Using Radical Candor to Strengthen Relationships at Work and Home with Kim Scott
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Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and I am sure we've all experienced how it can be tough to give others feedback, especially when that feedback can be a little critical. It's something I've struggled with, but when I read a book about six years ago called Radical Candor, it really changed my approach and made the whole process so much easier. So today, I am so excited to have the author of that incredible bestselling book, Kim Scott,

joining me to help you improve giving and receiving feedback that's both kind and clear. Kim is a formal Apple and Google exec that's helped people around the world increase their productivity and performance. And while this might seem just like a framework for managers, I assure you that anyone can benefit from learning these important skills, even if you don't work full time. I am very excited for this conversation. So let's jump in right after this.

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Kim, thanks for being here. I'm a big fan of your work and I'm excited to have you on the show. Thank you so much. I'm really excited for our conversation. I imagine many people listening aren't familiar with the concept of your first book, Radical Candor, which I've heard you define as both caring personally and challenging directly at the same time. And then I've also heard you say it's best understood for what it's not. Yes. How would you introduce that concept to people?

One of the things about radical candor is that sometimes people hear the term and they assume it is licensed to act like a jerk, which it is not. So if you think about caring and challenging at the same time, those two things, caring and challenging, they don't really seem so radical. So why do I call it radical candor? Part of the reason is that everyone I've ever met struggles with feedback.

They struggle hearing it and they struggle giving it. I love a good two by two framework. So draw in your mind a vertical line, and that is the care personally dimension of radical candor and a horizontal line. That's the challenge directly dimension in the bottom right hand box where you are challenging, but you're not showing that you care. Even if you do care, you're not showing that you care. That is what I call obnoxious aggression.

In the first draft of the book, I called that the asshole quadrant because, I don't know, it seemed more radically candid. And I stopped doing that for a really important reason because I found that when I did that, people would start writing names in boxes in this two by two. And I beg of you and all of your listeners, please don't do that. This is not another Myers-Briggs personality test or something like that.

Use this kind of framework to guide specific conversations with specific people to a better place. So you don't want to be obnoxiously aggressive because it hurts other people. Also, because it's inefficient. If I'm a jerk to you, Chris, then you go into fight or flight mode and then you literally physically cannot hear what I'm saying. So I'm wasting my breath.

Not only those two problems with obnoxious aggression, but there's a third more subtle problem. When I realized that I've acted like a jerk, it's not actually my instinctive response to move up on the care personally dimension of radical candor. Instead, it's my response to go the wrong way on challenge directly and say, oh, I'm sorry. It's no big deal. I didn't really mean it, but it is a big deal. I did mean it, you know, so now I'm basically lying. And so now I've landed in the worst place of all.

manipulative insincerity. This is where passive aggressive behavior, political behavior, all of the things that really erode trust in any kind of relationship creep in. The bottom left quadrant where you're neither caring nor challenging. You haven't gone the right way on care personally, you've gone the wrong way on challenge directly. If you think about what goes wrong in relationships, especially what goes wrong in relationships at work,

you're going to talk a lot about obnoxious aggression and manipulative insincerity. If anybody watches The Office, they're going to see a lot of episodes about those two behaviors because that's where the drama is and the ridiculousness is. However, I don't think these are our most common mistakes in most relationships. In my experience, the vast majority of us

make the vast majority of our mistakes in this last upper left hand quadrant where you do remember to show that you care personally because you know what most people are actually pretty nice people when it comes right down to it so you do remember to show that you care personally

But you're so worried about not offending someone or not hurting someone's feelings that you fail to tell them something they'd be better off knowing in the long run. And that is what I call ruinous empathy. If there's one big reason why I wrote Radical Candor, it's to help us all be less ruinously empathetic because it's not a good thing. It feels nice, but it's actually mean in the long run. Yeah, I think my wife...

has consistently given me feedback on my managerial skills of like, you're being too nice. Another way of saying ruinously empathetic. Exactly. Another way to think about it is to think about what's the difference between nice and kind. Nice usually isn't so nice in the long run. Kind is what we're really shooting for. And I want people to be kind, but kind is radically candid.

I grew up in the South. There's this anecdote about someone went to finishing school and they were taught to say, how nice, instead of F you. And that's really what's going on often when people are being too nice, not intentionally, but sort of unintentionally. You hurt people with that kind of ruinous empathy.

I think a lot of people have just been raised that, you know, keep your mouth shut if you don't have anything nice to say. And yeah, all of these things that I guess leave us in that quadrant. Yeah. My parents said that to me, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. And then all of a sudden I was having this career where I was teaching people, oh, the problem, the thing that lands us in ruinous empathy is we have parents who say, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. And then I myself had kids who would say these incredible things.

horrible things when they were two. And I found myself saying that to my children too. So compassion for my parents and all the parents who said that to their kids, but it doesn't help. You know, we've talked a little bit about work and managing. How important are these skills just in life? Or is this really just a workplace skill set? This is all relationships. In fact, my publisher really wants me to write a book called The House of Radical Candor, where I talk about...

how important this is in your personal relationships. One time I was giving a radical candor talk and somebody came up to me afterwards and they said, oh my gosh, if I had heard this five years ago, I wouldn't be divorced right now. And that's true. I mean, in fact, I would say I wouldn't be married right now if it weren't for radical candor.

