Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott

26:41I love that this also gives an example of the impact of getting better at this point of, you'll lose not just the people that are not necessarily great, but also other high performers on the team because they're seeing people slip through the cracks that aren't amazing. And if you're not practicing this early, your team basically becomes not high performing, which is. Exactly. You're going to lose your top performers. And I think very often people are afraid to tell someone on their team when their work isn't good enough because they're afraid of losing them. But that's not a good reason. You should be helping this person to improve.

27:20This person deserves to have a job where they can excel. And you either help them excel on this team or you help them find a different job where they can excel because everyone can do great work somewhere. And Bob, Bob could have done great work. Maybe I would have helped him, you know, keep it to the weekends. Because he's very creative and very smart, but the floppy mistakes just got in the way of his ability to do his best work. So following that thread, I imagine the reason you didn't tell him early and most people don't do this well is many people are, you can maybe call them, people, pleasers, I'm a recovering people, please, they'll say it's just like hard to get people, hard feedback.

28:04You want people to like you. It's not a natural state for a lot of people. What do you find helps people get over this kind of need to be liked as a leader and helps them be more candid? I think that one of the things that was helpful for me anyway, so you can tell me if it's helpful for you. What was realizing that my job was not to be liked. My job was to care about other people and to get out of my own head and to become others focused is what helped me kind of let go of the the need to be liked. I think that also as a woman, I think there was something extra as my teenage children would say.

28:49There was something extra for me because the sort of likability competence bias that a lot of women face pushed me, especially early in my career, in the wrong direction on challenged directly. And it made it much harder for me to because often I would say something and I would say it even more gently than my colleagues who were men, but people would say, ah, you know, Kim is a real whatever. And they weren't saying Kim is a knock. I was being unjustly accused of obnoxious aggression. And it wasn't obnoxious if they were accusing me of being bossy or bitchy or abrasive or whatever. And it's really hard.

29:28I would also say of when it comes to soliciting feedback, it's really important to be open to it, and it's really important to separate the wheat from the chaff from the feedback you're getting. So in this example of Bob, say you were to do it now, what would you do differently other than give them feedback earlier? Is there something you've learned about just how you would have phrased it or approached it? I think probably what I would do, and I would love to hear what you would have said to Bob too, because I certainly don't have all the answers. But probably what I would have said is, you know, let's go back to the first time Bob handed work into me wish aim and his eyes.

30:06I would have said, Bob, maybe I'm misinterpreting the expression on your face, but it looks to me like you are not happy with this. What's going on? And so I would have asked him to diagnose it himself and and that could I want to I want to pause on that because that can be very risky. He might have said to me, I think this is awesome. This is my best work. And now I've kind of made my job of giving him feedback a little bit harder. So it's not always the right thing to ask questions. But I would have tried to ask it before I had examined the work when I noticed that he looked uncomfortable himself.

30:47And I think also another thing I've learned about noticing, I said earlier that there's a other facial expressions and body language. So I would have tried to say that with some humility. Like it seems like you're not, maybe I'm wrong, but you don't look to me like you're happy with this. And I would have given him an opportunity to say, yeah, maybe I need to do it again. Let's imagine though that he said, oh no, it's awesome. It's ready. So then I get it and I look at it, I would have not been shy about pointing out very specifically, every problem that I saw in that piece of work, every single one.

31:34Sometimes it can be tempting when you're giving someone feedback to say, oh, there's a number of careless mistakes here. Can you go back and look at it again? And the person will notice a few of them. And then you, like, then you've got to go, you know, sometimes it's useful to show someone a pattern. All of the careless mistakes, especially if someone is defensive or if you think they're likely to be defensive. If you think they're likely to do to you what I did to my boss, I don't know, everything spawns, no big deal. You need to move out on the challenge directly dimension, you need to be prepared to keep going until you have communicated with a person.

32:14And that was really the problem with Bob. He probably would not have started to cry. I think my fear around his tears was probably more about my fear than what was actually likely to happen. But I think we do fear someone else getting upset more often than they actually get upset. We have kind of a negative negativity bias when it comes to part of the reason why we're reluctant to give feedback. Yeah. And I think to your point that we want to be liked, like you said that you should get over that. I think that's obviously very hard just to be like, now I'm not going to worry about that. But I think your point is really important that you will be like later like if you don't do the hard thing now It'll only get worse if you just let it continue happening.

33:00Yeah, and I think also for me to say To myself going into that conversation. It's more important for me to demonstrate care than I care about Bob Then it is for Bob to like me, you know, and if I demonstrate that I care about Bob then I'm going to do the right thing that will ultimately create the conditions for a good relationship with Bob. Me pulling my punches Did not create the conditions for a good relationship with Bob. I actually did that and I learned this from a manager Mine is just almost work backwards from like ask them what what do you want to achieve in your career? Where do you want to go in this company and?

33:41Make sure you they know you know what they want and then basically work backwards from to get there Here's the things you need to get right. And here's the thing you did recently that isn't necessarily on the track. And here's what we should be working on if you want to get to the scope that you have. Yeah. I think one of the really important things that all managers can do for their director ports to show that they care is to have real meaningful career conversations where you talk about sort of their life story, sort of their past, whatever part of it they're comfortable talking to you about so that you understand what motivates them at work.

