TBC Flashback - Kim Scott and "Radical Candor" (March 2023)

What if the secret to transforming toxic workplaces wasn't just about removing bad bosses, but teaching good ones how to balance caring deeply with challenging directly? In this profound flashback conversation with Kim Scott, author of "Radical Candor" and "Just Work", we explore the frameworks that can revolutionize workplace dynamics and eliminate the harm caused by poor management.

• Click HERE for Part 2 of our interview with Kim Scott
• Click HERE for Kim's book Radical Respect
• Click HERE for Kim's book Just Work
• Click HERE for Kim's book Radical Candor
• Click HERE for Kim's article with Dr. Amy Edmondson
• Click HERE for Kim's website
• Click HERE for Kim's LinkedIn page

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Chapters

• 0:00 Introducing Kim Scott's Timeless Wisdom
• 3:42 The Quest to Rid the World of Bad Bosses
• 7:37 The Four Quadrants of Management Behavior
• 12:30 A Personal Bosshole Encounter
• 17:22 Bias, Prejudice, and Bullying in the Workplace
• 21:46 Becoming an Effective Upstander
• 28:21 Closing Thoughts on Leadership Responsibility

Transcript

John Broer: 0:00

Hey everybody out there in The Bossh ole Transformation Nation, this is your host, John Broer, bringing to you another installment of a TBC flashback. I've been going back into the archives of The Bossh ole Chronicles and realizing that we have some amazing episodes and the themes and the topics of those episodes are absolutely timeless, and I'm going to bring you one of those today. This goes back to March of 2023, when Kim Scott came on the program. It was actually a two-part episode and I'll put the link to part two in the show notes, but this was a discussion around her book, Radical Candor, and she has since published a new book called Radical Respect and the more work we are doing with managers and supervisors.

John Broer: 0:59

These themes continue to present themselves. So I thought, man, we got to bring back this powerful message from Kim Scott. Let's jump in. The Bossh ole Chronicles are brought to you by Real Good Ventures, a talent optimization firm helping organizations diagnose their most critical people and execution issues with world-class analytics. Make sure to check out all the resources in the show notes and be sure to follow us and share your feedback. Enjoy today's episode.

Sara Best: 1:35

Kim, let me welcome you to the podcast. Hello and thank you for being here.

Kim Scott: 1:38

Thank you so much. I love what you all are doing and I think our missions are very aligned.

Sara Best: 1:45

I would agree and, as we were talking before we hit record today, it's just so very, very clear that we wish to make the influence and the impact of managers much more positive, and that it's not managers are meant to be bad people or they set out to cause harm or be boss holes. It's that sometimes they need tools and they need education, and we're going to talk a little bit about how you've created some opportunity, sharing some techniques to do that. But, kim, before we dive in, let me just share with our audience a little bit about your background. If I can Sure, you're the author, most recently in March of 21,.

Sara Best: 2:21

The author of your new book called Just Work in March of 21,. The author of your new book called Just Work how to Root Out Bias, prejudice, prejudice and Bullying to Build a Kick-Ass Culture of Inclusivity and Radical Candor. We'll definitely be digging in on that. I think that the upshot of that is it's kind of like a playbook for being a kick-ass boss versus a boss hole, so we'll talk more Radical candor is yes, boss versus a boss hole.

Sara Best: 2:43

So we'll talk more, yeah. Radical candor is yes, yeah, yeah. And so you also have been the CEO, coach, coach CEOs at Dropbox Qualtrics.

Kim Scott: 2:51

Twitter, not the current Twitter. I'm going to just interject.

Sara Best: 3:00

Okay, Thank you. The previous Twitter, Other tech companies, multiple other tech companies. You've lived and worked all over the world. You're a member of the faculty at Apple. You were a member or are you currently a member?

Kim Scott: 3:07

I was. I worked at Apple University, which is Apple's executive ed group.

Sara Best: 3:12

You worked at AdSense, for YouTube, DoubleClick and even along with teams at Google. Prior to that, you managed a pediatric clinic in Kosovo and started a diamond cutting factory in Moscow Is that right?

Kim Scott: 3:25

Yes, that is right, that is right. That is resonating very strangely these days.

Sara Best: 3:31

I bet, and you also. You have a family, you live on the West Coast and you have the previous book, too, that we'll also talk about. You mentioned Radical Candor. Can we start talking first about Radical Candor, Kim? Can we dig in there? Sure, absolutely. I think that the foreword there become a great boss through straightforward, deeply human lessons. These are techniques that are founded on two guiding principles, and the principles really struck me between the eyes the first time I read your book. Caring personally and challenging directly, I just want to say that radical candor is a term, that a phrase that's thrown out often. You know people maybe haven't read the book, or they have, but the how-to is very elusive. What prompted you to put pen to paper and provide this guidebook for managers? Tell us about that.

