help us get to know each other

00:12:42.420 | and it'll be really fast.

00:12:43.940 | Whatever his idea was, if it was really fast,

00:12:47.660 | we were down with it.

00:12:49.060 | So Bob says, let's just go around the table

00:12:51.620 | and confess what candy our parents used

00:12:54.620 | when potty training us.

00:12:56.060 | Really weird, but really fast.

00:12:57.820 | Weirder yet, everybody remembered,

00:12:59.700 | Hershey Kisses right here.

00:13:01.300 | And then for the next 10 months,

00:13:04.020 | every time there was a tense moment in a meeting,

00:13:06.700 | Bob would whip out just the right piece of candy

00:13:08.940 | for the right person at the right moment.

00:13:11.180 | So Bob was a little quirky,

00:13:14.020 | but brought some levity to the office.

00:13:16.220 | Everybody loved working with Bob.

00:13:18.060 | There was one big problem with Bob.

00:13:20.420 | He was doing terrible work.

00:13:22.100 | He would hand stuff into me

00:13:23.980 | and there was shame in his eyes.

00:13:25.620 | And I was so puzzled,

00:13:26.620 | I couldn't understand what was going on

00:13:28.540 | because he had this incredible resume,

00:13:30.300 | this great history of accomplishments.

00:13:32.660 | I learned much later,

00:13:33.740 | the problem was that Bob was smoking pot in the bathroom

00:13:37.780 | three times a day,

00:13:38.620 | which maybe explained all that candy

00:13:40.980 | that he had all the time.

00:13:42.700 | But I didn't know any of that at the time.

00:13:44.460 | All I knew was that he was handing in

00:13:46.220 | this terrible work to me.

00:13:47.380 | And I would say something to him along the lines of,

00:13:50.740 | oh, Bob, this is a great start.

00:13:53.340 | You're so awesome.

00:13:54.780 | Everybody loves working with you.

00:13:56.140 | Maybe you can make it just a little bit better.

00:13:58.220 | Kind of the thing that we do

00:14:00.180 | when we're being too "nice".

00:14:03.420 | And it's worth kind of double-clicking on this too nice.

00:14:06.500 | Like, why was I doing that?

00:14:08.180 | I think part of it was truly ruinous empathy.

00:14:11.340 | I really did like Bob

00:14:12.980 | and I really did not want to hurt Bob's feelings.

00:14:15.820 | But if I'm honest with myself,

00:14:18.300 | there was also something more insidious going on there

00:14:20.980 | because Bob was popular

00:14:23.820 | and Bob was also kind of sensitive.

00:14:26.060 | And so there was part of me that was afraid

00:14:27.900 | if I told Bob in no uncertain terms

00:14:30.260 | that his work wasn't nearly good enough,

00:14:32.500 | that he would get upset.

00:14:33.620 | He might even start to cry.

00:14:35.020 | And then everybody would think I was a big, you know what?

00:14:38.700 | And so the part of me that was worried about my reputation

00:14:42.140 | as Bob's boss was the manipulative insincerity part.

00:14:46.300 | That's why I was reluctant to give him honest feedback.

00:14:50.140 | Open, radically candid feedback.

00:14:52.180 | And then the part of me that was worried

00:14:55.140 | about Bob's feelings, that was the ruinous empathy part.

00:14:57.660 | And this went on for 10 months

00:15:00.140 | and eventually the inevitable happened.

00:15:02.700 | And I realized that if I don't fire Bob,

00:15:05.300 | I'm gonna lose all the best performers on the team

00:15:07.500 | because not only have I been unfair

00:15:09.820 | and really unkind to Bob not to tell him,

00:15:14.100 | I've been unfair to the whole team

00:15:16.540 | because not only is Bob not getting any better,

00:15:21.260 | but their deliverables, everybody's deliverables are late

00:15:25.100 | because Bob's deliverables are late.

00:15:27.060 | Everybody on the team is not able to spend as much time

00:15:30.700 | as they need to on their work

00:15:32.020 | 'cause they're having to redo Bob's work.

00:15:34.140 | And the people who are best at the job are gonna quit

00:15:36.300 | and go work somewhere where they can do their best work.

00:15:39.300 | And so when I realized this,

00:15:41.740 | I sat down to have a conversation with Bob

00:15:44.420 | that I should have started, frankly, 10 months previously.

00:15:48.020 | And when I finished explaining to him where things stood,

00:15:51.060 | he pushed his chair back from the table

00:15:53.580 | and he looked me right in the eye and he said,

00:15:56.420 | "Why didn't you tell me?"

00:15:58.220 | And as that question was going around in my head

00:16:03.300 | with no good answer, he looked at me again and he said,

00:16:07.180 | "Why didn't anyone tell me?

00:16:08.900 | "I thought you all cared about me."

00:16:12.500 | And now I realized that by not telling Bob,

00:16:16.300 | thinking I was being so nice,

00:16:18.500 | I'm having to fire him as a result of it,

00:16:20.700 | not so nice after all.

00:16:22.820 | But it was too late to save Bob.

00:16:24.820 | Even Bob at this point agreed he should go

00:16:26.860 | because his reputation on the team was just shot.

00:16:30.540 | All I could do in the moment

00:16:32.300 | was make myself a very solemn promise

00:16:34.860 | that I would never make that mistake again.

00:16:38.260 | And that I would do everything in my power

00:16:40.540 | to help other people making that mistake

00:16:42.300 | 'cause we all do it.

00:16:43.260 | We do it not only at work.

00:16:44.380 | We do it, I mean, think about,

00:16:46.780 | there was one time a guy came up to me

00:16:49.900 | after I'd given a talk and he said,

00:16:52.220 | "Yeah, you know, I got married

00:16:54.740 | "and my wife tended to clink her teeth with her spoon

00:16:59.740 | "when we were eating cereal in the morning

00:17:02.900 | "and it bugged me, but I didn't wanna be,

00:17:05.300 | "you know, I didn't wanna say anything."

00:17:06.860 | And like five years later,

00:17:08.580 | she clinked her teeth with her spoon.

00:17:10.500 | I'm like, "I need a divorce."

00:17:12.580 | I'm sure there was other stuff going on,

00:17:14.740 | but it happened, like we do this in all aspects of our life.

00:17:18.940 | - It's so funny 'cause I have a similar one with my wife.

00:17:21.220 | I'm like, "Use your lips to get this food off the spoon,

00:17:23.660 | "not your teeth, especially 'cause your teeth chip

00:17:27.340 | "all the time."

00:17:28.180 | - Yeah, but you told her at least.

00:17:29.860 | - I did tell her.

00:17:30.700 | Yeah, well, so it's funny 'cause I think sometimes

00:17:33.020 | I go down one path, maybe in my manager hat,

00:17:35.620 | I go down the ruinous empathy path

00:17:38.500 | and obnoxious aggression maybe feels a lot,

00:17:41.460 | but sometimes I'm in a point where I'm like,

00:17:44.380 | "When someone's doing great, like even at home,

00:17:47.220 | "like I love my wife, she's great."

00:17:48.700 | Like, I noticed three things.

00:17:50.540 | I'm like, "Oh, I wanna tell you these three things,

00:17:51.780 | "but it just seems so like rude."

00:17:54.180 | And like, "You know I love you,

00:17:55.180 | "so you know it's coming from a good place."

00:17:56.860 | But like, you know that whole kindness sandwich

00:17:58.940 | or something where it's like,

00:17:59.780 | "Oh, if you wanna give, deliver bad information,

00:18:01.180 | "it's like something nice, something, you know,

00:18:03.120 | "to improve, something nice again."

00:18:05.580 | What about when we're on that side of like,

00:18:07.620 | we wanna give people this feedback,

00:18:09.740 | we wanna make sure they know we care,

00:18:11.540 | even if we think they do, how do you deliver it?

00:18:14.860 | Yeah, yeah, so a couple of things.

00:18:17.420 | I would say, you know, Radical Cantor's

00:18:19.980 | not about nitpicking.

00:18:21.180 | A good friend of mine got married and her,

00:18:25.300 | I guess it was her, I don't know,

00:18:29.260 | her uncle or somebody stood up at the rehearsal dinner

00:18:32.580 | and she got married on this island

00:18:34.620 | with a very weak septic system.

00:18:37.900 | And so there were signs over all the toilets,

00:18:41.020 | "If it's yellow, let it mellow.

00:18:42.820 | "If it's brown, flush it down."

00:18:44.780 | And her uncle stood up and he said,

00:18:46.540 | "These are words to stay married by."

00:18:48.820 | You know, like, "You only need to say something

00:18:51.660 | "if it really matters."

00:18:53.140 | And so if something's really bothering you a lot,

00:18:56.380 | even if it's a small thing, by all means say it.

00:18:58.900 | But if it's a little thing and you can let it go,

00:19:01.340 | I think it's fine to let some stuff go.

00:19:03.340 | So if it's yellow, let it mellow.