34:17And I would have like three separate 45 minute conversations. So one about their past, one about their future, their dreams for the future. And it's not just the next couple of years. It's like imagine at the height of your career, you have everything you want. What does it look like? And give me three or four different pictures of that because very few of us know what we want to do when we grow up. Then the third conversation is to sort of sit down with your direct report and come up with a career action plan. So given what motivates you and where you want to go, what are the skills that it would be useful for you to develop so that you can get where you want to go.

34:58And who can I introduce you to? What are the educational opportunities? Can we tweak your job so that you're gaining those skills? So you're at least taking a step in the direction of your dreams, even if you're not there yet. Awesome. I have a I have a post about this a link to in the show notes that gives people a guide to having these conversations and there's like a spreadsheet. I share it with people like here's an action plan you can come up with with your teammate and like here's which you're gonna work on these next six months. Did you read the book when they win you win by Rosler away?

35:28No. Oh, he has a hundred pages on career conversations and he's also built sort of Some tools that help people so check that out and it's called when you win when they win you win Yes, okay, we'll do that he and I work together at Google and then we started a company together Oh, wow, okay cool pulling to them show notes. Maybe I'll get them on the podcast too great. Yeah, he'd be great Okay, so we've been chatting about ways and individually to get better at some of these skills another area that I think people struggle with as the company culture often isn't welcoming of direct feedback. So there's a question.

36:06So you probably saw this on Twitter, ask people, we should ask you and a lot of people came in with a lot of questions. And there's one that came in from Pete Kazanjee, so I'm just going to read it because it's along these lines. So this question is just, how do you practice being radically candid in a culture? And most cultures are like this where people aren't ready for direct feedback. since company culture is often closer to ruinous empathy and being radically candid is more of a long term good than a short term good You potentially risk retention with your employees if you're too direct that with them So how do you think about finding his balance of Being candid but not pissing people off?

36:39Where do you just hire people that are open and ready for direct feedback? And that's kind of how you solve their problem? I don't think you can hire you can only hire people who are open and ready for direct feedback because it's hard for all of us I just want to acknowledge that. It's hard for me. I wrote the book. I believe in it to my core. And sometimes it's still hard for me. It's hard for me to hear it and it's hard for me to deliver it. This is a really difficult thing to do. The good thing about that two by two is it makes it look easy, which is useful, but it's not easy. So anyway, I think there are, to answer a piece question, I think there are a few things that can help.

37:16There's really an order of operations, Serbatical candor, and if you begin with soliciting criticism, then you take the first and most important step to improving your relationship with that person enough that it becomes easier for you to give it as well as to get it. So I want to leave folks with some sort of steps on how to solicit feedback. And this is true, especially if you're a boss, but it's true in all your relationships. You can use this at home as well. So if you say, do you have any feedback from me? You're wasting your breath. The other person's gonna say, oh no, everything's fine.

37:58Nobody in your life except your teenage children. If you had teenage children, they really want to give you some criticism. But nobody else in your life really wants to give you criticism. And so you want to think about how you're going to ask the person that's going to be most likely to elicit a response. The question that I like to ask is what can I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me. But do not write down my question because if you sound like Kim Scott and not like yourself then other people are not going to believe you want the answer. It needs to sound authentic to you.

38:33I was working with Christa quarrels when she was CEO of Open Table and she said, Kim, I could never imagine those words coming out of my mouth. She said, the way I like to ask is tell me why I'm wrong. Okay, that's fine too. It demands an answer or her question. But of course, there were a couple of people on her team who felt that that was too aggressive. Like that shut them down. So she had to adjust her question. Like being authentic does not mean ignoring the impact you're having on others. So you want to think about your question, you want to think about who you're going to ask that question up.

39:10And if everybody can write down their question who they're going to ask it up and then pop it into their calendar right now, this will be one of the most productive podcasts in all of podcast land. Well, it's been more time on this actually. So what is it you recommend that they pick? How many people would you recommend they pick they ask feedback from? Well, I think if you are a manager, you need to be soliciting every week feedback from each of your direct reports. And you need to sort of, I would budget five minutes at the end of your 101 to solicit feedback. So mostly a one -on -one should be your employees setting the agenda and your employees time.

39:53And don't, by the way, save up. When you have to give feedback, don't save it up for your 101 and definitely don't save it up for a performance review. You wanna give that in the moment. We can talk more about that in a second. But when you're soliciting feedback, say five minutes at the end of your 101, and ask that go to question. And you also want to ask that go to question of your cross -functional peers you work most closely with, and of your boss. And I think you don't want to ask the same question every single time. It'll start to sound, but you don't really want the answer. But you want to make this part of your daily weekly routine with the people who you interact most closely with.

40:34So you added to the end of this one, your one on one agenda, and two versions of this question are, what am I doing wrong, which is that one? I guess you already did from that. Tell me why I'm wrong. Tell me why I'm wrong. Tell me why I'm wrong. Or what am I doing wrong? Or what can I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me? Or what could I, what should I stop doing? What should I start doing? What should I continue doing? Moses some common ones. What do you like to ask, Lenny? I think it was something along the lines of like what's one thing I could be doing better or what's one way I could be helping you be more successful I said that's a really good one.

41:08What's one way I can help you be more successful or or Jason Rhozof my co -founder a radical candor likes to ask You know what what did what could I have done this week? So he time he time bound it. What could I have done this week to better support you when you're work? In fact, with Jason told me after we had worked together for about a month, he was like, Kim, you know, I really hate your go -to question. He said, it's too open -ended for me. If you can tell me what you're working on and ask me at the end of a meeting specifically, what I notice, then that is much better. How often do you accept no answer just like none of everything's great?