Kim Scott: 4:22

Yeah, I mean, our mission at Radical Candor is to rid the world of bad bosses, and it's my belief that most bosses are not actually bad people, but they've had no training.

Kim Scott: 4:33

There was a saying when I first got to Silicon Valley that management is neither taught nor valued, and that was the recipes for bad management, right, and I think that there's a bunch of problems.

Kim Scott: 4:48

Part of it is that you know you learn how to be a salesperson, or you learn how to be an engineer, or you learn how to be a lawyer, and there's actually not a coherent curriculum that teaches you how to be a manager, and so that's part of the problem. The other part of the problem is that managers are often given too much power, right, and so power corrupts, and a little, you know, absolute power corrupts absolutely, and a little power corrupts a lot. That's kind of how it goes, and so I think probably I started thinking about radical candor when I was I had started a software company and I walked into the office and opened up my computer and 10 people had emailed me. The same article about people would how people would rather have a boss who's who's an asshole but really competent than one who's really nice but incompetent, and I thought are they sending me this because they think I'm incompetent or because they think I'm an asshole?

Kim Scott: 5:46

Surely those are not my two choices, and that was. You know, I didn't learn anything about management at business school, but I did learn about the two by two framework and that was sort of how I started thinking myself out of this. And so radical candor is about caring personally and challenging directly at the same time. And when you can do both at the same time, that's radical candor. But all of us fail on one of these dimensions or another. So when you challenge directly but you fail to show that you care personally, that I call obnoxious aggression and actually in earlier versions of the book, in drafts of the book, I called that asshole or bosshole or whatever. But I stopped doing that. And I stopped doing it for a really important reason because I want people to use this two by two not as another Myers-Briggs personality test right, don't start writing names in boxes but rather to avoid making mistakes, because these are mistakes that all of us, whether we're the boss or not, make all the time.

Kim Scott: 6:47

So that's obnoxious aggression. Now, obnoxious aggression is problematic because it hurts people. It's also problematic because it's inefficient. When you act like a jerk, the other person goes into fight or flight mode and they literally can't hear what you're saying, so you're wasting your breath. And it's also problematic for a more subtle reason. I don't know about you all, but when I realized that I've acted like a jerk which I do I try not to, but I do it's not my instinct to go the right way on care personally. Instead, it's my instinct to go the wrong way. On challenge directly oh, it doesn't matter, it's no big deal, but it does matter and it is a big deal. That's why I just said it, you know. And then I wind up in the worst place of all manipulative insincerity.

Kim Scott: 7:29

So, if obnoxious aggression is front stabbing, manipulative insincerity is backstabbing and uh and, and those are the kind of behaviors that make a workplace most toxic.

Kim Scott: 7:41

Like if we talk about what goes wrong about work, we're probably talking about manipulative insincerity or obnoxious aggression, because that's where the drama is. But in my experience and I'd be curious to hear about what you all think the vast majority of people make the vast majority of mistakes in this other quadrant, where they do remember to show that they care personally, but they're so worried about not hurting someone's feelings that they fail to tell them something they'd be better off knowing in the long run. And that's what I call ruinous empathy. And so that's radical, what it is and what it isn't in a nutshell. And sometimes people you know if you write a book about feedback, you're going to get a lot of it, and sometimes people will tell me that people that someone will charge into a conference room and say, in the spirit of radical candor, and then they'll proceed to act like a garden variety jerk, and that is not the spirit of radical, that's the spirit of obnoxious aggression.

John Broer: 8:36

So I just want to make that clear.

John Broer: 8:38

So I don't want you to get mad at me, kim, and I know the quadrants were not intended to put people into. However, I couldn't read them and really get into your lessons without thinking of people. You know. I thought, oh, that this person was definitely demonstrating manipulative insincerity. However, we talk about trying to help managers and supervisors stay out of the bosshole zone and to me, radical candor, that is staying out of the bosshole zone and the other three to some degree. That is the bosshole zone and nobody is born to be a bosshole. We always emphasize that. But sometimes circumstances too much power, too many direct reports, no training they end up there and they don't even realize it. But I love that. You've given it a framework that people can reflect on and go oh my gosh, am I doing that? And, kim, you've given people and everybody go to the show notes because all of this information will be in there. You've given them a great way to reflect and think about how am I showing up with these folks? And it's so practical.