00:19:05.540 | If it's brown, flush it down.

00:19:06.660 | But let's imagine you've decided it's brown.

00:19:09.220 | So you wanna say the thing.

00:19:11.580 | I think that you wanna start out

00:19:15.860 | by making sure that you're soliciting feedback

00:19:20.180 | more than you're giving it.

00:19:21.460 | You know, you don't wanna dish it out

00:19:23.460 | until you prove you can take it.

00:19:25.500 | So, and you also wanna make sure

00:19:27.540 | that you understand the other person's perspective.

00:19:30.660 | I think sometimes, especially when we're in relationships

00:19:35.660 | that we've been in for decades,

00:19:38.100 | it's easy to think you already know

00:19:40.180 | everything this person thinks, but we never do.

00:19:42.860 | Like, you can never be married long enough

00:19:45.580 | to really know someone, what they think all the time.

00:19:49.580 | So make sure there's an order of operations.

00:19:52.620 | Make sure that you're soliciting feedback.

00:19:55.140 | And then, you know, you mentioned the feedback sandwich.

00:19:58.380 | Am I allowed to curse on your podcast?

00:20:00.540 | I mean, there's the warning for anyone listening

00:20:03.340 | that is in a car with their children.

00:20:05.620 | Turn the radio down for a second.

00:20:07.260 | Turn the volume down for a second.

00:20:08.980 | Nobody likes a shit sandwich.

00:20:11.860 | Like, if you say, "Oh, Kim, you know,

00:20:14.500 | "I love your bookshelf.

00:20:16.020 | "I hate your book, but I like your orange hoodie."

00:20:19.300 | Like, that doesn't make me feel any better, you know?

00:20:21.620 | So you wanna make sure that you're focused

00:20:24.820 | on the good stuff, but in a way

00:20:26.420 | that is specific and sincere.

00:20:28.820 | So you do wanna give more praise than criticism, for sure.

00:20:32.060 | So the next step in the radical canter of operations

00:20:35.660 | after soliciting feedback is giving praise.

00:20:38.860 | But if it's something you would say to your dog,

00:20:41.500 | it's not good praise, you know?

00:20:43.220 | "Oh, good job."

00:20:44.500 | You know, that doesn't really help anybody.

00:20:46.700 | So you wanna make sure that you're sort of using this,

00:20:51.700 | you know, I hate acronyms.

00:20:54.100 | I was just talking to Bob Sutton,

00:20:55.860 | who wrote "The No Asshole Rule,"

00:20:57.300 | and he talks about jargon monoxide.

00:20:59.380 | So if this sounds like jargon monoxide, I apologize.

00:21:04.300 | But it's useful sometimes to have an acronym

00:21:06.500 | to remember in the moment.

00:21:07.540 | So when I'm thinking about praise,

00:21:09.340 | I try to think about core,

00:21:11.060 | context, observation, result, next step.

00:21:14.620 | I don't call it corn because I did a Google search on that,

00:21:18.020 | and it means something else to other people,

00:21:20.980 | so I call it core.

00:21:22.660 | So context, like in the meeting, observation,

00:21:26.700 | when you argued both sides of the case,

00:21:30.540 | results, you earned credibility,

00:21:33.060 | next step, do more of that.

00:21:34.500 | So that's what I mean by core.

00:21:35.820 | Don't just say good job,

00:21:37.740 | but make sure you're telling the person specifically

00:21:41.580 | what was good and what they could do more of.

00:21:43.780 | Like the purpose of praise is to let them know

00:21:45.860 | what to do more of.

00:21:46.700 | In fact, if you think about radical candor

00:21:48.940 | as helping someone else scratch an itch

00:21:52.660 | on an unreachable spot in your back,

00:21:54.940 | you gotta say, yeah, that's good or no, that's not good.

00:21:59.940 | And you need to be able to say both.

00:22:01.660 | So praise is really important.

00:22:03.460 | But let's say this is not praise.

00:22:06.860 | This is a little criticism.

00:22:08.340 | You wanna give someone who you love

00:22:11.900 | and who knows that you love them.

00:22:13.540 | Hopefully you know them well enough

00:22:17.380 | to know how things land for them.

00:22:19.060 | So you wanna go in and you wanna be,

00:22:23.420 | make sure that you're humble,

00:22:24.940 | that you're not sure you're right.

00:22:26.940 | To me, I call it candor and not the truth.

00:22:30.580 | 'Cause if I go to you, Chris,

00:22:31.860 | and I say, I'm gonna tell you the truth,

00:22:33.540 | I'm kind of implying like, I've got a pipeline to God

00:22:36.300 | and you don't know beep from Shinola.

00:22:38.540 | And that's not a great way to, I beeped out.

00:22:41.220 | So you don't have to turn the volume down.

00:22:43.340 | So to me, candor implies,

00:22:47.580 | here's how I understand the situation.

00:22:49.500 | I'm also really curious to know

00:22:51.140 | how you understand the situation.

00:22:53.660 | And so you wanna be humble.

00:22:56.260 | You wanna state your intention to be helpful.

00:22:59.020 | I think sometimes when people get, receive criticism,

00:23:03.220 | they receive it as though you're trying to like be dominant

00:23:06.660 | or show you're smarter than they are.

00:23:08.340 | And so you wanna make sure

00:23:10.100 | that you're getting on the same side of the table

00:23:12.380 | with the person.

00:23:13.300 | I can tell you really care about this dish

00:23:17.540 | you're cooking for this dinner party.

00:23:19.220 | And I have an idea that I think will make it even better,

00:23:21.780 | whatever it is, state your intention to be helpful.

00:23:24.980 | You wanna do it right away.

00:23:27.860 | You don't wanna hold on to stuff,

00:23:30.180 | especially if it's critical feedback.

00:23:33.060 | I think we've all had relationships

00:23:35.660 | where someone told us about something

00:23:37.740 | that we did six months ago that really upset them.

00:23:41.980 | And you're like, you've been holding onto that

00:23:43.660 | this whole time?

00:23:44.500 | Like, why didn't you tell me six months ago?

00:23:46.940 | So you wanna tell them right away.

00:23:49.340 | And if you're like so angry

00:23:51.380 | that you don't think you can say it right, you can delay.

00:23:53.820 | But usually when I say in my mind,

00:23:56.780 | oh, I'm gonna wait for the right moment.

00:23:59.700 | What I'm really telling myself

00:24:01.140 | is I'm never gonna say that thing.

00:24:02.840 | So you wanna say it right away in general.

00:24:07.020 | You also want to make sure that if possible,

00:24:11.020 | you're having this conversation in person.

00:24:14.580 | If not possible,

00:24:15.740 | you wanna have a conversation on the phone.

00:24:17.900 | Do not send an email, do not send a text.

00:24:21.220 | Slack is a radical candor train wreck waiting to happen.

00:24:26.220 | You don't wanna criticize people

00:24:28.580 | in front of other people and in writing.

00:24:31.780 | And the reason why I say have a phone call

00:24:34.540 | or an in-person conversation

00:24:37.100 | is because a big part of success is gauging how it's landing.

00:24:40.980 | And if you broadcast it with a text message,

00:24:44.460 | you have no idea how your words are landing

00:24:46.620 | for the other person.

00:24:47.740 | And if it's praise, of course do it in public,

00:24:53.420 | but you gotta criticize in private.

00:24:56.040 | If I criticize you publicly,

00:24:59.860 | you're likely to go into fight or flight mode

00:25:02.220 | and then you physically cannot hear what I'm saying.

00:25:04.580 | So once again, I'm wasting my breath.

00:25:07.060 | And so don't do that.

00:25:08.940 | And also use core with criticism,

00:25:11.620 | context, observation, result, next step.

00:25:13.940 | So I had a boss who told me in the meeting,

00:25:18.420 | that's the context.

00:25:19.660 | When you said, "Um," every third word,

00:25:21.860 | that's the observation.

00:25:25.500 | The result, it made you sound stupid.

00:25:28.580 | Go visit this speech coach.

00:25:30.100 | So that's core criticism, you know.

00:25:32.820 | But there's a world of difference

00:25:34.340 | between saying in the meeting,

00:25:36.100 | when you said, "Um," every third word,

00:25:37.500 | it made you sound stupid,

00:25:38.820 | here's a speech coach you can visit.

00:25:40.940 | There's a world of difference between saying that

00:25:43.060 | and saying, "Oh Kim, you're just too stupid to do this job."

00:25:45.780 | Like that would be awful.

00:25:47.540 | And a lot of people object to the use of the word stupid,

00:25:50.860 | which is some criticism I've gotten about that story.

00:25:53.740 | And so maybe it's better to say, you know,

00:25:57.020 | something else, say, you know, you lost credibility.

00:26:00.180 | But in my case,

00:26:01.900 | that was the word that really got my attention.

00:26:04.220 | And my boss knew me well enough to know

00:26:07.980 | that that was the okay word to use with me,

00:26:11.380 | that it wasn't gonna crush me,

00:26:12.660 | but it was gonna get my attention.