41:52Never. Never. Never. I mean, you don't have, if there are some people who really don't like to be put on the spot. So, so if I can tell that this part that I'm inflicting a cruel and unusual punishment on the person, I'll say, look, you know I'm not perfect. I know I'm not perfect. Next time we meet, I want you to think of something. Notice something. It's the thing that you can do that would help me more than anything else that that you could do. is to tell me when I'm wrong because I need to know that. In fact, Andy Grove, who was the CEO of Intel, said he used to, at the end of his one -on -ones, say to people, there's one more thing.

42:37And he explained to me that that was coded Intel for like, this is the most important thing. I was working at Apple at the time. And I said, oh, did you get that from Steve Jobs? Because that was always how we introduced. You know, there's one more thing, the iPad. And Andy got immediately very grumpy and very offended. He said, no, we both got it from Colombo, the detective show. So you can get tips from anywhere. So you want to make sure that you're though letting the person know that you really do care about what they say and that it's really, when they give you this critical feedback that you're going to reward it.

43:19But that's not the end. Asking that question is only the first step. The bad news about your question, no matter how hard you think about it, and no matter how good a question it is, the other person is still going to feel uncomfortable. There's no such thing as emotional nobication. That's why I don't believe in scripts. Like people believe if I just say the magic words, like the door will open, that's not how it works. It's a given take. So, you want to sort of be prepared to embrace that discomfort. The only way out is through. Simplest way to embrace the discomfort is to close your mouth and count to six.

43:59Only made it to three just there and your eyes were popping up. Yes, so you've got to sew a little. Six seconds is a really long time. Oh, man. All those, nobody can endure six full seconds of silence. So they'll probably tell you something. So now you've dragged this poor soul out on a conversational limb that they never wanted to go on. You're probably going to say something. The third step is to make sure that you listen with the intent to understand, not to respond. Because you're probably going to feel defensive. And that's okay. It doesn't mean you're a lesser mortal or that you're shut down the feedback.

44:35All it means is that you're human. And that's all part of this. So you want to figure out like how to manage your natural defensive reaction to critical feedback, which you're probably going to have. And so the simplest tactic I can offer folks there is to think of some follow -up questions. So at breakfast, my daughter, not too long ago, said to me, Mom, I wish you weren't the radical candor lady. And immediately this wave of parental guilt washed over me. And I thought, ah, I'm spending too much time at work. She wants more of my time. I shouldn't be traveling so much. But then I thought, well, I should ask her what she, make sure I understood.

45:18I'm jumping to conclusions here. I'm not listening with the intent to understand. So I asked a follow -up question. I said, well, who do you wish I were? And she said, I wish you were the lady who minded her own business. So I could go spend a little more time at work as far as she was concerned. So you want to make sure you really understand and what a person is telling you. And once you feel certain that you really do understand and that you've been open to it, the last and most important step is to reward the candor. A person takes a huge risk, especially if this person is your employee, a person takes a huge risk to give you critical feedback.

45:53And if you do not reward that risk richly, you're never gonna get any feedback again. So if you agree with the feedback, fix the problem and make your listening tangible, be loud, you know, said. So, once I told me that the tea in the break room is terrible and now we have 35 different kinds of tea. You know, thank you for telling me. And that kind of can demonstrate to people that they're not wasting their breath to come to you. If you become aware of a problem, you'll fix it. And you also want to, by the way, you want to ask for feedback after you fixed it. Did I over -correct or did I under -correct?

46:30My boss at Google, the same boss from the UM story, also told me when she gave me some feedback that I tended to move too fast. She said, Kim, tell people are giving you feedback that you're going too slow, you won't have corrected this problem. So you kind of want to shoot to over -correct if you get some critical feedback. I also want to, though, pause on what to do when you get some critical feedback that you disagree with because it can be easy to feel wedged here. And if all you do is say, thank you for the feedback. The other person is going to hear something much less polite than a brush off or worse.

47:10And so what you want to do is you want to look for that five or 10 % of whatever the person said that you can agree with and you want to give voice to that. And then what you want to do is you want to say, as for the rest of it, I want to think about it and get back to you. And then you've got to get back to them. You've I'm gonna offer a respectful explanation of why you disagree. And it's tempting to feel like a disagreement poses a risk to our relationships, but it's not disagreement that poses a risk to our relationships. It's unspoken disagreement. Many, I don't know about you, Annie, but a lot of my best professional relationships began with a good respectful disagreement.

47:51Interesting. That reminds me of just watching good games of the reality show in Netflix. Yeah. Have you seen this at all? I haven't watched it, but it's on my list. There's this guy who makes a huge bad decision on behalf of his old team and they hate him. And then on Tik Tok, he shared that they're their best friends now. You're going to let them know. Yeah, yeah, no one can happen for sure. You fell in love with building products for a reason. But sometimes the day -to -day reality is a little different than you imagine. Instead of dreaming up big ideas, talking to customers and crafting a strategy, You're drowning in spreadsheets and roadmap updates and you're spending your days basically putting out fires.

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49:06Anyone that you want can contribute ideas, feedback, and insights in JIRA product discovery for free. No catch. And it's only $10 a month for you. So you could buy it to your spreadsheets and then never ending alignment efforts. The old way of doing product management is over. Rediscover what's possible with Giro product discovery. Try it for free at Atlassian .com slash Lenny. That's Atlassian .com slash Lenny. So to recap the steps roughly for how to get feedback from people, it's, uh, ask your question. Like what's one thing I could have done this week to make you more successful. wait six seconds, potentially, or try two.