So when I was dating this guy, who's now my husband, he had spent the night over at my house. And the next morning I went into another room to do yoga. I had a one bedroom and a living room. So it was like a two room situation. He was still asleep. And I went into the living room to start doing yoga. And as I was doing it, he came in and picked up the paper and started reading the paper in the same room where I was trying to do my yoga. And I was like, oh my gosh, this is why I can't be in a relationship, you know, when

you know, and I was ready never to see him again. And then I'm like, why don't I just ask him to leave the room? And I said, you know, I really can't do my yoga with you sitting there reading the paper. And he said, oh, I'm sorry. And he left the room and I was like, oh, I could be in a relationship. Now there's two children and 16 years of marriage. Wow. If you think broadly about the kind of impact

embracing radical candor could have on your life, your relationships? Is it more productive, happier? How do you describe that impact? I would describe it as first, I mean, what's most important to me is a deep relationship with people. It's the relationships, I think, that give both life and work meaning. And so you have deeper relationships and there's plenty of evidence that shows when you have better relationships, you're happier in life, but also you're more productive. When we have a couple of good relationships at work,

especially if that relationship is with our boss or our employee. Like if it's in the context of a hierarchy, that is what unleashes our capacity to do the very best work of our lives because it's the relationships at work that often give the work its meaning.

For some people, it's the work itself, but often it's the relationships at work. I also think that when you have a bad relationship at work, especially if it's with your boss, it has a huge impact. I just read a statistic that showed your relationship with your boss has a bigger impact on your health outcome than the quality of your doctor. And I certainly have found when I've had bad bosses...

I wake up in the middle of the night. At one point, I had a boss who was sort of belittling and I literally shrank half an inch. My doctor was like, what is going on? You know, I was only 30 and I'm only five feet tall. Like I didn't have half an inch to give. And then I quit and I gained my half an inch back.

A bad relationship with a manager can really have a physical impact on your life. I worked with someone else who was working for a boss who was a bully and they broke out in hives. They got like a physical rash. It's a big deal. There's also a lot of research that shows a bad relationship with your boss makes you more prone to have a heart attack.

So it really matters. It's not like something you just have to tough out. I imagine for a lot of people, it's uncomfortable. We talked about how a lot of people are people pleasers. How do you figure out where you are? Is there some kind of diagnostic? How do you start to make change? And then maybe after that,

How do you help others? I will say that you probably are in all of these boxes all of the time. So again, when I said this is not another Myers-Briggs personality test, try not to write your own name in a box either, but just try to be aware when you've drifted into the box.

The thing that I have done that has helped me more than anything else is to think back over the course of my life about a time when I was, for example, ruinously empathetic. We'll start there because that's the most common mistake that we make. And then when I'm tempted in the future to be ruinously empathetic, to think about that story.

So this happened. I had just hired this guy who liked Bob a lot. Bob was smart, funny, charming. He would do stuff like we were in a manager offsite playing one of those endless get to know you games. Bob was the guy who had the courage to raise his hand and to say, I can tell everybody is really stressed out. Everybody kind of wants to get back to work. I've got an idea. It will help us get to know each other and it'll be really fast. Whatever his idea was, if it was really fast, we were down with it.

So Bob says, let's just go around the table and confess what candy our parents used when potty training us. Really weird, but really fast. Weirder yet, everybody remembered Hershey Kisses right here. And then for the next 10 months, every time there was a tense moment in a meeting, Bob would whip out just the right piece of candy for the right person at the right moment. So Bob was a little quirky, but brought some levity to the office. Everybody loved working with Bob. It was

There was one big problem with Bob. He was doing terrible work.

He would hand stuff into me and there was shame in his eyes. And I was so puzzled. I couldn't understand what was going on because he had this incredible resume, this great history of accomplishments. I learned much later the problem was that Bob was smoking pot in the bathroom three times a day, which maybe explained all that candy that he had all the time. But I didn't know any of that at the time. All I knew was that he was handing in this terrible work to me. And I would say something to him along the lines of,

of, oh, Bob, this is a great start. You're so awesome. Everybody loves working with you. Maybe you can make it just a little bit better. You know, kind of the thing that we do when we're being too quote unquote nice.

And it's worth double clicking on this too nice. Like, why was I doing that? I think part of it was truly ruinous empathy. I really did like Bob and I really did not want to hurt Bob's feelings. But if I'm honest with myself, there was also something more insidious going on there because Bob was popular and Bob was also kind of sensitive. And so there was part of me that was afraid if I told Bob in no uncertain terms that his work wasn't nearly good enough.

that he would get upset. He might even start to cry. And then everybody would think I was a big, you know what? The part of me that was worried about my reputation as Bob's boss was the manipulative insincerity part. That's why I was reluctant to give him honest feedback, radically candid feedback. And then the part of me that was worried about Bob's feelings, that was the ruinous empathy part. And this went on for 10 months.

And eventually the inevitable happened. And I realized that if I don't fire Bob, I'm going to lose all the best performers on the team because not only have I been unfair and really unkind to Bob not to tell him, I've

I've been unfair to the whole team because not only is Bob not getting any better, but their deliverables, everybody's deliverables are late because Bob's deliverables are late. Everybody on the team is not able to spend as much time as they need to on their work because they're having to redo Bob's work. And the people who are best at the job are going to quit and go work somewhere where they can do their best work.

And so when I realized this, I sat down to have a conversation with Bob that I should have started, frankly, 10 months previously. And when I finished explaining to him where things stood, he pushed his chair back from the table and he looked me right in the eye and he said, why didn't you tell me? That question was going around in my head with no good answer. He looked at me again and he said, why didn't anyone tell me? I thought you all cared about me.