00:26:14.500 | - Yeah.

00:26:15.420 | Okay, so I'm gonna back up a little because you said

00:26:17.660 | you wanna start by soliciting feedback.

00:26:19.940 | Are there easy ways to do that?

00:26:22.500 | I feel like sometimes,

00:26:24.700 | even when I'm recording an episode at the end,

00:26:26.420 | I'm like, "Oh, do you have any feedback?"

00:26:27.500 | And people are like, "Nope, that was great."

00:26:29.020 | - Yeah.

00:26:30.340 | - What tips do you have

00:26:31.220 | when people are not easily able to give good feedback?

00:26:34.860 | - Yeah, which nobody is easily.

00:26:37.140 | I mean, except your teenage children.

00:26:39.100 | If you have a teenager, they're really good at this.

00:26:41.340 | This is a service they offer with alacrity.

00:26:45.060 | But other people are very reluctant to give you feedback.

00:26:48.340 | So I have found if I say, "Do you have any feedback for me?"

00:26:52.300 | The answer is invariably, "Oh no, everything's fine."

00:26:55.500 | So I have four bits of advice for soliciting feedback.

00:26:59.340 | The first is you wanna ask the question

00:27:04.340 | in a way that sounds like you.

00:27:05.780 | So I'm gonna tell you the question that I like to ask,

00:27:09.140 | but do not write it down.

00:27:10.220 | 'Cause if you sound like Kim Scott and not like yourself,

00:27:13.140 | the other person's not gonna believe you want the answer.

00:27:15.580 | So the question I like to ask is,

00:27:18.220 | "What could I do or stop doing

00:27:20.220 | that would make it easier to get along with me?"

00:27:22.580 | And that's a question.

00:27:24.940 | I mean, I've been married since 2007, so for a while,

00:27:28.580 | but I still occasionally ask my husband some version,

00:27:32.140 | what could I do?

00:27:33.220 | What could I have done or not done in that situation

00:27:36.540 | so that you wouldn't be so mad right now?

00:27:38.740 | 'Cause my goal is obviously not to make you mad.

00:27:41.380 | And so, but don't write down that question

00:27:45.580 | because if those are not the words you would use,

00:27:48.620 | the other person is gonna be like,

00:27:49.740 | "Did you just listen to some podcast?"

00:27:51.820 | And so, in fact, I was working with Krista Quarles

00:27:56.940 | when she was the CEO of OpenTable.

00:27:59.060 | And she said, "Kim, I could never imagine

00:28:01.820 | your words coming out of my mouth."

00:28:03.580 | She said, "The question I like to ask is,

00:28:05.500 | tell me why I'm wrong."

00:28:06.980 | Okay, that's fine too, that's what worked for her.

00:28:11.660 | But there were a couple of people in Krista's life

00:28:15.020 | that that question didn't work for

00:28:17.500 | because it seemed too aggressive to them

00:28:19.660 | and it kind of shut them down.

00:28:21.020 | So she had to adjust.

00:28:22.820 | Being authentic doesn't mean ignoring the impact

00:28:26.380 | you're having on other people.

00:28:28.260 | And you can say the same thing to one person

00:28:31.380 | and it's gonna be awesome with that person.

00:28:34.100 | The exact same thing to somebody else

00:28:36.060 | and they're gonna feel,

00:28:37.540 | they're either not gonna hear what you said

00:28:39.380 | because you weren't out far enough

00:28:41.340 | on the challenge directly dimension

00:28:43.540 | or they'll be crushed by it

00:28:45.140 | 'cause you said it in a way that you meant as funny,

00:28:48.620 | but they didn't find funny at all.

00:28:50.500 | So you gotta adjust for the other person.

00:28:52.220 | So that's number one,

00:28:53.660 | is think about your question very consciously.

00:28:58.140 | Have a go-to question that you usually ask

00:29:00.580 | and then adjust it for whom you're asking it up.

00:29:03.700 | And the other thing about the question

00:29:05.940 | is that it shouldn't be able to be answered

00:29:09.340 | with a yes or a no.

00:29:11.140 | So what could I do or stop doing

00:29:13.980 | that would make it easier to work with me?

00:29:16.660 | Not, is there anything that I could do?

00:29:19.940 | And in fact, if you read the book,

00:29:21.260 | you'll notice I wrote, "Is there anything?"

00:29:23.660 | And a reader gave me some feedback.

00:29:26.260 | Great thing about radical writing about feedback

00:29:28.300 | is you're gonna get a lot of it

00:29:29.380 | and said, "It's better to ask what?"

00:29:31.700 | And I realized that is a good point.

00:29:33.620 | So there you go.

00:29:35.380 | So think about how you're gonna ask.

00:29:37.260 | Now, no matter how good your question is,

00:29:41.300 | the other person doesn't wanna answer it.

00:29:43.540 | They're still gonna feel uncomfortable.

00:29:45.900 | And the only way out is through.

00:29:48.100 | You've just got to embrace the discomfort.

00:29:50.780 | That's the second step, embrace the discomfort.

00:29:53.820 | Really simple technique here.

00:29:56.180 | Close your mouth and count to six.

00:29:59.060 | (silence)

00:30:01.220 | We made it to six.

00:30:07.740 | You're the first person who didn't jump in

00:30:10.420 | and say something.

00:30:12.060 | - It's so hard.

00:30:13.140 | - It is really hard.

00:30:14.140 | Six seconds is a really long time.

00:30:16.300 | So if you can manage to stay silent for six seconds

00:30:19.500 | and the other person is like smiling at you

00:30:21.860 | and then they're kind of wincing at you,

00:30:23.460 | like just stay silent.

00:30:25.260 | They'll probably say something.

00:30:27.780 | So now you've dragged this poor soul

00:30:30.940 | out on a conversational limb

00:30:33.060 | they never wanted to go on, right?

00:30:36.140 | It's crucial that you take the third step,

00:30:38.420 | which is to listen with the intent to understand,

00:30:41.740 | not to respond.

00:30:43.820 | Because even though you just solicited feedback,

00:30:47.860 | you're probably gonna feel a little bit defensive

00:30:50.140 | when you get some.

00:30:51.340 | And that doesn't mean you're a lesser mortal

00:30:53.540 | or that you're shut down to feedback.

00:30:54.980 | It just means you're human and that's all part of this.

00:30:57.940 | And so you wanna think about maybe,

00:31:00.540 | here's a tactic for this third step,

00:31:02.380 | which is asking a follow-up question.

00:31:05.100 | So for example, my daughter said to me at breakfast one time

00:31:10.100 | "Mom, I wish you weren't the radical candor lady."

00:31:13.220 | And immediately this wave of parental guilt washed over me.

00:31:16.140 | And I thought, oh, I'm spending too much time at work.

00:31:18.220 | She wants more time with me.

00:31:20.100 | And then I thought, well, I should ask a follow-up.

00:31:22.780 | I should take my own advice here.

00:31:24.460 | Ask a follow-up question.

00:31:26.140 | So I said, "Well, who do you wish I were?"

00:31:29.220 | And she said, "I wish you were the lady

00:31:32.100 | who minded her own business."

00:31:34.180 | So I was very, I could spend a little more time at work

00:31:36.660 | as far as she was concerned.

00:31:38.380 | So you wanna make sure that you're really open

00:31:42.780 | to whatever it is the person is saying

00:31:45.140 | and that you have some kind of technique

00:31:47.980 | for managing your own defensiveness when you get it.

00:31:52.620 | Now the fourth step.

00:31:53.980 | So first was have a go-to question.

00:31:57.620 | Second was embrace the discomfort.

00:31:59.700 | Third was listen with the intent to understand,

00:32:02.860 | not to respond.

00:32:03.700 | The fourth thing you need to keep in mind

00:32:05.580 | is that you've got to reward the candor.

00:32:07.860 | Because when someone gives you critical feedback,

00:32:11.260 | they take a big risk, no matter who they are in your life.

00:32:15.060 | And if you're gonna make a risky investment,

00:32:18.020 | you expect a big return.

00:32:19.940 | And you can think about critical feedback

00:32:23.100 | as a very risky investment from that other person.

00:32:25.780 | And if you do not reward them richly,

00:32:29.900 | they are never gonna give you feedback again.

00:32:32.260 | So you gotta make sure that you are,

00:32:37.140 | if you agree with the feedback,

00:32:39.500 | that you don't just say thank you,

00:32:41.140 | but that you take the next step and fix the problem.

00:32:44.060 | And then tell them that you fixed the problem,

00:32:46.100 | that they brought to your attention.

00:32:48.380 | What do you do though, if you disagree with the feedback?

00:32:51.020 | This is tricky, 'cause you just solicited feedback,

00:32:53.540 | they told you, and you actually think,

00:32:55.660 | you're not defensive, but you actually think they're wrong.