49:45It's very hard. Ask a few follow -up questions to make sure you understand what they're saying. And then find a way to reward them, say, thank you. Do more than say thank you. Right. Especially if you disagree, which is a really interesting nuance of this. I had Jules Wal -Turn in the podcast. I always think of him when I think of getting feedback. He shared this advice when you get feedback. Just be so appreciative, so that people give you. He just like, thank you so much for that feedback. The way he phrases, even if you're melting inside and really hate this feedback, just like thank you, I really appreciate it.

50:16But I think your no one's there is really key, is if you do disagree, I really like this tip of just like, let me think about this element of it and then actually follow up. Even if you're melting inside, if you say thank you when you're melting inside, I mean maybe it's just because I'm a terrible actor, but usually people know. And that's why I say, it's not enough to say thank you, you've got to fix the problem and then show what you did to fix the problem and get more feedback that I over corrected, I under correct. And if you disagree, you gotta say that you disagree, but you gotta say so respectfully.

50:48As a leader, it sounds like a lot of work to be doing every week. If you have a one -on -one following up, correcting things, is there anything you'd recommend there? Or is it just this is really important you gotta make time? It's not as much work as failing to do this, by the way, as we saw from the Bob story. So I think that the important thing that I have found is that this is part of why it's so important to do it immediately. It's important for the other person, but it's also important for you. If you're doing this in a one -on -one, which you should be having anyway, so you're saving some time in a one -on -one.

51:21So it's not adding time necessarily to your day. And when you hear about problems, you should fix them. I'm, yes, it takes time, but that is your job. And when you disagree with something, you can disagree in your next regular, early scheduled one -on -one. So I'm not talking about adding meetings to your calendar. So it doesn't actually take more time. I have found that it, in fact, it saves tremendous amounts of time, but it does take emotional discipline. And I think it also requires you, especially when it comes to giving it, which we talked about before, where the humble helpful. Those are in prompt to two minute conversations, giving the feedback that you should be having kind of in between your meetings, like in the um story, walk to my meeting with me.

52:12It didn't take any extra time for my boss to give me that feedback. She had to walk to her meeting anyway, and I had to go in the same direction. So it didn't even take extra time from me. But it is, I think, the most common reason, one of the most common reasons why people don't do this. In addition to fear of retaliation and just sort of existential dread, which are both factors, which hopefully we've helped alleviate. But is that your schedule back to back to back? And you don't have those two minutes in between meetings. And that's why I think it's important either to schedule slack time in your calendar, make your 25, make your 30 -minute meetings, 25 -minute meetings, make your hour -long meetings, 50 -minute meetings, maybe give yourself a few breaks in the day.

52:55But if it's not possible, and often it was not possible for me in my career to sort of schedule my time that way, I just decided that these moments of management were more important than being on time to my next meeting. And so I was just late sometimes. So you know, I wish I had a better answer than either, you know, be control your time, which is really annoying advice because it's impossible to follow or be willing to be late to your next meeting. But those were the things that I tried to do. That was super helpful. I think your point of just if you're not making like two minutes to do this thing now, it will be a lot more time intensive later.

53:39Oh, yeah. It's a stitch in time takes nine on all these two minutes. And really these are two, it should be like brushing and flossing. This is not like a root canal. These are like, this is relationship hygiene that you should be doing all the time. I was just reading Charlie Munger's book and there's a quote that he references of just the classic announce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Yes, absolutely. Same idea. Yeah. So we've talked about a leader getting feedback. What if you're the employee? Do you also recommend the same thing in the one -on -one? Have an agenda item and ask this question, or is there a different approach you'd recommend?

54:15I think yes. If you're the employee, you should also be soliciting feedback on a regular basis from your boss. So there's sort of an order of operations. You want to solicit it first, no matter who you are. It's the same up down in sideways. Even though it feels very different, the order of operations is the same. So start by soliciting feedback. Then you want to give both praise and criticism. I think sometimes it feels like you're kissing up if you give your boss praise, but boss is need praise too And if you want if there are things that your boss does that you appreciate and you want your boss to do more of those things Praise is a better tool for that than criticism when it comes time to offering your boss some critical feedback you want to make sure Or, and by the way, this is also true when it comes time to give your employee critical feedback or your spouse or anybody else in your life.

55:04You want to be sure that you are prepared to gauge how it lands. So you want to start in kind of a neutral place. You don't want to go to the outer edge of challenge directly because then you're going to wind up and up a macho's aggression. So if we go back to that story, my boss started, you know, you said a lot where you were in it. Okay. That was my response. And then, you know, I know this great speech coach, would you like an introduction? That was marvelous. So she had to keep going out on that challenge directly. She didn't start out by saying, when you say, I'm every third word, it makes you sound stupid.

55:36But she realized she had to go that far. So you want to keep going out if you think they're brushing you off. But if you find that your boss looks either sad or mad, that is your cue to move up on the care, personally, dimension. And so to take a moment, if you find your employee looks sad or mad, if they look sad, you know, pause and say, you know, I feel like maybe I didn't say that in the best possible way. How could I have said it differently? And so that means you're going up on the care personally dimension, but you're not going the wrong way on challenge directly. I don't know about you, Lenny, but if I say something to someone and they look sad, it's so tempting for me to say to try to pull the words back.