Kim Scott: 9:48

Yeah, I really. You know, I have to give. There was a guy who worked for me at Google, daniel Rubin, and he helped me edit the book and he was he's a lot younger than I am and he was full of radical candor for me and he kept telling me I don't know what to do. This makes sense, but I don't know what to do. So to the extent that there are practical tips. We all owe Daniel Rubin a great shout out of thanks.

John Broer: 10:17

No, that's great.

Sara Best: 10:18

Well, and Kim, you mentioned the software company you started. I was reading about something that may have happened as a precursor to starting your software company. You had a boss hole encounter. You write about it in your book. Do you want to? Can you share a little bit about that experience?

John Broer: 10:39

Without any direct names, of course.

Kim Scott: 10:41

Yeah, because actually there's lots. I'll tell you there's lots more to the story than I had before in the book. But so I was working for this guy who was really belittling. In fact, you know, sometimes that kind of behavior, it shows up in your body. I actually shrank half an inch, literally. I went to the doctor. She couldn't believe it. She said well, you've got to quit this job. But anyway, he said something incredibly rude about me in an email to someone else and somehow there was a BCC situation and I wound up seeing the email and went and I confronted him about it and he said oh, just don't worry your pretty little head about it. And then later on he said I said you know, I feel like you don't respect me. And he said I don't feel like you respect me and my superiority. Basically, like it was really bad that was. It was a terrible situation.

Sara Best: 11:45

But I think it spurred the mission and just confirmed your passion for creating a workplace where people can love each other certainly.

Kim Scott: 11:56

Or at least care, at least show common human decency. I mean, that was the, in fact, in this moment where there have been so many layoffs, it was a layoff that that manager conducted horribly that made me realize how important good management is and how damaging bad management can be. It was really it was, and that was kind of the moment where I realized that management was not. It was actually interesting and it mattered.

John Broer: 12:23

And we will be right back.

Speaker 4: 12:29

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John Broer: 13:37

Okay, let's get back to the program. Well, kim, you can look back on this now and you said there's a lot more to this story. Clearly you have recovered or you've moved on. However, I don't think this should be lost. We've had people come on and share their bosshole stories. There is real misery. I mean there is harm being done to people emotionally, physically, psychologically and just because of people that don't understand that they're just acting like bossholes or they have no knowledge of how to be better at what they're doing.

Kim Scott: 14:14

Yeah, no, and the sort of more. To the story part was I bumped into him like 10 years later and I was really I'm laughing at it. It's a funny story now.

Kim Scott: 14:26

It was not funny at the time I mean when you're shrinking half and I'm only five feet tall, I did not have half an inch to give you know when the way that you're being treated is making itself manifest in your body and I've talked to people who get insomnia they break out in hives. I mean, it really is, is true harm there's? There's also evidence that shows that people are more likely to have heart attacks, probably not in their twenties, as I was at the time, but later. So it's, it's a serious thing. But I bumped into him 10 years later and we had a drink and I realized, like in my mind, he was the devil. You know, I had, I had and then I realized he wasn't he. You know, he was even younger than I was at the time when he was running this company. He had no idea what he was doing and nobody to teach him and he had too much power. It's a bad combo, isn't it? Yes, it is. Ignorance and power are a bad combo, not good, not good.

Sara Best: 15:29

Well, and that's an example, there are others. You lived through other, more egregious violations, if you will, that weren't just about your spirit or your reputation. They were about your livelihood, your womanhood. All of that. You write about that in Just Work. I think that's where I'd love to go next how we can recognize, attack and eliminate workplace injustice. So, at the end of the day, we really are talking about inequality, injustice, ignorance. It could be a cover for all of that in some cases, but what moved you in this direction?

Kim Scott: 16:09

to be even more specific about what we have to shift in the workplace, yeah Well, as I said before, when you write a book about feedback, you get a lot of it, and indeed I did. And by far the most valuable feedback I got was when I was giving a radical candor talk at a tech company in San Francisco and the CEO of that company had been a colleague of mine for the better part of a decade, a person who I like and respect enormously and 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 excited to roll out Radical Candor, but I got to tell you it's much harder for me than it is for you. And she went on to explain to me that as soon as she would offer anyone, even the most gentle, compassionate criticism, she would get slimed with the angry black woman stereotype. And I knew this was true. And it made me have four realizations at the same time. The first was that I had not been the kind of colleague that I imagined myself to be, that I want to be. I hadn't even noticed the extent to which she had to show up unfailingly cheerful and pleasant at every meeting we were ever in together, even though she had what to be ticked off about, as we all do at work.