00:32:59.100 | So in that situation, what I recommend doing

00:33:01.940 | is taking a look at what they said and what you think

00:33:06.060 | and finding that five or 10%,

00:33:08.060 | there's some little bit of overlap between what they said

00:33:10.580 | and what you think that you can agree with.

00:33:13.260 | And give voice to that, just to demonstrate

00:33:16.260 | that you're not instinctively shut down the feedback

00:33:18.820 | and to make your listening tangible.

00:33:21.340 | And then what you wanna do next is you wanna say,

00:33:25.100 | so I agree with that, as for the rest,

00:33:27.740 | I wanna think about it and get back to you.

00:33:30.020 | And then you must get back to them.

00:33:31.980 | And you gotta offer them a respectful explanation

00:33:35.660 | of why you disagree.

00:33:37.420 | I think that we kind of have this bad instinct

00:33:40.380 | about disagreement.

00:33:41.660 | We think that a disagreement is gonna pose a risk

00:33:44.700 | to our relationship.

00:33:46.660 | But actually many of my best relationships,

00:33:50.300 | both in my personal life and at work,

00:33:53.420 | started with a really respectful disagreement.

00:33:56.820 | And I have found that what really hurts a relationship

00:34:01.820 | is unspoken disagreement.

00:34:05.180 | 'Cause that's where resentment builds up,

00:34:07.060 | it builds up and then it explodes like a dirty bomb

00:34:10.140 | all over your relationship.

00:34:11.380 | So talk to them and explain why you disagree

00:34:16.220 | and be willing, let them try to persuade you

00:34:19.620 | that you're wrong.

00:34:20.940 | And you can't argue endlessly.

00:34:23.500 | At some point you gotta listen, challenge, commit.

00:34:25.420 | But don't skip the listen and challenge part

00:34:28.820 | before you get to some sort of commitment.

00:34:31.340 | I like finding the overlap.

00:34:32.500 | 'Cause I can imagine a conversation between a couple

00:34:34.940 | where someone's like, "You never listened to me."

00:34:37.100 | And it's like, "Well, I do."

00:34:38.420 | But it's probably better to say, "Well, you know what?

00:34:40.860 | "I was distracted this afternoon.

00:34:43.540 | "I'm gonna acknowledge that there was some overlap

00:34:46.300 | "in what you think and how I feel,

00:34:49.060 | "but I do listen to you sometimes."

00:34:51.780 | And you can kind of continue down that path, so.

00:34:54.340 | Yeah, anytime somebody says never,

00:34:57.100 | there's some questions.

00:35:00.060 | Those absolute rules are,

00:35:02.180 | and I say this to my kids all the time.

00:35:04.620 | And what about the other side of that?

00:35:05.900 | What about when, let's say I'm delivering feedback

00:35:08.140 | and it's very clear to me

00:35:08.980 | that the other person completely disagrees?

00:35:10.980 | Yeah, I think there's that Jerry Maguire movie

00:35:15.980 | and there's that scene where he's yelling,

00:35:19.180 | "You think we're arguing,

00:35:20.500 | "and I think we're finally talking."

00:35:23.020 | And so I think one of the things

00:35:25.540 | that I have found disarming is to say,

00:35:27.740 | "I can tell you totally disagree with me.

00:35:29.740 | "Like, tell me why."

00:35:31.540 | And let them disagree with you

00:35:36.060 | and try to understand why they disagree with you.

00:35:39.340 | And if the person is,

00:35:41.780 | sometimes it happens that the person is disagreeing with you

00:35:45.220 | in a way that's obnoxious,

00:35:46.500 | like they're yelling at you or something.

00:35:49.420 | And that is your cue to move up

00:35:52.300 | on the care personally dimension.

00:35:53.860 | But it's kind of hard to care personally

00:35:56.380 | about someone who's yelling at you.

00:35:58.620 | And so it's really useful in that moment

00:36:01.940 | to try to get curious, not furious.

00:36:04.300 | Like, try to really understand

00:36:06.460 | why the person thinks what they think.

00:36:10.100 | Not necessarily because you're gonna agree with it,

00:36:13.460 | but because it's interesting to understand why.

00:36:15.900 | Okay.

00:36:18.460 | And I'm starting to think about various people I know

00:36:22.060 | and conversations I've had.

00:36:23.180 | And I have a bunch of friends in Israel

00:36:25.060 | who seem to be very direct and that's comfortable.

00:36:27.860 | And we've spent some time in Japan and it's very different.

00:36:32.820 | How do you start to think about using this language

00:36:36.340 | and skillset with people where maybe culturally

00:36:40.420 | they're not ready for it,

00:36:41.580 | or maybe culturally they're so ready for it,

00:36:44.300 | it's kind of uncomfortable for you?

00:36:46.580 | Yeah, at one point I was managing teams all over the world.

00:36:50.900 | And believe me, radical candor in Israel

00:36:53.820 | or in the Netherlands sounds very different

00:36:56.380 | from radical candor in Japan.

00:36:58.740 | In fact, with the team in Japan,

00:37:01.220 | I called it polite persistence

00:37:03.900 | because polite was how they liked to show

00:37:06.580 | that they cared personally.

00:37:08.220 | And persistence was an easier way

00:37:10.140 | for them to think of challenge directly.

00:37:12.420 | And once I had reframed it for them in that way,

00:37:16.340 | then believe me,

00:37:17.460 | they were relentlessly politely persistent.

00:37:20.300 | And I heard a lot from them and learned a lot.

00:37:23.380 | And we improved the product

00:37:25.460 | as a result of their polite persistence.

00:37:27.980 | But if I had gone to the Netherlands or to Israel

00:37:30.660 | and said, be politely persistent,

00:37:33.180 | they would have interpreted that as me saying,

00:37:36.420 | sort of be manipulatively insincere.

00:37:40.340 | And because challenging directly

00:37:42.580 | was very much part of those cultures

00:37:45.060 | and really a sign of respect in those cultures.

00:37:48.540 | And so I think it is useful to remember

00:37:52.580 | that radical candor gets measured,

00:37:54.980 | not at the speaker's mouth, but at the listener's ear.

00:37:57.980 | And that means that even though if you abstract up enough,

00:38:02.140 | radical candor is about love and truth at the same time.

00:38:04.780 | And those are pretty universal human values.

00:38:07.700 | Not everybody, but most of us honor love and truth.

00:38:11.860 | But the way that we express love and truth

00:38:15.860 | is culturally relative.

00:38:17.300 | And so you've got to adjust for the culture

00:38:20.220 | where you're operating,

00:38:21.140 | but you also have to adjust for the individual

00:38:24.180 | to whom you're speaking.

00:38:25.180 | Like if you're being radically candid with me,

00:38:28.420 | I'm kind of stubborn and I'm not always the best listener.

00:38:31.140 | So you're probably gonna have to attend more

00:38:33.220 | to the challenge directly dimension of radical candor,

00:38:36.180 | 'cause I might just brush you off.

00:38:38.420 | And you may have to say it again more clearly.

00:38:41.260 | I'm aware of this feedback and I'm working on it,

00:38:44.340 | but that's just, but if you're managing my brother,

00:38:48.260 | who is a great listener

00:38:49.940 | and probably more sensitive than I am,

00:38:53.100 | you're gonna need to attend more

00:38:55.100 | to the care personally dimension.

00:38:57.740 | You don't need to go as far out

00:38:59.580 | on the challenge directly dimension.

00:39:01.300 | So sort of being aware of which vector to choose

00:39:05.580 | as you move forward in these conversations

00:39:07.900 | with different people and in different cultures.

00:39:10.300 | And similarly on the note of different cultures,

00:39:13.620 | I have an assistant who lives in Sri Lanka

00:39:17.060 | and we overlap for a few hours a day.

00:39:19.620 | But one of my challenges right now,

00:39:21.620 | yeah, I've gotten two pieces of feedback from you.

00:39:23.460 | One, address things quickly.

00:39:25.020 | And two, don't do them asynchronously,

00:39:27.060 | do them synchronously.

00:39:28.300 | And I'm like, well, what about when someone's sleeping

00:39:31.100 | and I wanna get them feedback before they work,

00:39:33.580 | but I'm gonna be asleep.

00:39:35.060 | Or just generally in a lot of work scenarios now

00:39:37.700 | where we're distributed,

00:39:38.860 | people work different times, different days.

00:39:41.460 | Are there any ways to be more radically candor

00:39:44.780 | when you're writing a private Slack message or an email?

00:39:47.860 | Or surely the answer can't always be

00:39:50.820 | to get on the phone or an email to give,

00:39:53.340 | or sorry, a video to give feedback.

00:39:55.860 | Yeah, so I recommend finding time to get on the phone.

00:40:00.860 | And the reason, it always feels more efficient

00:40:04.580 | to just fire off the message.

00:40:06.220 | And it also feels easier

00:40:08.220 | 'cause then you don't have to gauge how it landed

00:40:10.420 | because you don't have to know, you just fire it off.