56:18Oh no, it's no big deal. I didn't mean it, but it is a big deal and I did mean that's why I just said it. And so if you go the wrong way on challenge directly, you wind up in ruinous empathy and then you leave the person both sad and confused. So that's, you make it worse. So you want to take a beat to pay attention to the emotions in the moment, but not to go the wrong way on challenge directly. And same thing if they're mad. Although So if somebody's mad, that maybe is even hard. If somebody starts yelling at me, it's tempting for me. They're to start yelling back and wind up in a marxious aggression or to crawl off to a self -protective manipulative insincereity.

57:00And so instead, what I try to do is get curious, not furious. And like, why is this person so mad? So say, like, look, maybe I didn't say that in the right way, but this is an important issue and we need to resolve it. This comes back to the point you made about when you're giving feedback to try to do it in person or on a phone call to do exactly what you're saying to read them as you're giving this feedback and figure out which access you want to go down. Yeah, you want to gauge it. I mean, when we communicate with other people, we communicate on an emotional level and on an intellectual level at the same time.

57:34And if we ignore the emotional signals that are coming at us or say, don't do it personally, then we're just not going to communicate very well. Kind of along these same lines, another question that came in is from a coach of yours that works, I think, for you or somehow with the program. She has this question of many top leaders have very low self -awareness. They believe obnoxious aggression is the only way to get feedback or they just ignore the problem and fire people with no feedback. Is there something you've learned about how to change their mind about this is the way to operate? Yeah, I think the most important thing with leaders like that that you can do is to explain to them the impact that they're having.

58:14And to also show them that there is another way that is going to help them succeed. Very often, the leaders who are low on the care personally dimension, they do care about their results. And they do care about their own careers. And so when you sort of explain this to them in terms of enlightened self -interest, they tend to get better at it. And also, I mean, there are, I can think of maybe one or two people I've worked with who are truly low on care, who truly don't care. Very often people are bad at showing they care, but they do actually care. And also sometimes there are leaders who think they're not supposed to care.

59:04And so unleashing that capacity that they and they have to care and telling them this is actually part of the job can make them a much better, more effective leader. But you know, look, if someone is a psychopath and they truly don't care, I don't have, you know, that we need that they shouldn't be a manager. That's the solution. And that's like totally get that one. So I really like that take away. Just basically show them the impact they're having. Because your point, they want the company to succeed. They want their team to succeed. And if they're not realizing there's downsides to the way you're operating.

59:38And they want themselves to succeed. You know, when they realize, that's why I say, you know, part of the problem with obnoxious aggression is that you harm other people. But it's also inefficient because when you act like that, people can't hear what you're saying. so you're wasting your breath, you know? And the way you show them that impact is it, do you recommend like talk interviewing people, getting stories, seeing like, I don't know, what kind of, how do you collect this impact so that they are like, oh wow, I didn't realize this? I think that the best thing to do is to, for me, anyway, is I start by sharing stories from my career.

1:00:15And stories when I was a jerk, like I've acted like a jerk to plenty of times, unfortunately, and I show the impact that I've had. And then I asked them for a similar story. And usually, usually, sort of me holding up the mirror to myself is useful for them to be able to hold the mirror up to themselves, to realize like, you want to help these people adopt a growth mindset around this stuff. I am not telling you that you're an asshole. I'm telling you that we all behave like assholes sometimes. And it's a big problem for us as well as for the people around us. And here's my asshole story when I acted like a jerk.

1:00:54What's yours? You know, and people that kind of self -awareness, you know, sometimes people talk about inflicted insight like it's some kind of burden, but usually that kind of self -awareness feels makes people feel lighter. They're like, oh, now I know what's wrong, and now I know what I can do about it. Yeah, I've definitely noticed that about your stories. They always are you making the mistake? Yeah, because very disarming. We all make mistakes. Yeah. Maybe the extreme of this obnoxious aggressiveness is bridge water. Their whole Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. Did you read the book, the fund? No, not yet.

1:01:35You must read it. It's all about bridge water. And with I always thought it was problematic. I had no idea just how problematic it is. put that book in the show notes. One of the best business books I've read in the last decade. Wow. That is a high praise. Yes. I will read that. And so it gets for people that aren't familiar, like Bridgewater, they incurred the system called dots where they tell people you must give hard, critical feedback after every meeting in like, not after the meeting in the meeting publicly. And it's recorded on it was. I think they changed it since, but it was recorded for plus of the past year on video.

1:02:13And sometimes, like, in fact, true story, shortly after I left Google, I was approached to work at Bridgewater in a management capacity, not in an investment capacity. And so I called someone I knew who worked there, and he said, let me give you an anecdote. He said the other day there was a meeting, And there was a woman who in the meeting who had made a mistake and everybody just piled on. The criticism was very personal. There was no core about the criticism. It was like, these are your personality attributes that make you a useless human being kind of terrible feedback until she started to cry.

1:03:00And the whole meeting was recorded and then and then they emailed a recording of the meeting out to the whole company Including all the people who were not in the meeting saying this is an example of how to have So I would say that is like deep dark of noxious aggression. That is not radical candor. That is horrible So it's safe to say you're not a fan of that approach. No, no, no, no, that is that is there was no there's a In fact, I did an analysis of Dalia's book, Principles. And it's like, I don't know, 300 or 400 page book. And there were, I think, four or five pages about caring about people.