And now I realize that by not telling Bob, thinking I was being so nice, I'm having to fire him as a result of it. Not so nice after all. But it was too late to save Bob. Even Bob at this point agreed he should go because his reputation on the team was just shot.

All I could do in the moment was make myself a very solemn promise that I would never make that mistake again and that I would do everything in my power to help other people making that mistake because we all do it. There was one time a guy came up to me after I'd given a talk and he said, yeah, you know, I got married and my wife tended to clink her teeth with her spoon when we were eating cereal in the morning and it bugged me.

I didn't want to say anything and like five years later she clinked her teeth with her spoon. I'm like, I need a divorce. I'm sure there was other stuff going on, but it happened.

We do this in all aspects of our life. I have a similar one with my wife. I'm like, use your lips to get this food off the spoon, not your teeth, especially because your teeth chip all the time. But she told her at least. I did tell her. It's funny because I think sometimes I go down one path. Maybe in my manager hat, I go down the ruinous empathy path. Obnoxious aggression maybe feels a lot. Sometimes I'm in a point where I'm like, when

when someone's doing great, even at home, like I love my wife. She's great. I noticed three things. I'm like, Oh, I want to tell you these three things, but it just seems rude. And like, you know, I love you. So, you know, it's coming from a good place. You know, that whole kindness sandwich or something where it's like, Oh yeah, deliver bad information. It's like something nice, something to improve something nice. Again, we want to give people this feedback. We want to make sure they know we care. Even if we think they do, how do you deliver it? A couple of things. I would say radical canter is not about nitpicking. Uh,

A good friend of mine, she got married on this island with a very weak septic system. So there were signs over all the toilets. If it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down. And her uncle stood up and he said, these are words to stay married by. You only need to say something if it really matters. If something's really bothering you a lot, even if it's a small thing,

by all means say it. But if it's a little thing and you can let it go, I think it's fine to let some stuff go. So let's imagine you've decided it's brown. You want to say the thing. You want to start out by making sure that you're soliciting feedback more than you're giving it. You don't want to dish it out until you prove you can take it.

You also want to make sure that you understand the other person's perspective. I think sometimes, especially when we're in relationships that we've been in for decades,

It's easy to think you already know everything this person thinks, but we never do. You can never be married long enough to really, really know someone that what they think all the time. Am I allowed to curse on your podcast? I mean, there's the warning for anyone listening in a car with their children. Nobody likes a shit sandwich. If you say, oh, Kim, I'm

I love your bookshelf. I hate your book, but I like your orange hoodie. Like that doesn't make me feel any better. So you want to make sure that you're focused on the good stuff, but in a way that is specific and sincere. So you do want to give more praise than criticism for sure. So the next step in the radical canter of operations after soliciting feedback is giving praise. But

But if it's something you would say to your dog, it's not good praise. You know, oh, good job. That doesn't really help anybody. So you want to make sure that you're sort of using hate acronyms. I was just talking to Bob Sutton, who wrote the No Asshole Rule, and he talks about jargon monoxide. So if this sounds like jargon monoxide, I apologize. But it's useful sometimes to have an acronym to remember in the moment. When I'm thinking about praise, I try to think about CORE.

Context, observation, result, next step. Context, like in the meeting, observation, when you argued both sides of the case, results, you earned credibility, next step, do more of that. So that's what I mean by core. Don't just say good job. Make sure you're telling the person specifically what was good and what they could do more of. Like the purpose of praise is to let them know what to do more of. In fact, if you think about radical candor as something

helping someone else scratch an itch on an unreachable spot in your back. You know, you got to say, yeah, that's good or no, that's not good. And you need to be able to say both. So praise is really important.

This is a little criticism. You want to give someone who you love and who knows that you love them. Hopefully, you know them well enough to know how things land for them. So you want to go in, make sure that you're humble, that you're not sure you're right. To me, I call it candor and not the truth. Because if I go to you, Chris, and I say, I'm going to tell you the truth, I'm kind of implying like I've got a pipeline to God and you don't know beep from Shinola.

To me, candor implies here's how I understand the situation. I'm also really curious to know how you understand the situation. You want to be humble. You want to state your intention to be helpful. I think sometimes when people receive criticism, they receive it as though you're trying to be dominant or show you're smarter than they are. And so you want to make sure that you're getting on the same side of the table with the person.

I can tell you really care about this dish you're cooking for this dinner party and I have an idea that I think will make it even better, whatever it is. You know, state your intention to be helpful. You want to do it right away.

You don't want to hold on to stuff, especially if it's critical feedback. I think we've all had relationships where someone told us about something that we did six months ago that really upset them. And you're like, you've been holding on to that this whole time? Like, why didn't you tell me six months ago? And if you're like so angry that you don't think you can say it right, you can delay. But usually when I say in my mind,

Oh, I'm going to wait for the right moment. What I'm really telling myself is I'm never going to say that thing. So you want to say it right away in general. You also want to make sure that if possible, you're having this conversation in person. If not possible, you want to have a conversation on the phone. Do not send an email. Do not send a text. Slash.

Slack is a radical candor train wreck waiting to happen. You know, you don't want to criticize people in front of other people and in writing. And the reason why I say have a phone call or an in-person conversation is because a big part of success is gauging how it's landing. And if you broadcast it with a text message, you have no idea how your words are landing for the other person.