00:40:14.460 | If you think about the number of times though,

00:40:17.740 | when you sent someone an email or a text

00:40:20.820 | and they totally misinterpreted what you were trying to say,

00:40:23.820 | or they got incredibly offended because you used a word.

00:40:28.460 | If you were having a synchronous conversation with them,

00:40:32.180 | you could have fixed it in the moment.

00:40:34.260 | But once they read that

00:40:36.100 | and they're pissed off for 12 hours

00:40:38.900 | before they talk to you, like now it's exploded

00:40:42.380 | and it takes way more time actually to undo the damage.

00:40:45.300 | We've all seen this happen with email and text and Slack.

00:40:49.860 | And so I really think that it's worth,

00:40:52.900 | if you notice something in a meeting

00:40:55.660 | and you know that you only overlap

00:40:58.780 | for a couple of another hour,

00:41:02.180 | I would say, send the person a text and say,

00:41:04.620 | "Can we have a two minute conversation?"

00:41:07.740 | Most radical candor conversations literally are two minutes.

00:41:12.500 | And so it's fast.

00:41:15.500 | And if you can gauge how what you're saying is landing,

00:41:20.500 | like nine times out of 10,

00:41:22.980 | the person will just say,

00:41:23.820 | "Oh, thank you for pointing it out."

00:41:25.060 | And you'll be like, "I probably could have sent an email."

00:41:27.300 | But for that one time out of 10,

00:41:28.860 | where you really have offended someone

00:41:31.540 | and done a lot of damage to a relationship,

00:41:33.940 | it's gonna take a lot.

00:41:34.900 | You can fix it usually in the two minutes

00:41:36.940 | if you're actually speaking to them synchronously.

00:41:40.220 | And there's a lot of evidence that shows

00:41:43.900 | that there may be more noise than signal

00:41:46.940 | in facial expressions and body language over video.

00:41:50.700 | And so I recommend the phone,

00:41:53.860 | not another Zoom call, actually.

00:41:56.260 | Just get on the phone.

00:41:57.500 | 'Cause then you're listening to the words

00:41:59.340 | the person is saying,

00:42:00.940 | and you're not misinterpreting their facial expression

00:42:03.580 | or body language.

00:42:05.340 | So like, for example, if I get really angry,

00:42:10.340 | I'm more likely to tear up than to yell.

00:42:14.020 | But you may think I'm sad, but I am not sad.

00:42:16.380 | I'm really mad, you know?

00:42:17.940 | And if we're just talking on the phone,

00:42:19.580 | like that whole round trip doesn't even have to happen

00:42:22.540 | 'cause you don't have to notice facial expression

00:42:25.540 | or body language.

00:42:26.900 | And even if you're gonna have the conversation in person,

00:42:30.220 | I recommend taking a walk together

00:42:32.660 | instead of sitting across from the other person,

00:42:36.620 | you know, at a table or something.

00:42:38.620 | There's something psychologically

00:42:40.220 | about walking in the same direction that's very useful.

00:42:43.780 | There's also a lot of evidence that shows we think better

00:42:46.700 | when we're moving our bodies instead of just sitting there.

00:42:49.740 | And you're not staring at the other person,

00:42:53.100 | misinterpreting their facial expressions and body language.

00:42:56.620 | And also sometimes looking, this is very mammalian,

00:43:01.780 | but when a mammal stares another in the eye,

00:43:04.020 | that can like be a sign to attack.

00:43:07.100 | And so walking in the same direction

00:43:09.660 | can sometimes be a little more effective.

00:43:12.100 | Yeah, for me, it's like,

00:43:13.260 | if I'm just sitting at my desk on the phone,

00:43:15.620 | I feel like I have to be doing something.

00:43:17.020 | I can't just be on the phone, it's very hard.

00:43:19.100 | But if I'm just walking,

00:43:20.340 | now it like checks the box in my mind of,

00:43:22.820 | now I'm doing a thing and talking and it's clear,

00:43:26.140 | but it's nowhere near as distracting as, you know,

00:43:28.980 | reading emails or anything like that.

00:43:30.940 | Yeah, exactly, exactly.

00:43:32.380 | As soon as you're doing something,

00:43:34.140 | if you're sitting at your desk,

00:43:36.340 | like there's some notification,

00:43:38.460 | no matter how good you are

00:43:39.740 | about turning all your notifications off,

00:43:41.860 | some notification is gonna come along and distract you.

00:43:45.980 | And what do you think about just calling out

00:43:48.580 | the radical or the kind of care personally side of,

00:43:51.940 | hey, I noticed the work you've been doing lately

00:43:54.540 | hasn't been up to par.

00:43:57.140 | I'm telling you this because I believe in you

00:43:59.780 | at this company and I think that I've seen work

00:44:02.020 | that shows that you can do it

00:44:03.420 | and just like calling it out in the feedback.

00:44:05.940 | 100%, 100%.

00:44:07.700 | I think that that's part of like stating your intention

00:44:10.660 | to be helpful.

00:44:11.900 | You know, humble and helpful

00:44:13.020 | are the most important parts of this.

00:44:15.140 | And saying, you know,

00:44:16.820 | I can tell you really care about this project

00:44:20.460 | and that's why I wanna tell you this thing

00:44:22.820 | is hugely important.

00:44:24.700 | And telling the person you believe in them

00:44:26.780 | is like, that never goes awry.

00:44:29.700 | I mean, unless you're lying and you don't believe in it,

00:44:31.980 | but that's a whole other topic.

00:44:32.820 | - Yeah, yeah, of course, you have to believe it.

00:44:33.940 | - Yes.

00:44:35.500 | - Okay, so you mentioned earlier

00:44:36.700 | that one of the fun parts of writing a book

00:44:39.740 | about radical candor is that you get a lot of feedback.

00:44:43.580 | - Yes.

00:44:44.460 | - You know, I first came across your work

00:44:47.340 | five, six years ago when I was working at a company

00:44:50.700 | that managing a team, what's changed, right?

00:44:54.860 | I think the world's changed a bit.

00:44:56.980 | What kind of feedback have you gotten?

00:44:58.380 | Where do you take some of these lessons from now?

00:45:01.740 | - Yeah, so hands down,

00:45:03.980 | the best feedback I got about radical candor

00:45:07.180 | happened shortly after the book came out.

00:45:09.660 | I was at a tech company in San Francisco

00:45:12.820 | giving a radical candor talk

00:45:14.380 | and the CEO of that company had been a colleague of mine

00:45:17.940 | for the better part of a decade.

00:45:20.020 | And she's a person who I like and respect enormously.

00:45:23.100 | And she's one of too few black women CEOs in tech.

00:45:26.660 | And when I finished giving the presentation,

00:45:28.900 | she pulled me aside and she said,

00:45:30.540 | "Kim, I'm really excited to roll out radical candor.

00:45:33.060 | I think it's gonna help me build

00:45:34.180 | the kind of culture that I want.

00:45:36.260 | But I gotta tell you,

00:45:37.100 | it's much harder for me to roll it out than it is for you."

00:45:40.380 | And she went on to explain to me

00:45:42.300 | that as soon as she would give anyone

00:45:44.220 | even the most gentle, compassionate criticism,

00:45:47.340 | she would get slimed with the angry black woman stereotype.

00:45:51.300 | And I knew this was true.

00:45:53.220 | And as soon as she said it to me,

00:45:55.940 | I realized kind of four things at the same time.

00:45:59.620 | The first was that I had not been a kind of colleague

00:46:03.060 | that I imagined myself to be.

00:46:05.340 | I had failed even to notice the extent

00:46:10.100 | to which she had to show up unfailingly cheerful

00:46:12.900 | and pleasant in every meeting we had ever been in together,

00:46:16.180 | even though she had what to be pissed off about

00:46:18.300 | as we all do at work in six and a half years.

00:46:21.020 | But she was not as free as I was to say.

00:46:24.580 | And I was not as free as my husband

00:46:26.820 | was to say when I was, you know.

00:46:28.940 | So I'd failed to notice,

00:46:30.820 | I'd failed to be an upstander really to her.

00:46:33.020 | The second thing that I realized

00:46:35.460 | was that not only had I been in denial

00:46:38.300 | about what was happening to her,

00:46:39.780 | I had been even deeper in denial

00:46:41.660 | about the things that had happened to me

00:46:43.980 | as a woman in tech.

00:46:46.780 | And kind of hard for the author of a book

00:46:49.100 | called "Radical Canner" to admit that I had been in denial.

00:46:52.300 | But I had pretended throughout most of my career

00:46:54.900 | that a whole host of things were not happening

00:46:57.020 | that were in fact happening.

00:46:58.860 | And I think the reason I had been in denial

00:47:01.420 | is that I hated to think of myself

00:47:03.740 | or of my colleague as a victim

00:47:07.020 | because we have such a strange attitude

00:47:09.060 | towards that in our society.

00:47:11.100 | But even less than wanting to think of myself as a victim

00:47:13.660 | did I wanna think of myself as a culprit.