1:03:41There's very low care personally. I imagine many people see that. They see Elon, they see Steve Jobs and the perception is they're very challenged directly people. They're not clearly care about you people, but they're very successful. What do you say to people that are like, but it works. Why wouldn't I be that? if that's the way I want to do it. Well, first of all, I would not put Steve Jobs in the same category as Radalio and Elon Musk. I mean, Steve Jobs could be obnoxiously aggressive, but mostly I would say, like, he built such good relationships with his direct reports that when he got cancer, Tim Cook offered to give him half his liver.

1:04:24And I don't know of a word to describe that other than love. You know, these, these were real human relationships. When I worked at Apple, you could see Steve and Johnny talking, you could tell these people cared about each other. Now, you know, their radical canner gets measured not at, you know, not at the speaker's mouth, but at the listener's ear. And I think that Steve had built a team around him of people who who didn't mind rather what other people would consider obnoxious aggression. But I think in the context of their relationship, it was understood as care. And I'll give you an example of that from my own career, not that I am comparing myself to C -chups.

1:05:11I think I'm a much gentler person. But you know, sometimes I develop relationships with people and part of that relationship is that we push each other pretty hard. So there was a person who I had worked with for a long time for many years. He had followed me from one company to another. And we were localizing a product. And he kept conflating Slovakia and Slovenia. And I corrected him once, I corrected him twice. The third time I was like, I did Slovakia and not Slovenia dumbass. And he started laughing and like, that was fine in the context of our relationship. But I realized that the people around me, I was silencing them because they were like, oh my gosh, I don't want to make a mistake.

1:05:54Kim's going to call me a dumbass. So I had a pause and say, look, I respect this person enormously. And I like this person enormously. We work very well together. And so I think that sometimes people have relationships with others and they have those relationships in public and other people misinterpret those relationships. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna, and there were, you know, Steve Jobs was not perfect. He made all kinds of mistakes, but he was no Ray Dalio or Elon Musk, who I would say make far more and worse and more egregious mistakes. And I think you're raising a really important point. You're raising a point which is that there's this false dichotomy.

1:06:39In fact, the new biography of Elon Musk falls into this category. I like Walter Isaacson's work a lot, but he falls prey to this in his biography of Elon Musk, which is there's this notion that we have to choose between being a total jerk, but really competent, or really nice, but incompetent. And those are not our two choices. That's the whole point of radical co -candor is that there's this other way that works better and doesn't hurt people. I think that's the key takeaway there is you can be even more successful if you lean into the care deeply. Like in theory they could have gotten more out of their people if they made it clear they really care about them.

1:07:25Yeah. And you know there's plenty of counter her examples of incredibly successful people who are very caring leaders. And it's not as much fun to tell stories about that. And so we don't as often. On the same lines, there's someone that you work with that suggested I ask you about investing in your authentic leadership style. Melissa Tan, I don't know if you remember her. She was great. And she was on the podcast in the past. And she just said how when she met you, she was a very people -pleasery person and just wanted to be like and you helped your developer natural leadership style. Can you just talk about what you suggested people to figure this out and how to find that for yourself?

1:08:05I mean I wonder what Melissa would say. But my memory of conversations with her and this is an issue that I talk about a lot because like I'm a people pleaser too. I grew up in the south and I'm a woman. Like I was not brought up to challenge directly. I was that that was not part of the culture that I was brought up in. I was, you know, brought up to be polite and and but also brought up to be kind. And for me, the thing that is most important to hang on to is that fundamental kindness and to realize that it's actually unkind, not to say the thing. And so that is part of the reason why I encourage people, I tell the Bob So often and I encourage other leaders who I work with to think about what their Bob story is Is that you realize it's not nice in the long run.

1:09:00It's not it's unkind in the long run Not not to tell someone if they're making a mistake There's nothing nice about that in the long run and so that I think it at least for me that's been helpful And then another thing that is is helpful is again to get others focus to focus not on pleasing people, but on doing the right thing for those people, on truly caring about those people more than you care about your own discomfort in the moment. And that is something that is easier for people to do than just to challenge directly. I think in many ways it's about what is getting in the way, that's why I call it ruinism, Empathy is a good thing, but sometimes empathy can paralyze, at least me, because I'm so acutely aware of how what I'm going to say might impact the other person, might hurt their feelings, then I don't say it.

1:10:01And so when I push myself to be, you know, and you can call it compassionate candor, if you like that, better than radical candor. But when I push myself, not to feel so acutely what I think the other person might feel, and by the way, I could be wrong about what I think the other person might often they're like it's no big deal They're like oh, thank you for letting me know but when I can let go of that and think about The other person and what I care about and what they care about for their future going back to your point Like if you know that it's really important for someone to get promoted and you know they won't get promoted If they they keep talking to people in a particular way Then you're focused on what they want.

1:10:43That is really helpful to move past that. Just a few more questions before we wrap up. Your book sold something like half a million copies. A million copies. A million copies. A million copies. In like 23 languages. 23 languages. I had a stat of 20 languages. Jesus Christ. Okay. So a lot of people have read it. A lot of people have been using it. What's something that people often just get wrong? that super frustrates you about the system, the recommendations that you just wish people like, come on, here's what I really wanted to say, here's what you should change. There's two things. I mean, as I mentioned earlier, when you write about a book about feedback, you're going to get a lot of it.

1:11:22One is this, in the spirit of radical candor, and then the person acts like a jerk. That is not the spirit of radical candor, that is the spirit of noxious aggression. But there, shortly after the book came out, I was giving a talk at a tech company in San Francisco and I got some feedback from the CEO of that company that was so impactful that it caused me to write my next book, which is called Radical Respect. And in many ways, Radical Respect is kind of the prequel to Radical Kinder because if you don't respect the other person, it's impossible to care about them and you're not going to bother challenging them directly.