And if it's praise, of course, do it in public. You got to criticize in private. If I criticize you publicly, you're likely to go into fight or flight mode. And then you physically cannot hear what I'm saying. So once again, I'm wasting my breath. Don't do that. And also use core with criticism, context, observation, result, next step.

I had a boss who told me in the meeting, that's the context. When you said, um, every third word, that's the observation. The result, it made you sound stupid. Go visit this speech coach.

There's a world of difference between saying in the meeting when you said, I'm every third word, it made you sound stupid. Here's a speech coach you can visit. There's a world of difference between saying that and saying, oh, Kim, you're just too stupid to do this job. That would be awful. And a lot of people object to the use of the word stupid, which is some criticism I've gotten about that story. And so maybe it's better to say stupid.

you lost credibility. In my case, that was the word that really got my attention. And my boss knew me well enough to know that it wasn't going to crush me, but it was going to get my attention.

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I'm going to back up a little because you said you want to start by soliciting feedback. Are there easy ways to do that? I feel like sometimes even when I'm recording an episode at the end, I'm like, oh, do you have any feedback? And people are like, nope, that was great. What tips do you have when people are not easily able to give good feedback? Nobody is easily. I mean, except your teenage children. If you have a teenager, they're really good at this. This is a service they offer with alacrity. But other people are very reluctant to give you feedback.

I have found if I say, do you have any feedback for me? The answer is invariably, oh no, everything's fine. So I have four bits of advice for soliciting feedback. The first is you want to ask the question in a way that sounds like you. So I'm going to tell you the question that I like to ask, but do not write it down. Because if you sound like Kim Scott and not like yourself, the other person's not going to believe you want the answer. So the question I like to ask is,

What could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to get along with me? I've been married since 2007. So for a while, but I still occasionally ask my husband some version of, you know, what could I do? What could I have done or not done in that situation so that you wouldn't be so mad right now? Because my goal is obviously not to make you mad, but don't write down that question. If

If those are not the words you would use, the other person is going to be like, did you just listen to some podcast? In fact, I was working with Krista Quarles when she was the CEO of OpenTable. And she said, Kim, I could never imagine your words coming out my mouth. She said, the question I like to ask is, tell me why I'm wrong. Okay, that's fine too. That's what worked for her.

There were a couple of people in Krista's life that that question didn't work for because it seemed too aggressive to them and it kind of shut them down. So she had to adjust.

Being authentic doesn't mean ignoring the impact you're having on other people. You can say the same thing to one person and it's going to be awesome with that person. The exact same thing to somebody else. They're either not going to hear what you said because you weren't out far enough on the challenge directly dimension, or they'll be crushed by it because you said it in a way that you meant as funny, but they didn't find funny at all. So you got to adjust for the other person.

Number one is think about your question.

very consciously, have a go-to question that you usually ask and then adjust it for whom you're asking it up. And the other thing about the question is that it shouldn't be able to be answered with a yes or a no. What could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me? Not, is there anything? And in fact, if you read the book, you'll notice I wrote, is there anything? And a reader gave me some feedback.

Great thing about radical writing about feedback is you're going to get a lot of it. And said, it's better to ask what? And I realized that is a good point. So there you go. So think about how you're going to ask. No matter how good your question is, the other person doesn't want to answer it. They're still going to feel uncomfortable. And the only way out is through. You've just got to embrace the discomfort. That's the second step. Embrace the discomfort. Really simple technique here.

Close your mouth and count to six. We made it to six. You're the first person who didn't jump in and say something. It's so hard. It is really hard. Six seconds is a really long time. If you can manage to stay silent for six seconds and the other person is like smiling at you and then they're kind of winting at you, like just stay silent. They'll probably say something.

Now you've dragged this poor soul out on a conversational limb they never wanted to go on, right? It's crucial that you take the third step, which is to listen with the intent to understand, right?

not to respond. Even though you just solicited feedback, you're probably going to feel a little bit defensive when you get some. And that doesn't mean you're a lesser mortal or that you're shut down to feedback. It just means you're human. And that's all part of this. So you want to think about maybe here's a tactic for this third step, which is asking a follow-up question. So for example, my daughter said to me at breakfast one time,

Mom, I wish you weren't the radical candor lady. And immediately this wave of parental guilt washed over me. I thought, I'm spending too much time at work. She wants more time with me. And then I thought, well, I should take my own advice here. Ask a follow-up question. So 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 wasn't very, I could spend a little more time at work as far as she was concerned. You want to make sure that you're really open to whatever it is the person is saying and that you have some kind of technique for managing your own defensiveness when you get it. Now,

Now, the fourth step. So first was have a go to question. Second was embrace the discomfort. Third was listen with the intent to understand not to respond. The fourth thing you need to keep in mind is that you've got to reward the candor because when someone gives you critical feedback, they take a big risk no matter who they are in your life. You know, if you're going to make a risky investment, you expect a big return.