00:47:16.060 | So the third thing that I wrote,

00:47:17.580 | this was a big moment for me.

00:47:18.700 | The third thing that I realized

00:47:20.580 | was that I had been even deeper in denial

00:47:22.980 | about the times in my career and in my life

00:47:26.860 | when I had been biased or said something

00:47:29.740 | or done something that was prejudiced or bullied someone.

00:47:32.820 | And we all play those roles.

00:47:35.980 | Sometimes we're the person who observed the thing.

00:47:40.980 | Sometimes we're the silent bystander

00:47:44.060 | when we wanna be the upstander.

00:47:46.300 | Sometimes we're the person to whom it happened.

00:47:49.180 | And other times we're the person who did the thing

00:47:51.180 | even though we didn't, I never intended.

00:47:53.540 | I never woke up and I don't think anybody really does

00:47:56.260 | or many people really do wake up and say,

00:47:58.660 | ah, I wanna be biased today.

00:48:00.700 | I wanna be prejudiced today.

00:48:02.140 | I wanna bully someone today.

00:48:03.620 | Like that's not usually what causes those things to happen.

00:48:08.420 | And then the fourth thing I realized was that as a leader

00:48:11.020 | I imagined I had created these workplaces

00:48:14.140 | that were sort of like these BS free zones.

00:48:18.340 | But because I was refusing to notice bias, prejudice

00:48:21.220 | and bullying that was happening on my teams

00:48:23.580 | I hadn't built the kind of culture that I wanted to build.

00:48:25.980 | So all of those realizations prompted me

00:48:29.300 | to write my next book, "Radical Respect."

00:48:31.900 | And there's been a lot written about this stuff.

00:48:36.660 | Actually a lot more written about it

00:48:39.660 | since I started writing that book

00:48:41.180 | than when I began writing that book.

00:48:43.020 | But we haven't solved these problems by a long stretch.

00:48:48.060 | So hopefully "Radical Respect" will help people

00:48:52.180 | make things a little better.

00:48:53.780 | - And I know it's not out yet

00:48:55.300 | so people can definitely pre-order

00:48:56.700 | but what are some of the things we can start to do

00:49:00.300 | for people who are like, okay, give me a little bit.

00:49:03.180 | - So I think one of the things that is really helpful

00:49:06.020 | is to distinguish between bias, prejudice and bullying

00:49:09.700 | because there are three very different things

00:49:11.260 | but I think we tend to conflate them.

00:49:13.300 | So I'm gonna leave you with super simple definitions.

00:49:16.820 | Bias is just not meaning it.

00:49:18.580 | So that's my definition, not meaning it.

00:49:22.260 | And it's usually unconscious.

00:49:24.420 | When we stop and think about the implications

00:49:26.460 | of what we just said or did,

00:49:27.700 | like that's not what we really consciously believe

00:49:30.660 | but often we're not aware of what's going on

00:49:33.020 | in our own brains.

00:49:34.140 | Kahneman's book, "Thinking Fast and Slow"

00:49:36.900 | is really good on this.

00:49:38.100 | So that's bias.

00:49:39.780 | Prejudice on the other hand is very different.

00:49:41.980 | It's meaning it.

00:49:43.740 | So not meaning it, meaning it.

00:49:45.900 | And prejudice is usually a very consciously held belief

00:49:49.340 | usually reflecting an unfair stereotype.

00:49:53.340 | And bullying on the other hand,

00:49:56.100 | there's no belief conscious or unconscious really going on.

00:49:59.340 | Person's just trying to be mean.

00:50:00.980 | So not meaning it, meaning it, being mean.

00:50:04.140 | So what do you do if it's bias?

00:50:05.900 | And I think this is really important

00:50:07.660 | because the right response to bias

00:50:11.580 | is just to hold up a mirror,

00:50:12.780 | to point it out to the other person

00:50:14.740 | and to do it in a way that is supportive of the other.

00:50:17.260 | You're not trying to punish someone

00:50:18.740 | for something they're unconscious of.

00:50:20.300 | You're just trying to make them aware.

00:50:22.140 | So one of the things that I recommend

00:50:24.780 | is with the people who you're close with

00:50:30.180 | either in your personal life or at work,

00:50:32.580 | I come up with some kind of shared vocabulary.

00:50:35.140 | So with the people who I work most closely with,

00:50:38.300 | we all have these little purple flags

00:50:40.620 | and we'll wave a purple flag if we're on Zoom

00:50:43.180 | or we'll say purple flag if we're on the phone.

00:50:46.380 | And that gives the other person the opportunity

00:50:49.260 | to either say, "Oh, thank you.

00:50:52.380 | I get it.

00:50:53.220 | You know, I'm working on not saying that thing."

00:50:56.780 | Or to say, "Thank you for pointing it out,

00:50:58.940 | but I don't get it," you know?

00:51:01.660 | And learning how to say that,

00:51:04.060 | "Thank you for pointing it out.

00:51:05.340 | I don't get it," is really hard

00:51:06.860 | because, you know, I don't know about you,

00:51:08.740 | but when someone points out to me

00:51:10.060 | that I've said or done something biased,

00:51:11.580 | I feel deeply and profoundly ashamed.

00:51:15.060 | Like I can tell you-

00:51:16.340 | Can you give an example for people

00:51:17.660 | who are maybe not able to kind of really

00:51:20.660 | get what you're, some examples?

00:51:22.060 | Yeah, I mean, for example,

00:51:24.780 | I was working with a team

00:51:29.780 | or kind of around helping folks roll these ideas out.

00:51:34.140 | And I said in a meeting,

00:51:37.380 | "I am a slave to my calendar."

00:51:40.860 | And someone said,

00:51:41.700 | "Oh, do we really need a slavery metaphor there?"

00:51:45.020 | You know, and no, we did not need a slavery metaphor there.

00:51:49.340 | And one of the people on the team is black

00:51:52.300 | and it especially was, you know, offensive to her.

00:51:56.620 | And the last thing I wanted to, you know,

00:51:58.100 | it's easy enough for me to change the word.

00:51:59.740 | So she waved a purple flag and I was like,

00:52:02.580 | "Oh, thank you."

00:52:03.580 | Like, I got it immediately in that case.

00:52:06.500 | There was another time when I was working

00:52:09.260 | with a team of people and I said to someone,

00:52:13.340 | "Can we have lunch after this?"

00:52:15.140 | And someone waved a purple flag and I felt like,

00:52:18.260 | "What, what, what, what was wrong with that?"

00:52:21.300 | And they said, "I'll tell you after the meeting."

00:52:26.100 | Like we went on and then they reminded me it was Ramadan

00:52:29.380 | and this person was fasting.

00:52:31.300 | And so those are the kinds of things where we,

00:52:34.500 | you know, we say it wasn't like the worst thing

00:52:37.780 | in the world, but I would rather know than not know.

00:52:40.300 | And that's why I find like disrupting the bias

00:52:44.300 | or whatever, the slightly offensive thing

00:52:46.500 | or maybe even extremely offensive thing you just said

00:52:49.340 | is so useful to deepen relationships.

00:52:53.060 | I think, you know, one of the problems

00:52:57.860 | that a lot of teams have told me that they had

00:52:59.980 | with like unconscious bias training

00:53:02.260 | is that it felt a little bit like boiling the ocean.

00:53:04.980 | There are so many different examples of unconscious bias

00:53:09.340 | that may or may not be relevant

00:53:11.420 | to a group of people working together.

00:53:13.100 | If we can just work on the ones

00:53:14.660 | that the people in the room are experiencing,

00:53:16.660 | like that's great, that's a great next step.

00:53:20.340 | Which is why I think disrupting the specific biases

00:53:24.420 | is really useful.

00:53:25.900 | Like for example, I was working with a CEO

00:53:30.860 | who tended to stand up in front of his whole team

00:53:33.700 | and say, all right guys.

00:53:35.540 | And you know, some of the women on the team didn't mind that,

00:53:38.740 | but others did.

00:53:39.660 | And he's like, why don't I say, all right team

00:53:43.060 | or all right, you know, folks or something.

00:53:45.380 | All right, y'all, I'm from the South.

00:53:47.700 | So y'all comes trippingly off my tongue,

00:53:49.980 | doesn't come trippingly off everyone's tongue.

00:53:53.900 | But like, it's easy enough to change the words

00:53:56.940 | that we use to work better with other people.

00:53:59.580 | So why not be aware of them

00:54:01.660 | and help each other to be aware of them?

00:54:03.740 | - Yeah, I mean, I have a couple of things come to mind,

00:54:07.340 | but one is, you know,

00:54:10.020 | especially when I was working at a startup,

00:54:12.460 | there's just, it feels like right now,

00:54:14.820 | I'm thinking, okay, well, do we need flags?

00:54:17.060 | Like how do we run the meeting?

00:54:18.860 | What kinds of things do I need to make sure I do?

00:54:22.100 | At some point, is there,

00:54:24.340 | does this get in the way of actually doing the work?