Kim Scott: 17:26

The second thing I realized was that I had also been in denial about the kinds of things that were happening to me as a woman in the workplace, and I think, in part because I never wanted to think of myself as a victim, but even less than wanting to think of myself as a victim that I want to think of myself as a perpetrator. And so I had been even deeper in denial about the ways in which I had caused harm. I hadn't intended to, but I had exhibited sort of the bias, prejudice and bullying that had caused people to slime my colleague with that stereotype. And then the fourth thing I realized was that, as a leader, I had failed to do what I needed to do to prevent these things from happening on my watch, sure, as as almost all leaders do, actually, and I thought that it was that was kind of the moment when I decided to write Radical, I mean just work, because I needed to, I needed to come to grips with these things that I had been sort of I had gone through so much of my career kind of la, la, la, la, la la, pretending that things weren't happening, and I want to acknowledge that in some respects that was that was useful, because I think there were some things that had happened that were so painful and upsetting that I couldn't come to grips with them.

Kim Scott: 18:50

I'm not saying denial is like a great way of coping, but I also want to offer some compassion for people who are sometimes in denial about the things that are happening to them. So when you're the person harmed, you get to choose your response, but if you're the upstander, you need to intervene. You don't get to be in denial.

Speaker 4: 19:12

And if you're the leader.

Kim Scott: 19:13

You definitely don't get to be in denial.

Sara Best: 19:15

That's right and upstander. And that whole idea jumped out to me when I read the book. I have a big sticky note over here.

Speaker 4: 19:22

Oh, thank you.

Sara Best: 19:24

What a great segue. I wanted to ask you how do people become upstanders? Give us some practical advice about you know, joining in in a way to be part of the solution, in a way that doesn't mean we have to change who we are or what we do. Give us your take on the upstander.

Kim Scott: 19:43

Yeah, I think you probably do have to change some things, but you want to become your best self, not your worst self. There you go, I'll put it that way, well said.

Kim Scott: 19:52

And so I think that, in order to be an upstander, first of all remember what you're doing is you're intervening when something's going wrong. You're not like going in to be the Incredible Hulk or the hero. You're not an Avenger, and you're also not standing up for someone who's weaker than you. You're not casting other people in the role of damsel in distress or you're not giving in to the white savior complex or something like that. So what can you do when you want to sort of create a better workplace? I think one of the problems is that we often conflate bias, prejudice and bullying as though they're the same thing, and they're actually three very different things and we need three very different responses. So I'm going to offer you some, if I may, some really simple definitions Overly simple, but useful in the moment.

Speaker 4: 20:46

We like simple. Simple is good.

Kim Scott: 20:48

Yeah, simple is good. There's more to it and I'm not saying ignore all the more to it, but let's sort of disambiguate. Bias is not meaning it. It's usually unconscious you don't really mean what you're saying Whereas prejudice is meaning it. It's a very consciously held belief and bullying. There's no belief, conscious or unconscious, going on, you're just being mean. So not meaning. It is bias, meaning it is prejudice. Being mean is bullying, and thinking about how to respond differently to each is useful. So let's start with bias.

Kim Scott: 21:21

One of my favorite stories comes from Aileen Lee, who started Cowboy BC. She said she was going into a meeting with two colleagues who are men and they sat down at a big, long conference table and the other side started filing in and the first person sat across from the guy to Aileen's left. The next person came in and sat across from the guy to his left and then everybody else filed on down the table, leaving Aileen dangling by herself. So how many times is that how bias shows up? Just in, who decides to sit across from whom? Right, but Aileen was undeterred. She knew she had the expertise that was going to win her team the deal. So she started talking and when the other side had questions, they didn't direct them at Aileen, they directed them at her two colleagues who were men another common way that bias shows up. It happened once, it happened twice, it happened a third time and finally her colleagues stood up and he said I think Aileen and I should switch seats. That was all he had to do to totally change the dynamic in the room Because all of a sudden everybody else realized what they were doing. They felt a little embarrassed, but they changed it, you know.

Kim Scott: 22:30

And so, yeah, that's what. That's what an I statement does. It kind of holds a mirror up to the other side to understand, to understand things the way that you do. It sort of calls people in. But if it's prejudice, holding a mirror up is not going to work because the person's going to grin in the mirror, they're going to like what they see. You know that's the way they want it. So if it's prejudice, you need an it statement. And then it statement can appeal to the law, it can appeal to HR policy or it can appeal to common sense.