You can think about critical feedback as a very risky investment from that other person. And if you do not reward them richly,

they are never going to give you feedback again. You got to make sure that if you agree with the feedback that you don't just say thank you, but that you take the next step and fix the problem and then tell them that you fixed the problem that they brought to your attention. What do you do though if you disagree with the feedback? This is tricky because you just solicited feedback. They told you you're not defensive, but you actually think they're wrong. So in that situation, what I recommend doing

is taking a look at what they said and what you think and finding that five or 10%. There's some little bit of overlap between what they said and what you think that you can agree with and give voice to that just to demonstrate that you're not instinctively shut down the feedback and to make your listening tangible. And then what you want to do next is you want to say,

So I agree with that. As for the rest, I want to think about it and get back to you. And then you must get back to them. And you've got to offer them a respectful explanation of why you disagree. We kind of have this bad instinct about disagreement. We think that a disagreement is going to pose a risk to our relationship. Actually,

Actually, many of my best relationships, both in my personal life and at work, started with a really respectful disagreement. I have found that what really hurts a relationship is unspoken disagreement. Because that's where resentment builds up, it builds up, and then it explodes like a dirty bomb all over your relationship. So talk to them. Explain why you disagree. Let them try to persuade you that you're wrong. You can't

Argue endlessly. At some point, you got to listen, challenge, commit. Don't skip the listen and challenge part before you get to some sort of commitment.

I like finding the overlap because I can imagine a conversation between a couple where someone's like, you never listen to me. Well, I do. But it's probably better to say, well, you know what? I was distracted this afternoon. Yeah. I'm going to acknowledge that there was some overlap in what you think and how I feel. But I do listen to you sometimes and can kind of continue down that path. Anytime somebody says never, there's some questions. Yes. There's absolute rules.

And I say this to my kids all the time. Let's say I'm delivering feedback and it's very clear to me that the other person completely disagrees.

You know, there's that Jerry Maguire movie, that scene where he's yelling, "You think we're arguing and I think we're finally talking." One of the things that I have found disarming is to say, "I can tell you totally disagree with me. Tell me why." And let them disagree with you and try to understand why they disagree with you. Sometimes it happens that the person is disagreeing with you in a way that's obnoxious, like they're yelling at you or something.

That is your cue to move up on the care personally dimension. But it's kind of hard to care personally about someone who's yelling at you. And so it's really useful in that moment to try to get curious, not furious. Try to really understand why the person thinks what they think.

Not necessarily because you're going to agree with it, but because it's interesting to understand why. I'm starting to think about various people I know and conversations I've had. And I have a bunch of friends in Israel who seem to be very direct and that's comfortable. And we've spent some time in Japan and it's very different.

how do you start to think about using language and skill set with people where maybe culturally they're not ready for it or maybe culturally they're so ready for it it's kind of uncomfortable for you at one point i was managing teams all over the world and believe me radical candor in israel or in the netherlands sounds very different from radical candor in japan in fact with

With the team in Japan, I called it polite persistence. Polite was how they liked to show that they cared personally. And persistence was an easier way for them to think of challenge directly. Once I had reframed it for them in that way, then believe me, they were relentlessly politely persistent. I heard a lot from them and learned a lot. And we improved the product as a result of their polite persistence.

But if I had gone to the Netherlands or to Israel and said, be politely persistent, they would have interpreted that as me saying, be manipulatively insincere. Challenging directly was really a sign of respect in those cultures.

I think it is useful to remember that radical candor gets measured not at the speaker's mouth, but at the listener's ear. And that means that even though if you abstract up enough, radical candor is about love and truth at the same time. And those are pretty universal human values. Not everybody, but most of us honor love and truth.

The way that we express love and truth is culturally relative. And so you've got to adjust for the culture where you're operating, but you also have to adjust for the individual to whom you're speaking. Like if you're being radically candid with me, I'm kind of stubborn and I'm not always the best listener. So you're probably going to have to attend more to the challenge directly dimension of radical candor because I might just brush you off.

You may have to say it again more clearly. I'm aware of this feedback and I'm working on it. If you're managing my brother, who is a great listener and probably more sensitive than I am, you're going to need to attend more to the care personally dimension. You don't need to go as far out on the challenge directly dimension. So sort of

Being aware of which vector to choose as you move forward in these conversations with different people and in different cultures. On the note of different cultures, I have an assistant who lives in Sri Lanka and we overlap for a few hours a day. Yeah. I've gotten two pieces of feedback from you. One, address things quickly. And two, don't do them asynchronously. Do them synchronously. Yes. What about when someone's sleeping asynchronously?

and I want to get them feedback before they work, but I'm going to be asleep. Or just generally in a lot of work scenarios now, we're distributed, people work different times, different days. Are there any ways to be more radically candor when you're writing a private Slack message or an email? Surely the answer can't always be to get on the phone or video to give feedback. I recommend finding time to get on the phone.

always feels more efficient to just fire off the message. And it also feels easier because then you don't have to gauge how it landed because you don't have to know. You just fire it off. If you think about the number of times, though, when you sent someone an email or a text and they totally misinterpreted what you were trying to say,

If you were having a synchronous conversation with them, you could have fixed it in the moment. Once they read that and they're pissed off for 12 hours before they talk to you, now it's exploded and it takes way more time actually to undo the damage. We've all seen this happen with email and text and Slack.

And so I really think that it's worth if you notice something in a meeting and you know that you only overlap for another hour, I would say send the person a text and say, can we have a two minute conversation? Most radical candor conversations literally are two minutes. It's fast. If you can gauge how what you're saying is landing,

Like nine times out of 10, the person will just say, oh, thank you for pointing it out. And you'll be like, I probably could have sent an email. But for that one time out of 10 where you really offended someone and done a lot of damage to a relationship, you can fix it usually in the two minutes if you're actually speaking to them synchronously. There's a lot of evidence that shows that there may be more noise than signal in facial expressions and body language over video.