00:54:26.660 | Or is it really a way to make doing the work more efficient?

00:54:30.300 | You know, as part of understanding.

00:54:32.580 | - I think it's way more efficient

00:54:34.900 | to get the elephant out of the room

00:54:36.660 | than to leave the elephant in the room.

00:54:38.740 | And usually if someone is saying

00:54:41.820 | or doing something that is biased,

00:54:44.340 | it is getting in the way of a team's ability

00:54:49.340 | to work well together.

00:54:51.540 | I'll give you an example.

00:54:52.980 | I had this guy who I had just hired him.

00:54:56.660 | This is when I was working at Google.

00:54:58.700 | And he referred to the women on his team as girls.

00:55:02.380 | And I knew that they found it offensive.

00:55:05.700 | It bugs me when people refer to as, you know,

00:55:09.180 | men as men and women as girls,

00:55:11.700 | but I didn't say anything to him.

00:55:13.300 | I was his boss and it was my job to say something to him,

00:55:15.860 | but I didn't because it seems I was busy.

00:55:19.140 | We were stressed.

00:55:19.980 | It was a new relationship.

00:55:21.620 | And then he went to meet with my boss,

00:55:25.220 | who was Sheryl Sandberg.

00:55:27.140 | And he referred to the women on his team as girls.

00:55:30.900 | And she did not hesitate to tell him.

00:55:33.420 | And he came into my office afterwards.

00:55:38.460 | And I was sitting there with two other people on my team,

00:55:40.820 | both of them men,

00:55:41.900 | who I had worked with at a previous startup that I had done.

00:55:45.260 | So I had known them and I had warned them

00:55:47.580 | not to call women girls.

00:55:51.340 | And he came in and he was kind of pale.

00:55:53.900 | And he was like, this thing just happened.

00:55:56.420 | And instead of like doing what I should have done,

00:55:58.820 | which is own the fact that I had failed him as his boss.

00:56:01.900 | And what I should have said is, I'm sorry.

00:56:03.980 | I should have told you, it was my job to tell you.

00:56:05.660 | And I didn't.

00:56:06.780 | Instead, I kind of burst out laughing.

00:56:08.780 | And I turned to these other two guys and I was like,

00:56:11.140 | see, aren't you glad I told you?

00:56:13.780 | 'Cause we had had this argument before.

00:56:16.580 | And they started laughing.

00:56:18.780 | And he's like the new guy on the team.

00:56:21.300 | And he said, why in the world, like, did you not tell me?

00:56:26.460 | And I did what has been done to me.

00:56:29.260 | Oh, it's no big deal.

00:56:30.740 | Don't worry about it.

00:56:32.300 | And to his credit, he said, look, I would say

00:56:35.380 | when you meet your boss's boss for the first time

00:56:38.500 | and she spends 40 minutes reaming you out for a word,

00:56:43.500 | it is a big deal.

00:56:45.300 | Like you should have told me.

00:56:46.580 | I would have not used that word

00:56:48.100 | if you had given me a heads up.

00:56:49.420 | And so that was an example of me as a leader

00:56:51.940 | failing to disrupt someone's biased language

00:56:54.940 | in a way that was hurtful to him.

00:56:57.300 | And so it was my job to tell him and I failed to do my job.

00:57:01.740 | And I think that's why, if we go back to the story

00:57:05.420 | that prompted me to write this book,

00:57:07.940 | it's so useful to think about

00:57:09.620 | the different roles that we have.

00:57:11.060 | 'Cause like, if he had called me a girl

00:57:14.340 | and I found it offensive and I wasn't his boss,

00:57:17.140 | I could choose to remain silent if I wanted to.

00:57:20.380 | But because I was his boss,

00:57:22.060 | I had more obligation to him to tell him.

00:57:25.780 | And so I think that is helpful to think about as well.

00:57:30.780 | And what advice would you give to the person who,

00:57:35.460 | let's assume it's biased 'cause it's not intentional,

00:57:39.220 | but who is in a situation like you've been,

00:57:42.940 | made a comment, people are offended.

00:57:45.340 | You didn't mean it.

00:57:46.220 | What's the right way to handle that situation?

00:57:48.500 | Because I think I've met people whose perspective is like,

00:57:51.620 | this is not a big deal, let's move on.

00:57:53.500 | But the reality is clearly it was a big deal to someone else

00:57:57.020 | and it's gonna make the relationship you have

00:57:59.860 | with that person not great if you can't resolve it.

00:58:03.660 | So how do you kind of address that appropriately

00:58:06.220 | and kind of be productive?

00:58:08.460 | Yeah, so I had a boss once who said,

00:58:13.140 | every single person on this planet has a red word.

00:58:17.420 | And what he meant by the red word is,

00:58:19.420 | if you use that word with that person,

00:58:22.380 | they're not gonna hear another word that you say.

00:58:25.300 | And so one of the things that I tell people

00:58:27.940 | is to identify what's your red word.

00:58:32.340 | So for example, I was working with a group

00:58:34.740 | of investment bankers and they really,

00:58:38.740 | I think they had, people tend to have an unconscious

00:58:42.660 | or maybe conscious bias about investment bankers

00:58:45.060 | that they're all assholes.

00:58:46.500 | And so as soon as you said the word asshole,

00:58:48.380 | like that was a red word to these guys.

00:58:50.740 | They really did not like being,

00:58:52.380 | and so I was careful not to use that word with those guys,

00:58:57.380 | even though I love the word asshole,

00:58:59.020 | but like if my goal is to communicate with those guys,

00:59:02.580 | I wasn't gonna use the word asshole,

00:59:04.860 | even though I'm using it now, I hope they're not listening.

00:59:07.180 | And so I think it's useful to think about what like,

00:59:12.180 | for me, calling me a girl is kind of a red word.

00:59:16.380 | I don't know why it bugs me so much, but it does.

00:59:18.420 | So just please don't do it.

00:59:19.860 | Sometimes I'll be working with somebody and I'll say that,

00:59:23.020 | and they'll be like, well, so-and-so doesn't mind

00:59:25.860 | when I call her a girl.

00:59:27.700 | And I'm like, well, you're talking to me right now,

00:59:29.620 | not to so-and-so.

00:59:30.740 | So I think some of this is like just remembering

00:59:34.100 | that good communication gets measured,

00:59:37.380 | not at the speaker's mouth, but at the listener's ear.

00:59:40.220 | I will also say that it's useful to think about

00:59:45.860 | what happens when someone else points out bias.

00:59:49.820 | 'Cause I don't know about you,

00:59:51.020 | but when someone points out to me that I've said

00:59:53.380 | or done something that's biased, I feel ashamed.

00:59:57.260 | And when I feel ashamed, I go into like,

00:59:59.740 | again, this fight or flight mode.

01:00:01.260 | Like I can tell you in my body where I feel it.

01:00:04.460 | I feel a tingling in the backs of my knees.

01:00:08.060 | It's the same feeling that I get if my children

01:00:10.700 | walk too close to the edge of a precipice,

01:00:13.260 | and I'm afraid they're gonna fall.

01:00:14.380 | Like it is a real primal sort of fear response.

01:00:19.380 | And when we're in that kind of shame brain,

01:00:23.100 | we rarely respond at our best.

01:00:25.020 | And so one of the things that I've tried to teach myself

01:00:27.860 | to do, and that I try to teach people

01:00:29.660 | who I'm working with to do,

01:00:31.500 | is to figure out like, what can you do to move?

01:00:34.220 | You gotta move through that shame

01:00:36.540 | and re-engage your executive function.

01:00:39.540 | And so sometimes I find it's useful just to have this

01:00:43.020 | sort of talk track in my mind.

01:00:45.260 | Thank you for pointing it out.

01:00:46.780 | Like that allows me to like buy a little bit of time,

01:00:50.300 | like breathe a couple of times.

01:00:52.740 | And then either I get it, I'm working on not saying it again,

01:00:56.260 | but point it out if I fail again.

01:00:58.020 | And that's an important point also.

01:00:59.700 | I think that very often when we're trying to change

01:01:03.580 | deeply ingrained words or patterns of speech,

01:01:07.460 | it takes a while.

01:01:08.380 | And so we have to be patient with ourselves,

01:01:10.500 | but also persistent.

01:01:11.540 | So thank you for pointing it out.

01:01:12.900 | I'm working on it.

01:01:13.740 | Please tell me if I do it again.

01:01:15.660 | Or the second thing, thank you for pointing it out.

01:01:18.500 | I don't know what I did wrong.

01:01:19.980 | As in the case of, can we have lunch?

01:01:22.420 | And that's, again, that's a really hard place to be,

01:01:25.180 | 'cause I'm ashamed because I've upset someone,

01:01:29.340 | which wasn't my intention.

01:01:30.620 | And I'm ashamed because I'm ignorant,

01:01:32.220 | which I hate to think of myself as.

01:01:34.660 | And so learning how to say,

01:01:37.060 | can you explain it to me after the meeting?