1:11:57So what happened in this meeting? I went and walked in. I was really excited to give this talk. The CEO had been a colleague of mine for the better part of a decade. She's a person I like in respect enormously and she's one of two few black women CEOs in tech or in the other sector. And when I finished giving the talk, she pulled me aside and she said, Kim, I'm excited to roll out radical candor. I think it's really going to help me build the kind of career I want. But she said, I got to tell you, it's much harder for me to roll it out than it is for you. And she went on to explain to me that as soon as she would offer folks, even the most gentle, compassionate criticism, they would call her an angry black woman.

1:12:39And I knew this was true as soon as she said it, and I knew how unfair it was because she's like one of the most even keeled, cheerful people I've ever worked with. And I realized a bunch of things at the same time, which told me that. The first was that I had not been the kind of colleague that I aspire to be, that I imagine myself to be. I had failed even to notice the extent to which she had to show up unfailingly cheerful and pleasant. In every meeting we had ever been in together, even though she had what to be ticked off about as we all do at work. So I had sort of failed to be an upstander, a good colleague.

1:13:16The second thing I realized was that I had also failed to acknowledge when I was experiencing different versions of bias prejudice and bullying. And I think part of the read is kind of hard for the author of a book called Radical Canter to admit she was in denial, but I had been in denial about a bunch of experiences I had had in the workplace. I had pretended that a whole host of things were not happening that were in fact happening. And I think part of the reason why I did that was that I never wanted to think of myself as a victim. But even less than wanting to think of myself as a victim, did I want to think of myself as the culprit?

1:13:57So I'd been even more deeply in denial about the times that I had said or done things that hurt other people who I worked with. Sad or done things that were biased or worse. I had bullied people before. And by the way, when you become a leader, you're much more prone to bullying. Even if you don't think of yourself as a bully, which I certainly don't think of myself as a bully, but that doesn't mean I never bullied anyone. And then the last thing I realized was that as a leader, I imagined that I was creating these BS reasons, but I had allowed all manner of BS to pass. So that was what prompted me to write the next book, Radical Respect, which you can pre -order right now and please do.

1:14:41I was, that was my next question, talk more about this book, but it said it was it about where people find it. Right. Of course, back comes out in May. You can pre -order it now anywhere you buy books at your local independent bookstore. I'm speaking at a conference of independent bookstore owners soon. You can pre -order it on Amazon or Barnes Noble or anywhere else you buy by books. And who would you say it's most for? So there are chapters in that book about things leaders can do. There are chapters in the book about things you can do if you're harmed by bias prejudice or bullying There are chapters in the book about how to be a great upstander How to be a better colleague and there are chapters in the book about how to become part of the solution not part of the problem when you're the culprit and And I think we all find ourselves in all four of those roles at different moments in time and I don't think there's any one group who can solve this problem.

1:15:42Everyone has is responsible for solving, for creating a more respectful work environment. Awesome. We'll link to that in the show notes. Amazing. To leave people with a very tactical next step. What's one thing they could do this week today to get better at radical candor? To start building that muscle? I would love it if everyone would write down their go -to question. What are you? What are the words that will come out of your mouth and practice it? practice it in front of the mirror and then practice it with a friend and refine it. Just figure out what, because it is uncomfortable to solicit feedback from others.

1:16:17They don't want to give it to you and you don't really want to hear it. And so if everybody can write down their go -to question and then put five minutes in your calendar of someone you're going to ask that question off. And that calendar and Jail is going to come back to it, actually. So you do the one -on -one agenda adding the question. the calendar entries for people you don't have a one -on -one with. Pick someone that you're going to ask that you're not moving with regular. Absolutely. You're added to the bottom of your next one I wanted. That's fair too. You know what? Amazing. Kim, is there anything else you want to leave folks with before we get to our very exciting lightning round?

1:16:52I think just remember you do not have to choose between being successful and being a jerk. You can be a successful kind person. I love that. Amazing. Okay. Well, with that we've reached our very exciting lightning round. Are you ready? I'm ready. What are two or three books you've recommended most to other people? We've already mentioned a few but Yes, I mentioned a couple Please do by radical respect. I I believe that the more novels people read the the better That's the if people often ask me like what can I do to move up on the care personally to mention a radical candor and And read more novels.

1:17:31This is the best way I know of to build compassion for other people to understand the emotional signals that might be coming at you. I mean, some of my favorite novels are Middle March. I try to read that, reread that all the time. Anything that Tony Morrison wrote, the blue is I is one of my favorite, but also a song of Solomon. and it just such a brilliant, brilliant writer and will help you like enter into the lives of people that you haven't entered into. I think that Orlando, by Virginia Wolf, is another one of my favorites. And Robertson Davies, the Deptford Trilogy is an incredible set of novels to read.

1:18:20I'm cheating now and giving you three. I'm more the mayor. Yes, yes. Alice Walker, the color purple is another one of my very favorite books. So I recommend reading more novels. I love this leaning into fiction that doesn't come off then on this podcast. So this is great. What is a favorite recent movie or TV show that you really enjoy? I watched all 19 seasons of Grey's Anatomy with my with my daughter during during an after a COVID. That was really fun. We'd actually I did the same thing with my wife. We didn't do all the seasons, but we watched a lot of green anatomy. We watched every single one.