And so I recommend the phone, not another Zoom call, actually. Just get on the phone because then you're listening to the words the person is saying and you're not misinterpreting their facial expression or body language. For example, if I get really angry.

I'm more likely to tear up than to yell. But you may think I'm sad, but I am not sad. I'm really mad, you know? And if we're just talking on the phone, like that whole round trip doesn't even have to happen because you don't have to notice facial expression or body language.

Even if you're going to have the conversation in person, I recommend taking a walk together instead of sitting across from the other person at a table or something. There's something psychologically about walking in the same direction that's very useful. There's also a lot of evidence that shows we think better when we're moving our bodies instead of just sitting there. And you're not staring at the other person, misinterpreting their facial expressions and body language.

This is very mammalian, but when a mammal stares another in the eye, that can be a sign to attack. And so walking in the same direction can sometimes be a little more effective.

If I'm just sitting at my desk on the phone, I feel like I have to be doing something. I can't just be on the phone. It's very hard. But if I'm just walking, now it checks the box in my mind. Now I'm doing a thing and talking and it's clear, but it's nowhere near as distracting as reading emails or anything like that. Exactly. As soon as you're doing something...

If you're sitting at your desk, there's some notification. No matter how good you are about turning all your notifications off, some notification is going to come along and distract you. And what do you think about calling out the kind of care personally side of, hey, I noticed the work you've been doing lately hasn't been up to par. I'm telling you this because I believe in you at this company. And I think that I've seen work that shows that you can do it.

calling it out in the feedback. A hundred percent. I think that that's part of stating your intention to be helpful. Humble and helpful are the most important parts of this. And saying, I can tell you really care about this project. That's why I want to tell you this thing is hugely important. And telling the person you believe in them, that never goes awry. Unless you're lying and you don't believe in it. But that's a whole other topic. Of course, you have to believe it. Yes.

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I just want to thank you quick for listening to and supporting the show. Your support is what keeps this show going to get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners. You can go to all the hacks.com slash deals. So please consider supporting those who support us. So you mentioned earlier that one of the fun parts of writing a book about radical candor is that you get a lot of feedback.

I first came across your work 5-6 years ago when I was working at a company, managing a team. What's changed? I think the world's changed a bit. What kind of feedback have you gotten? Where do you take some of these lessons from now?

So hands down, the best feedback I got about Radical Candor happened shortly after the book came out. I was at a tech company in San Francisco giving a Radical Candor talk. And the CEO of that company had been a colleague of mine for the better part of a decade. And she's a person who I like and respect enormously. And she's one of too few black women CEOs in tech.

And when I finished giving the presentation, she pulled me aside and she said, Kim, I'm really excited to roll out radical candor. I think it's going to help me build the kind of culture that I want. But I got to tell you, it's much harder for me to roll it out than it is for you. She went on to explain to me that as soon as she would give anyone even the most gentle, compassionate criticism, she would get slimed with the angry black woman stereotype. And I knew this was true. As soon as she said it to me,

I realized four things at the same time. The first was that I had not been a colleague that I imagined 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 pissed off about, as we all do at work in six and a half years. She was not as free as I was to say, and I was not as free as my husband. So I had failed to be an upstander really to her. The second thing that I realized was

was that not only had I been in denial about what was happening to her, I had been even deeper in denial about the things that had happened to me as a woman in tech. And hard for the author of a book called Radical Candor to admit that I had been in denial. But I had pretended throughout most of my career that a whole host of things were not happening that were in fact happening. I

I think the reason I had been in denial is that I hated to think of myself or my colleague as a victim because we have such a strange attitude towards that in our society. Even less than wanting to think of myself as a victim that I want to think of myself as a culprit.

The third thing that I realized was that I had been even deeper in denial about the times in my career and in my life when I had been biased or said something or done something that was prejudiced or bullied someone. And we all play those roles. Sometimes we're the person...

who observed the thing. Sometimes we're the silent bystander when we want to be the upstander. Sometimes we're the person to whom it happened. And other times we're the person who did the thing, even though I never intended. I never woke up. And I don't think many people really do wake up and say, ah, I want to be biased today. I want to be prejudiced today. I want to bully someone today.

That's not usually what causes those things to happen. And then the fourth thing I realized was that as a leader, I imagined I had created these workplaces that were sort of like these BS free zones. But because I was refusing to notice bias, prejudice and bullying that was happening on my teams, I hadn't built the kind of culture that I wanted to build. So all of those realizations, problematization,

prompted me to write my next book, Radical Respect. There's been a lot written about this stuff, a lot more written about it since I started writing that book than when I began writing that book. But...

But we haven't solved these problems by a long stretch. So hopefully radical respect will help people make things a little better. I know it's not out yet, so people can definitely preorder. But what are some of the things we can start to do for people who are like, OK, give me a little bit? I think one of the things that is really helpful is to distinguish between bias, prejudice and bullying, because there are three very different things. But I think we tend to conflate them. I'm going to leave you with super simple definitions.

Bias is just not meaning it. So that's my definition, not meaning it. And it's usually unconscious. When we stop and think about the implications of what we just said or did, that's not what we really consciously believe. But often we're not aware of what's going on in our own brains. Kahneman's book, Thinking Fast and Slow, is really good on this. So that's bias. Prejudice, on the other hand, is very different.

It's meaning it. So not meaning it, meaning it. Prejudice is usually a very consciously held belief reflecting an unfair stereotype. And bullying, on the other hand, there's no belief, conscious or unconscious, really going on. This person's just trying to be mean. Not meaning it, meaning it, being mean. What do you do if it's bias? And I think this is really important because the right response to bias is just to hold up a mirror, to point it out to the other person.