01:01:39.460 | And the reason why I say after the meeting

01:01:41.460 | goes back to what you were saying.

01:01:42.660 | Like, I'm at a startup, I'm busy,

01:01:44.260 | I don't have time to have a long conversation.

01:01:46.740 | The bias disruption needs to be really fast,

01:01:49.500 | like just purple flag.

01:01:51.300 | And then if I don't get it,

01:01:52.700 | we can talk after the meeting, not in the meeting,

01:01:54.820 | so that we're disrupting the bias,

01:01:56.500 | but not every single meeting we ever have together,

01:01:58.900 | every single conversation.

01:02:01.020 | Wow, okay.

01:02:02.660 | I feel like my team right now happens to be my wife

01:02:06.420 | and my assistant.

01:02:07.740 | So it's gonna blur the lines,

01:02:09.940 | which actually comes back to one topic

01:02:12.420 | that before we wrap, I wanted to ask,

01:02:14.580 | which is, I don't know how often it gets asked.

01:02:17.580 | Are there ways you run,

01:02:18.980 | whether it's meetings or conversations

01:02:21.380 | or planning sessions with the family,

01:02:24.180 | with your husband or conversations with your children

01:02:27.620 | that might be a little bit different,

01:02:29.740 | but embrace some of this?

01:02:31.780 | Honestly, if you told me every week

01:02:33.900 | I run a meeting with my husband to plan our lives,

01:02:35.980 | I'm curious what happens in that meeting,

01:02:37.740 | but I'll leave the floor open.

01:02:40.580 | Yes, so my husband and I also run a business together,

01:02:44.020 | so, which I love.

01:02:47.140 | The way that we do it

01:02:49.140 | is we try to take a walk every day together,

01:02:52.220 | which is really nice.

01:02:53.380 | And we talk about all kinds of stuff on the walk,

01:02:56.300 | including stuff on it.

01:02:58.700 | So that's kind of when we go through our,

01:03:00.500 | it's not exactly a meeting,

01:03:02.540 | but it's when we kind of make sure

01:03:04.300 | that we touch base on the stuff that we're talking,

01:03:08.940 | that we need to talk about.

01:03:10.260 | Like, ah, did you do this?

01:03:11.580 | Did you do that?

01:03:12.500 | Or should we do this?

01:03:16.580 | Or should we do that?

01:03:17.660 | Like, is it worth it to hire this PR firm?

01:03:21.380 | Or that was a topic of a recent walk and talk that we had.

01:03:26.380 | So I would say before Andy and I were working together,

01:03:30.180 | we were just married.

01:03:31.620 | And before that we were dating.

01:03:33.140 | So like I already told you the story about yoga,

01:03:35.620 | like the little things I think you address

01:03:38.340 | in these impromptu two minute conversations.

01:03:40.860 | Don't save them up,

01:03:43.500 | but say the good thing or say the praise,

01:03:47.020 | say the criticism right away.

01:03:49.100 | One of the things that I did right when we got married

01:03:52.900 | was I kept a gratitude journal.

01:03:55.860 | And I would write down before I went to sleep

01:03:59.020 | all the things that Andy had done that day

01:04:01.500 | that I was grateful to him for having done.

01:04:04.100 | And then I realized this is ridiculous.

01:04:06.580 | Like, I don't need to write a journal.

01:04:07.980 | I'm married.

01:04:08.820 | I need to tell him these things.

01:04:10.340 | And so I would make a point to tell those things.

01:04:16.220 | I think gratitude is a really important part

01:04:19.900 | of any good relationship.

01:04:21.980 | And gratitude often takes the form of giving praise.

01:04:25.900 | To me, it's kind of the same thing.

01:04:30.220 | I also try to make sure that I'm asking Andy

01:04:34.540 | on a regular basis.

01:04:36.100 | Like sometimes I'll say something and I can tell

01:04:38.620 | it didn't land the way I intended it to.

01:04:40.740 | And I'm like, what are you thinking?

01:04:43.060 | Don't imagine just 'cause you've been married

01:04:46.220 | for 15 or 20 or 30 years

01:04:48.220 | that you know what that other person is thinking.

01:04:51.100 | Like I barely know what I'm thinking half the time.

01:04:53.740 | I definitely don't know what he's thinking.

01:04:56.140 | So I think soliciting feedback, giving a lot of praise

01:04:59.100 | and not letting things pile up,

01:05:02.700 | like not holding onto things for very long

01:05:06.060 | is really important.

01:05:08.980 | You wanna make sure that you talk about something

01:05:12.260 | that bugs you while it's still a little thing.

01:05:14.500 | Don't let it become a big thing.

01:05:17.060 | I think radical candor should feel sort of like,

01:05:20.900 | it should not feel like a root canal.

01:05:22.420 | It should feel like brushing and flossing,

01:05:24.460 | like basic relationship hygiene.

01:05:26.980 | And the way you know you're succeeding

01:05:29.660 | is that when you don't say the thing,

01:05:32.220 | you feel a little gross.

01:05:33.540 | Kind of like you feel if you leave the house

01:05:35.700 | before you've brushed your teeth.

01:05:37.420 | It needs to become sort of a habit, I think,

01:05:41.260 | of a relationship.

01:05:42.700 | And then you don't have to have these big, deep,

01:05:46.700 | crucial conversations,

01:05:48.540 | 'cause you've had a lot of little conversations.

01:05:51.180 | And I think most of us,

01:05:52.620 | especially if there's a little conflict to resolve

01:05:56.780 | or a little criticism to share,

01:05:58.780 | we'd rather have a lot of little conversations.

01:06:02.180 | Than, you know, one big one.

01:06:04.500 | And when you have kids,

01:06:05.340 | it's time for a big conversation.

01:06:06.780 | Where are you gonna find it?

01:06:07.900 | Golly, you don't have.

01:06:09.780 | You definitely don't have.

01:06:11.380 | And with your children, I would say this.

01:06:14.260 | Like I made a joke earlier that nobody in your life

01:06:16.940 | wants to give you criticism except your children.

01:06:19.700 | Like, welcome that.

01:06:20.940 | That is really, this is how we move forward as a species.

01:06:25.260 | Is that it is the job of the younger generation

01:06:28.460 | to criticize the older generation.

01:06:30.860 | So I think the more you can be open to criticism

01:06:34.300 | from your, you don't have to agree with them.

01:06:36.180 | I mean, you are wiser than they are,

01:06:38.380 | but they have a fresh new perspective

01:06:40.660 | and trying to be open to that

01:06:43.340 | can make it really, really useful.

01:06:46.300 | I will also say that one of the gifts

01:06:49.780 | that my children gave me when they were two,

01:06:52.060 | when they were like in that toddler rage stage.

01:06:55.060 | Mine are one and three, so I'm there.

01:06:56.940 | Okay, so this is for you, yeah.

01:06:59.180 | So I found that, I mean, they have such intense emotions,

01:07:03.900 | like from zero to 90.

01:07:06.860 | And I learned, you know, when they flail,

01:07:11.540 | lay down on the floor of the grocery store

01:07:13.940 | and start kicking their legs and screaming,

01:07:16.900 | that it is really useful just not to react,

01:07:20.060 | just to like count to 60, not to six, but to 60.

01:07:23.900 | Like if you can manage not to react for 60 seconds,

01:07:28.180 | they won't be able to maintain that pitch of emotion.

01:07:33.180 | So it's just like, let it wash over you.

01:07:36.860 | And then once they are calmer,

01:07:39.180 | you can kind of re-engage with them.

01:07:40.900 | So, and I found that so helpful

01:07:44.060 | in my CEO coaching practice as well.

01:07:46.420 | Senior leaders often behave very much like two-year-olds.

01:07:51.060 | And so that was one of the many gifts

01:07:55.100 | that I got from my children.

01:07:56.540 | I love that.

01:07:57.380 | - If you ever write "The House of Radical Candor,"

01:07:59.340 | I'm excited to read it, but this has been fantastic.

01:08:02.620 | Where do we want to send people

01:08:04.620 | who are excited about all of this and want more?

01:08:07.500 | - Yeah, check out radicalcandor.com.

01:08:10.820 | I am not much on Twitter anymore,

01:08:13.100 | but I do a lot of posting on LinkedIn.

01:08:16.100 | So you can find me, Kim Scott, on LinkedIn.

01:08:20.180 | And there's also a website, radicalrespectbook.com.

01:08:26.220 | But if you want to find everything in one place,

01:08:28.720 | radicalcandor.com is probably the best place to go.

01:08:32.060 | - Awesome, I'm excited for the book.

01:08:33.420 | It comes out when?

01:08:34.900 | - May 7th, but you can pre-order it today.

01:08:37.620 | So don't wait.

01:08:38.740 | - Awesome, thank you so much for being here.

01:08:41.220 | - Thank you, really enjoyed the conversation.

Using Radical Candor to Strengthen Relationships at Work and Home with Kim Scott

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