Radical Candor by Kim Scott | with guest Ramsey Marwan

0:01Ramsey Marwan:Welcome to Business Book Club, the show where top entrepreneurs break down the most powerful insights from the world's best business books. I'm your host Sam Brown and today we're discussing Radical Candor by Kim Scott.

0:15Ramsey Marwan:This book challenges traditional management thinking, teaching leaders how to get what they want by building genuine relationships and getting the absolute best out of the people around them. Kim Scott is a heavyweight in the tech world, coaching CEOs at companies like Dropbox and Twitter. She was also a member of the faculty at Apple University and used to lead the money printing AdSense team at Google. Joining me to unpack the lessons in radical candor is Ramzi Marwan. Ramzi is the former head of marketing at a UK tech startup called FX Digital, overseeing the team growth from 10 to 80 employees, and is now the co-founder of MG Relations.

0:54Ramsey Marwan:Ramsey, I asked you to choose the book that's had the biggest impact on your business or life. Tell me why you chose Radical Candor.

1:01Kim Scott:So Radical Candor for me was a bit of a turning point, I would say, in my career in terms of I've never been a huge business book reader. When I was a member of the leadership team at FX, it was becoming kind of more and more important that all of us dive into more business type books. and yeah for us to kind of get a grasp on the different aspects of the business we will start diving into kind of all of the classics so for me radical candor essentially showed me a more human side to business teaches you how to treat your people that work for you like people like human beings and it was a really refreshing different take on the workplace compared to other books that i'd read and i think it was that human element from kim that that got me engaged with the book.

1:47Ramsey Marwan:I've asked you to highlight three of your most valuable lessons from Radical Candor. What's your first lesson?

1:54Kim Scott:When you become a manager, you have to learn to let go.

1:58Ramsey Marwan:Let's dig into that. What does letting go mean?

2:00Kim Scott:So I think a common pitfall for all managers, I certainly, speaking for myself, is when someone isn't necessarily doing something the way that you want them to do it, or perhaps the way you would do it, you jump in and say, you know what, I'll just do it myself. Everyone does that, I think, at times. We're all guilty of it. However, if you don't give your team the space to try and the space to fail, they're never going to learn how to do it. And they're never going to get to the place that you're at. I think you have to think about your own career and where you started out. If someone asked you to do something and immediately took that away from you, you think, oh, I'm probably not capable of doing that.

2:37Kim Scott:So it doesn't build the confidence that you need to grow your career and to grow your skill set. Yeah.

2:42Ramsey Marwan:So what does Kim say about the importance of letting go then?

2:45Kim Scott:I think from her perspective, it's about essentially giving autonomy to your team. It bolsters your relationship. It's a great way to build trust. If you trust someone, they're more likely to trust you back. And I think if you don't give them that freedom and trust, it can build resentment and it can lead your employees to be disengaged. I think when someone feels a sense of agency and autonomy, they choose to bring their best selves to work which leads in kim's words to better collaboration and results so thinking of areas where you could let go of control stop asking for constant updates stop badgering your team don't micromanage there's obviously a hot hot buzzword very often in the workplace but you know really stop interfering you have to learn to sit back i think it's not to build that parent child relationship but it's kind of a similar dynamic where if you're constantly hassling your kid, it's going to lead to irritation and resentment.

3:41Kim Scott:You have to give people the space to make their own mistakes.

3:44Ramsey Marwan:And so why do you think it's so difficult for people to start letting go?

3:48Kim Scott:I'll speak from a personal place here. I think it's a few different factors. I think the first is that idea of if you give somebody a job that might take you five minutes and it takes them an hour, let's say, your immediate instinct is, oh, I'll just do it because it's only going to take five minutes if I do it. So I think that's part of it. It's an efficiency thing. But I think also it depends on your personality but if you tend to be more controlling and you know that you can do it you're going to do it in the way you do it it's going to be done in the way that you want it to be done that can make you feel better about approaching a task or a project but ultimately as i kind of mentioned you have to let people have their own style take their own approach and maybe they'll do it differently to you and essentially the journey might be different but the result will probably be the same so it's about learning different styles and appreciating that everyone works in different ways.

4:40Ramsey Marwan:So what have you taken from that advice or that learning? And how have you implemented that in your own work?

4:47Kim Scott:So, and I'll say this for probably every lesson in Radical Candor, and I'd say this is probably the case for any business, but it's never easy, right? You have to practice, you have to take your time and you have to really, you know, be disciplined to implement these things and for them to become successful. You may not see them give you results immediately, but in terms of personal experience. When I first managed a team, I found myself falling into this trap all the time. You know, someone would message me on Slack and say, oh, I'm struggling with this. And I just say, okay, don't worry, I've done it for you.