1:19:02There's like so it's still coming out. Yeah, it's funny to see which characters continue in which day off. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Oh man. Okay. Funny. And Sean arrives. I mean, watch your Ted Talk. amazing person. All right, we'll look to that in the show notes. Do you have a favorite interview question that you like to ask when you're interviewing people that might be helpful to folks interviewing? The question that I like to ask is just tell me the story of your career and I know that's kind of maybe it's hard quite it's it seems like a softball but it actually can be unfairly hard or not I don't know unfairly hard but I always learn a lot about people from from how they tell the story of their life and their career.

1:19:43And then what I try to do is they'll say a couple of things that really interest me. And I sort of double click, triple click, quadruple click, down into the details of a couple of aspects. I love people's life stories. So that makes it a more fun conversation for me. Often people like talking about themselves. So it's not too painful for them, but you also learn all kinds of unexpected things. And is there anything you're looking for in an answer that's like this is a good person to hire or is it mostly information? I'm just gathering a lot of background. I find that I learn how the person approaches setbacks from a story, from the way they tell a story.

1:20:30I learn whether a person is able to identify mistakes they made. I mean, if you say, tell me the story of your career, if there's not a couple of mistakes in there. But, you know, I also find that when they talk about accomplishments and then I double click on it, I learn a lot about what a person really did. Sometimes a person will claim credit for something that just happened, that they had very little to actually to do with. And you learn, I learn about, very often, I find that a good way to learn about people's skills and depth of knowledge. Is there a favorite product you recently discovered that you really like?

1:21:13Yes. I love my new, it's called Attitude in their shampoo bars and conditioner bars. So it comes in cardboard, wrapped in paper, there's no plastic. it's much more environmentally friendly. And I have long hair, it gets very tangly and the conditioner works. So I recommend. Very unique suggestion. Is there a favorite motto that you often repeat to yourself, share with people find useful to come back to work or in life? It's not mean, it's clear. This is something someone told me on the streets of Manhattan, Manhattan. happened. It's actually the the origin story of radical canterals. Walking my dog almost got hit by my cab and this man, a perfect stranger, looked at me and he said, I can tell you love that dog.

1:22:04That was all he had to do to move up on the care of personally dimension. But he says, you're going to kill that dog if you don't teacher to sit in a pointed at the ground. This kind of harsh gesture. He says, soon, dog said, had no idea she even knew what that meant. And I kind of looked up at him and amazement. And he He said, it's not mean, it's clear. And then the light changed and he walked off, leaving me with words to live by. So I think about that stranger all the time. Did you get a story? Final question. I read online that you started a diamond -cutting factory in Moscow. Yes. At some point in your life, can you please explain this part of your life?

1:22:41Yes. So I studied Russian literature in college, very practical major. And then I moved to what was in the Soviet Union and in 1990, right, when I graduated from college. And I wound up taking a job with, first of all, we were, I was with an investment company and then they pulled out of Russia and put the money in China. And so I wanted to stay in Russia and do a friend of a friend. And I got a job working for this diamond company called Lazaracaplin, New York -based diamond company. And they were trying to figure out what they should do in Russia. And I found out there was an opportunity to start this diamond -cutting factory.

1:23:29And it was actually my first management job because I had to hire these diamond cutters. And I had to hire them away from these Russian diamond -cutting factories. And, you know, I had no nothing about management or business or anything. I'd studied Russian literature. I knew a lot about Dostoevsky. So I thought it was going to be easy, though. It's like, well, the rubble is collapsing. I'm going to pay them in dollars. Of course, they'll come work for me. But they didn't take the job right away, to my surprise. They wanted to have a picnic. And at the picnic, they brought a bottle of vodka. There's a rule in Russia.

1:24:06If you open a bottle, you've got to finish the bottle. So by the end of the bottle of vodka, I realized that what I could offer, that the state could not offer them, was to give them about them. They wanted to know that I would be a manager who would get them out of Russia if things went sideways there. And as you can imagine, I've been thinking a lot about these, these, they were all men, about these men, because I haven't been able to get them out. And, and, and, and, you know, I'm devastated by what Russia has done to Ukraine. But, but that was the moment when I realized that management really matters and it, it, it, and that to be good at it, you have to care about other people and that was what made it interesting to me.

1:24:53Man, it is a, a heavy first job as a man. Yeah, that's it was. Well, Kim, this was awesome. I think we're going to help a lot of people become better leaders. I think we're going to have a lot of companies change their culture. So honored that you agreed to do this. Two final questions. Working folks find you online if they want to follow up and learn more about your stuff. And then two, how can listeners be helpful to you? Radicalcanner .com is our website. And I'm not much on Twitter slash acts anymore, but you can find us. We do a lot of posting on LinkedIn. in, I think the thing that people can help me do is to send us a note.

1:25:33You can send, you can also email us, radicalcandoratradicalcandor .com. And let us know, like, what could we do, what, in podcasts like this or in our materials, what could we do that would make it easier for you to put these ideas into practice? Because radical can air is, it's about behavior change. And it sounds easy, but it's really hard. And we're always trying to figure out how to help people walk the talk here. I think doing this podcast is going to make a dent in that goal. Oh good. Kim, thank you so much for being here. Thank you. I really enjoyed it. Same. Bye everyone. Take care everyone.

1:26:15Thank you so much for listening. If you found this valuable, you can subscribe to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast app. Also, please consider giving us a rating or a leaving review as that really helps other listeners find the podcast. You can find all past episodes or learn more about the show at Lenny'sPodcast .com. See you in the next episode!