And to do it in a way that is supportive. You're not trying to punish someone for something they're unconscious of. You're just trying to make them aware. One of the things that I recommend is with the people who you're close with, either in your personal life or at work,

I come up with some kind of shared vocabulary. So with the people who I work most closely with, we all have these little purple flags and we'll wave a purple flag if we're on Zoom or we'll say purple flag on the phone. And that gives the other person the opportunity to either say, ah, thank you. I get it. I'm working on not saying that thing. Or to say, thank you for pointing it out, but I don't get it. And like,

learning how to say that, thank you for pointing it out, I don't get it, is really hard. Because I don't know about you, but when someone points out to me that I've said or done something biased, I feel deeply and profoundly ashamed. For example, I was working with a team helping folks roll these ideas out. And I said in a meeting, I am a slave to my calendar. And

And someone said, oh, do we really need a slavery metaphor there? And no, we did not need a slavery metaphor there. And one of the people on the team is black. And it especially was offensive to her. It's easy enough for me to change the word. So she waved a purple flag. And I was like, I got it immediately. Those are the kinds of things where...

I would rather know than not know. And that's why I find like disrupting the bias or whatever, the slightly offensive thing, or maybe even extremely offensive thing you just said is so useful. One of the problems that a lot of teams have told me that they had with unconscious bias training is that it felt a little bit like boiling the ocean. There are so many different examples of unconscious bias training.

that may or may not be relevant to a group of people working together. If we can just work on the ones that the people in the room are experiencing, that's a great next step. Disrupting the specific biases is really useful. So why not be aware of them and help each other to be aware of them? A couple of things come to mind. But one is, especially when I was working at a startup, it feels like right now,

I'm thinking, okay, well, do we need flags? Like, how do we run the meeting? What kinds of things do I need to make sure I do? At some point, does this get in the way of actually doing the work? Or is it really a way to make doing the work more efficient as part of understanding? I think it's way more efficient to get the elephant out of the room than to leave the elephant in the room. Usually, if someone is saying or doing something that is biased...

It is getting in the way of a team's ability to work well together. I'll give you an example. I had this guy who I had just hired him. This is when I was working at Google. And he referred to the women on his team as girls. I knew that they found it offensive. It bugs me when people refer to men as men and women as girls.

But I didn't say anything to him. I was his boss and it was my job to say something to him. But I didn't because I was busy. We were stressed. It was a new relationship. And then he went to meet with my boss, who was Sheryl Sandberg. He referred to the women on his team as girls. And she did not hesitate to tell him.

He came into my office afterwards and I was sitting there with two other people on my team, both of the men who I had worked with at a previous startup that I had done. So I had known them and I had warned them not to call women girls. He came in and he was kind of pale and he was like, this thing just happened. And instead of doing what I should have done, which is own the fact that I had failed him as his boss. And what I should have said is, I'm sorry, I should have told you it was my job to tell you. And I didn't.

Instead, I kind of burst out laughing and I turned to these other two guys. I was like, see, aren't you glad I told you? Because we had had this argument before and they started laughing. And he's like the new guy on the team. He said, why in the world did you not tell me? And I did what has been done to me. Oh, it's no big deal. Don't worry about it. And to his credit, he said, look,

I would say when you meet your boss's boss for the first time, she spends 40 minutes reaming you out for a word. It is a big deal. Like you should have told me. I would have not used that word if you had given me a heads up. And so that was an example of me as a leader failing to disrupt someone's biased language in a way that was hurtful to him. It was my job to tell him and I failed to do my job. And I think

that's why if we go back to the story that prompted me to write this book, it's so useful to think about the different roles that we have. Because like, if he had called me a girl and I found it offensive and I wasn't his boss, I could choose to remain silent if I wanted to. But because I was his boss, I had more obligation to him to tell him. So I think that is helpful to think about as well.

And what advice would you give to the person who... Let's assume it's biased because it's not intentional. Who is in a situation like you've been, made a comment, people are offended. You didn't mean it. What's the right way to handle that situation? I've met people whose perspective is like, this is not a big deal. Let's move on. But the reality is, clearly, it was a big deal to someone else. Yeah. And it's going to make the relationship you have with that person not great if you can't resolve it. How do you address that appropriately and be productive? I have...

a boss once who said every single person on this planet has a red word. What he meant by the red word is if you use that word with that person, they're not going to hear another word that you say. And so one of the things that I tell people is to identify what's your red word. So for example, I was working with a group of investment bankers.

People tend to have an unconscious or maybe conscious bias about investment makers, that they're all assholes. And so as soon as you said the word asshole, like that was a red word to these guys. And so I was careful not to use that word with those guys, even though I love the word asshole. But if my goal is to communicate with those guys, I wasn't going to use the word asshole. I think it's useful to think about

For me, calling me a girl is kind of a red word. I don't know why it bugs me so much, but it does. So just please don't do it. Sometimes I'll be working with somebody and I'll say that and they'll be like, so-and-so doesn't mind when I call her a girl. And I'm like, well, you're talking to me right now, not to so-and-so.

I think some of this is like remembering that good communication gets measured not at the speaker's mouth, but at the listener's ear. I will also say that it's useful to think about what happens when someone else points out bias. Because I don't know about you, but when someone points out to me that I've said or done something that's biased...