5:17Kim Scott:And what I noticed over time is that those people on my team, they had eagerness, they had willing, and they were smart people, but I wasn't giving them the space to do what they needed to do. So in terms of how you can remedy the issue, something I like to do personally, particularly I work in marketing, is to, if it's a new project, a new tool, whatever it might be, is to sit down and give my team or team members or team member a tutorial or a session that gives an overview of how I would approach this task. I'll usually let them record it. And that way they have something to reference back to if they can't remember.

5:51Kim Scott:Obviously, I also reiterate, you can always come to me and ask me questions. You have to be approachable and open and be prepared that at the start, people are going to ask a lot of questions and that's okay. And then once the project or task is complete, it's also then really important to have a retro and go through the goods and the bads. So you can't just focus on one or the other, you know, all the negatives or all the positives, but you have to be really brutally honest, praise your team, explain to them what they did well and explain to them what they could do differently next time. And again, you have to put this into place multiple times.

6:26Kim Scott:And, you know, in time, you should see improvement, you should see those tasks start to get completed more quickly, more efficiently, and the results will end up being better. But you have to stick with it. And look, these things don't always, always work out. But I always recommend giving it a try. Don't just keep it professional, actually care about your team.

6:45Ramsey Marwan:Unpack that statement a little bit for me, please.

6:48Kim Scott:So I guess I talked about the human element. This is really for me where the human element properly comes in into radical candor. And I think this is the part of the book that felt the most refreshing to me because I don't think I've ever heard people in the world of business talk about getting to know your team personally. because I think there's, you know, a lot of places you work, it's like avoid personal relationships. You don't overstep that professional boundary. And of course, there are lots of elements where you have to maintain professionalism. But I think when it comes to managing a team, taking a personal interest in someone, treating them like a human being and not like a robot or a resource is incredibly important.

7:24Kim Scott:So in Radical Candor, Kim says you can't run a team without trust and trust is built by building relationships. By that, I think she means understand who your employees are, understand what their aspirations are, and understanding all of those things is crucial as a manager. You might have someone who has a difficult family life, and that's impacting their performance at work. Or for example, you might have someone who's really content with their lot, the situation at home and their situation at work, and they don't want to progress, but they're doing a really good job. Kim calls these people rock stars.

7:55Kim Scott:And then you have different types of personalities, like superstars, who are the people that want to climb the ladder, they want to progress, they're really, really hungry. It doesn't mean one of those people is better than the other. It just means that they're different. And understanding kind of what motivates these people, but behind the work facade is really, really important. Something that Kim talks about is building community with your employees. And you do that by listening, number one, I think that's the most important thing, but also by being open-minded, giving people space to speak their mind and creating a almost like a friendship like I said of course you want to maintain professionalism but I think that if you can be friends with your employees they're going to work much harder for you and they're going to appreciate what you do for them a lot more so that's kind of my perspective on it.

8:43Ramsey Marwan:Do you think that you can be an effective manager if you don't care about your team and you're just sort of pretending?

8:48Kim Scott:I guess it depends on what you mean by effective I think you can progress your own career in a business by not necessarily caring about your team. I've seen that firsthand. But to me, as a business owner, you're going to struggle. And ultimately, I kind of feel like you're going to get caught out eventually. And I've seen that happen time and time again. There's only so long people will put up with your bullshit. And if you don't treat your employees like human beings, they're going to leave or they're going to stop working for you. By that, I mean, they're not going to put in as much effort as they could.

9:21Kim Scott:And that's going to show in the results from you and your team. So ultimately, you know, can you progress your career without caring about your team? Probably. But for me, is it the right approach to take? No. And is it the most effective approach to take? Definitely not.

9:35Ramsey Marwan:Is there any advice about the best ways to show that you care?

9:39Kim Scott:Yeah, I think something that I talk about is like, you want to learn and remember personal details about your employees. But I always have to emphasize when I say this, not in a weird or like robotic way. You know, if someone's told you they have a cat, you don't then drop the cat into every conversation that you have. It has to be natural, it has to be normal, it has to be organic. Otherwise people are going to know that you're trying to engineer this relationship with someone. I guess the approach is treat someone how you treat people outside of work. If you're someone that is nice and normal and has friends, then it shouldn't be that difficult to bring that personality into the workplace.

10:15Kim Scott:But I think it makes a huge difference to, you know if someone's getting married next week to say oh hey congratulations i hope you have a great time to remember those things i think those small details they go a long way i always talk about small gestures make a big difference something when i was younger in the workplace that would really frustrate me because i'd have like a week where i worked really hard and like my boss for example might finish early on a friday and they just say nothing they say see you later have a good weekend and they'd leave and i'd be sat there like can i leave or should I stay?