Kim Scott: 23:03

So an example of that a colleague of mine was in a hiring meeting and everyone who had interviewed all the colleagues agreed that.

Kim Scott: 23:13

I mean all the candidates agreed that the most qualified person for the role was a black woman who had worn her hair out, naturally, and the hiring manager said, oh well, we can't extend her an offer.

Kim Scott: 23:29

And my colleague said, well, why not? And the hiring manager and this is at like a very well-known, well-respected company recently, not in the 1960s and the hiring manager said, well, I'm not going to put that hair in front of the business and, believe me, nowhere in the job requirements was there anything about hair. This was a financial services firm and so what was in its statement that could be used? It is illegal not to hire someone because of their hair, which it was in that state thanks to the Crown Act or she could have appealed to an HR policy. It is an HR violation not to hire someone because of their hair. Or if she had lived in a place where she didn't, or worked in a place where she didn't have the law or the HR policy in place, she could have said it is ridiculous not to hire the most qualified kid because of their hair.

John Broer: 24:24

Because of their hair.

Kim Scott: 24:25

Yeah, yeah. So an it statement sort of makes it clear where the line is between one person's freedom to believe whatever they want, but they can't impose that belief on other people.

Sara Best: 24:35

Oh, that's perfect.

Kim Scott: 24:37

Yeah, yeah, that's easier said than done. You know I tell this anecdote, but I had to think a long time to find it. So we'll talk in a minute about what leaders can do to make sure that this that upstanders stand up more often. Now, in the case of bullying, you want a you statement. You don't want an I statement, because an I statement sort of invites someone in to understand things from your perspective, and that's not what you want to do in the case of a bully.

Kim Scott: 25:02

My daughter taught me this when she was in third grade. She was getting bullied and I was encouraging her to say about this kid, you know, oh, you know, I feel sad when you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And she banged her fist on the table and she said mom, they are trying to make me feel sad. Why would I tell them? They succeeded. That's a really good point. And so so we talked about saying you know, why are you doing this or what's going on for you here? Sometimes, actually, I learned this from and there's a New York Times article about a dominatrix who taught people this trick. Just change the subject, ask a question about them Where'd you get that shirt that all of a sudden puts you in an active stance. You're no longer in the submissive role when you're asking a question to someone you know where'd you get that shirt?

Kim Scott: 25:55

So try a you question or a you statement, a you response. If you think it's bullying. There's a great organization that came up with the five Ds for upstanders. So how can you stand up to bullying or bias or prejudice? Sometimes it's a direct response, the I the, it, the you statement, but other times you might feel like you will get there will be repercussions for you.

Kim Scott: 26:22

And you know I wrote this book in part in honor of upstanders. I don't want to put upstanders in harm's way. Some people have written in and said you know I upstood and I got fired, so I want to acknowledge the power dynamics. But there are other things you can do to intervene that aren't direct. You can delegate, you can ask someone else to intervene. You can also delay. You can check in with the person later and see if they're okay. You can document what happened. You don't want to post it on social media because the person who owns that documentation is the person who was harmed, not you but that can be really, really helpful. Or you can just distract.

Kim Scott: 27:08

There's a New York Times article about someone on the subway. A man was following a woman and she was afraid of him clearly and things were starting to get physical and he just threw his potato chips all over the place and it created a distraction and allowed her to get away. He didn't want to fight this guy, but he also didn't want to do nothing. So those, the five Ds, I think give people different ways to think about intervening when they notice bias, prejudice or bullying.

John Broer: 27:41

Kim, you said something that I think is really helpful and a huge takeaway for our listeners, our managers and supervisors out there. Leaders have to be I don't know if it's an oversensitivity they just need to be aware and listening and cognizant of bias, prejudice or bullying that may be taking place within the team. And when you talk about leaders especially, they really need to be mindful of what's happening in the workplace. Correct?

Kim Scott: 28:09

Yes, they need to be mindful, but that's not enough. They really need to be mindful of what's happening in the workplace, correct? Yes, they need to be mindful, but that's not enough. They also need to put systems in place that are going to make it more likely that people intervene.

John Broer: 28:22

Like I said, timeless wisdom from Kim Scott. You can see why I wanted to bring this back up for a flashback, so make sure you go into the show notes and listen to part two of that particular interview with Kim Scott and look at the resources that are available, and especially her new book, radical Respect. Keep checking back to the Boss Hole Chronicles. We'll see you soon.