I feel ashamed. And when I feel ashamed, I go into like fight or flight mode. I can tell you in my body where I feel it. I feel a tingling in the backs of my knees. It's the same feeling that I get if my children walk too close to the edge of a precipice and I'm afraid they're going to fall. Like it is a real primal fear response. When we're in

we're in that kind of shame brain, we rarely respond at our best. And so one of the things that I've tried to teach myself to do and that I try to teach people who I'm working with to do is to figure out what can you do to move through that shame and re-engage your executive function.

Sometimes I find it's useful just to have this talk track in my mind. Thank you for pointing it out. That allows me to buy a little bit of time, like breathe a couple of times and then either I get it. I'm working on not saying it again, but point it out if I fail again. And that's an important point. Also, I think that very often when we're trying to change deeply ingrained words or patterns of speech,

It takes a while. And so we have to be patient with ourselves, but also persistent. So thank you for pointing it out. I'm working on it. Please tell me if I do it again. Or the second thing, thank you for pointing it out. I don't know what I did wrong. As in the case of, can we have lunch? Again, that's a really hard place to be. I'm ashamed because I've upset someone, which wasn't my intention. And I'm ashamed because I'm ignorant, which I hate to think of myself as.

Learning how to say, can you explain it to me after the meeting? And the reason why I say after the meeting goes back to what you were saying. I'm at a startup, I'm busy, I don't have time to have a long conversation. The bias disruption needs to be really fast, like just purple flag.

And then if I don't get it, we can talk after the meeting, not in the meeting so that we're disrupting the bias, but not every single meeting we ever have together, every single conversation. My team right now happens to be my wife and my assistant. So it's going to blur the lines, which actually comes back to one topic that before we wrap, I wanted to ask.

Are there ways you run, whether it's meetings or conversations or planning sessions with the family, with your husband or conversations with your children that might be a little bit different, but embrace some of this? Honestly, if you told me every week I run a meeting with my husband to plan our lives, I'm curious what happens in that meeting, but I'll leave the floor open.

My husband and I also run a business together, which I love. The way that we do it is we try to take a walk every day together. And we talk about all kinds of stuff on the walk. It's not exactly a meeting, but it's when we make sure that we touch base on the stuff that we need to talk about. Like, did you do this? Did you do that? Or should we do this? Or should we do that? Is it worth it to hire this PR firm? That was a topic of a recent walk and talk that we had.

The little things I think you address in these impromptu two minute conversations, don't save them up. Say the praise, say the criticism right away. One of the things that I did right when we got married was I kept a gratitude journal.

And I would write down before I went to sleep all the things that Andy had done that day that I was grateful to him for having done. And then I realized this is ridiculous. I don't need to write a journal. I'm married. I need to tell him these things. And so I would make a point to tell those things. I think gratitude is a really important part of any good relationship. And gratitude often takes the form of giving praise.

To me, it's kind of the same thing.

I also try to make sure that I'm asking Andy on a regular basis. Sometimes I'll say something and I can tell it didn't land the way I intended it to. And I'm like, what are you thinking? Don't imagine just because you've been married for 15 or 20 or 30 years that you know what that other person is thinking. Like, I barely know what I'm thinking half the time. I definitely don't know what he's thinking. So I think soliciting feedback, giving a lot of praise and not letting things pile up.

Not holding on to things for very long is really important. You want to make sure that you talk about something that bugs you while it's still a little thing. Don't let it become a big thing.

Radical candor should not feel like a root canal. It should feel like brushing and flossing. Basic relationship hygiene. The way you know you're succeeding is that when you don't say the thing, you feel a little gross, kind of like you feel if you leave the house before you've brushed your teeth. It needs to become a habit of a relationship. I think most of us, especially if there's a little conflict to resolve,

or a little criticism to share. We'd rather have a lot of little conversations than one big one. And when you have kids, it's time for a big conversation. Where are you going to find it?

And with your children, I would say this. I made a joke earlier that nobody in your life wants to give you criticism except your children. Welcome that. This is how we move forward as a species is that it is the job of the younger generation to criticize the older generation. So I think the more you can be open to criticism, you don't have to agree with them. I mean, you are wiser than they are, but they have a fresh new perspective.

Trying to be open to that can make it really useful. I will also say one of the gifts that my children gave me when they were two, when they were like in that toddler rage stage. Mine are one and three, so I'm there. Okay, so this is for you. Yeah, I found

that they have such intense emotions, like from zero to 90. I learned when they lay down on the floor of the grocery store and start kicking their legs and screaming, that it is really useful just not to react, just to like count to 60, not to six, but to 60.

If you can manage not to react for 60 seconds, they won't be able to maintain that pitch of emotion. Let it wash over you. And then once they are calmer, you can re-engage with them. And I found that so helpful in my CEO coaching practice as well.

Senior leaders often behave very much like two-year-olds. That was one of the many gifts that I got from my children. I love that. If you ever write the House of Radical Candor, I'm excited to read it. This has been fantastic. Where do we want to send people who are excited about all this and want more? Check out radicalcandor.com. I am not much on Twitter anymore, but I do a lot of posting on LinkedIn. So you can find me, Kim Scott, on LinkedIn. There's

There's also a website, radicalrespectbook.com. But if you want to find everything in one place, radicalcandor.com is probably the best place to go. I'm excited for the book. It comes out when? May 7th. But you can pre-order it today. So don't wait. Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. Really enjoyed the conversation.

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