10:46Kim Scott:And then that resentment grows. It's like, well, I've worked just as hard as you. Why can't I leave early this week? So something I try really hard to do is if I have an appointment and I'm leaving early on a Friday, I'll say to my team, oh, by the way, if you've wrapped everything up, please feel free to go as well. And I think that kind of actively voicing something, being really, really clear in your communication, not leaving ambiguity so that people feel anxious or unsure about what they can do next is really important. And I think the last thing I'll saying this is I think probably the most valuable thing for me from the book itself that Kim talks about is the importance of silence in one-on-one meetings with your team so if you don't have regular one-on-ones with your team have them that would be my first piece of advice and in those one-on-ones it's incredibly important to give space and silence for the other person to talk I have a habit as you should probably tell of talking a lot talking a million miles an hour and I don't like silence.

11:44Kim Scott:I'm always looking to fill the space. Something I had to like discipline myself and train myself to do is to be quiet and give the other person space to talk. Not everyone is like me. Not everyone likes to have a chat. Not everyone is super forthcoming with what they have to say. But sometimes that silence and that space and that maybe small bit of uncomfortableness, that feeling of discomfort can actually lead to someone telling you how they truly feel, giving you honest feedback. Something else as well in the one-on-one space, which I've always found effective is say to your team, this is a space that nothing's going to be held against you.

12:21Kim Scott:I want you to be honest, verbally give that reassurance. I think a lot of people just assume, well, why aren't my team comfortable around me? Why aren't they open? It's their fault. If you're not telling them and you're not giving them that encouragement, then people aren't naturally going to open up to you.

12:37Ramsey Marwan:Nice. Let's just stick on one-to-ones for a minute. How often do you think is the best sort of cadence for them um you know have you got any other best tips for successful ones i think

12:47Kim Scott:like everyone's different i'm not saying that necessarily i have it perfectly sussed out i like to do once a week i mean i talk to my team every day in every job i think that's also really important days of silence days without any communication can make people feel isolated particularly in remote working environments but in terms of a proper one-on-one i like to have a standing one-on-one. I think it's really important that you move that meeting as little as possible and you showed your team that it's important and that you respect it. I also like to create an agenda for that meeting to make sure that both you and your team member can bring what they need to that space.

13:25Kim Scott:Like I said, they might not necessarily write it on paper. They may not want to do that, but it gives them a chance to prepare their thoughts in advance and also for you to show them what you want to talk about so that nothing's coming as a huge surprise in that meeting. But yeah, in terms of cadence, for me, once a week feels like a perfect amount, usually for half an hour or an hour, depending on how much you have to discuss. But hey, some people do it once a month, some people do it once a quarter. That to me feels like it's not enough time and it doesn't show your team that you really care about what they have to say.

13:56Kim Scott:So for me, once a week feels like a sufficient amount. Once a day to me would feel like micromanaging. So that's the sweet spot that I've personally found.

14:04Ramsey Marwan:How have you found the balance between being a boss and a friend when showing that you care? Because some people might worry that overstepping into friendship might devalue your authority to be able to have the tough conversations or tell them when something needs to be done.

14:21Kim Scott:Yeah, absolutely. It's a great question. I think as I said the word friend previously, even then I was kind of like, doesn't feel like necessarily the right word because of exactly what you say, you know, obviously there is a difference with how you behave with your friends to how you behave at work and that's important but I think it's about being kind it's about caring like genuinely caring about people but obviously not overstepping the mark you know like keeping those boundaries outside of work I've been in workplaces where managers will go out with the team and maybe they'll have a few beers and I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that but it's about you know you have to keep your behavior professional you can be one of these people who kind of, I guess, turns their back on maybe their own level or their own leadership team or people above them to look good in front of your own team.

15:11Kim Scott:Like you have to maintain that the thing we're all working for here is the company and we're all trying to achieve something together. So I think it's about engineering, building a relationship with people that is about, if we're all in this together, we all treat each other with respect and we all get along, then it's going to be the best outcome for all of us, for me, for you on my team and for the business as a whole. And that's kind of the approach that I've taken, that I found works without blurring that line between professional life and personal life. Don't fall into the trap of ruinous empathy.

15:43Ramsey Marwan:We're going to need a lot of context here because the majority of the book actually focuses on this simple diagram. If you fully grasp this diagram, then you've got quite a lot of the context needed for the book and the rest is detailing how to implement it. Could you maybe explain the diagram that I'm talking about?