YouSaid · the spoken record

Kim Scott

lines on the record: 102
first: 2023-12-10
most recent: 2023-12-10
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“RadicalCandor.com is our website. And I'm not much on Twitter slash X anymore, but you can find us. We do a lot of posting on LinkedIn. I think the thing that people can help me do is to send us a note. You can also email us radicalcandor at radicalcandor.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 candor is it's about behavior change and it's it sounds easy but it's really hard and we're always trying to figure out how to help people walk the talk here”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Men because I haven't been able to get them out. And I'm devastated by what Russia has done to Ukraine. But that was the moment when I realized that management really matters. And that to be good at it, you have to care about other people. And that was what made it interesting to me.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hire them away from these Russian diamond cutting factories. And, you know, I knew 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. I was like, well, the ruble 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, brought a bottle of vodka and there's a rule in Russia. If you open a bottle, you 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 a damn 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 they were all men.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. 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, 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. I got a job working for this diamond company called Lazara Kaplan, 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. And it was actually my first management job because I had to hire these diamond cutters. And I had a”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not mean, it's clear. This is something someone told me on the streets of Manhattan. It's actually the origin story of radical candor. I was walking my dog, almost got hit by a cab. And this man, a perfect stranger, looked at me and he said, I can tell you love that dog. That was all he had to do to move up on the care personally to mention. But he says, you're going to kill that dog if you don't teach her to sit. And he pointed at the ground, this kind of harsh gesture. He says, The dog sat, had no idea she even knew what that meant, and I kind of looked up at him in amazement. And 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”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I love my new, it's called Attitude and 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.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I find that I learn how the person approaches setbacks from a story from the way they tell a story. I 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. 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 about very often, I find that a good way to learn about people's skills and depth of knowledge.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 a hard, it seems like a softball, but it actually can be unfairly, I don't know, unfairly hard, but I always learn a lot about people from how they tell the story of their life and their career. And then what I try to do is there's, 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.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More of the marrier. Yes, yes. Alice Walker, the color purple, is another one of my very favorite books. So I recommend reading more novels.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The better. If people often ask me, like, what can I do to move up on the care personally dimension of radical candor? And read more novels. This is the best way I know of to build compassion 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 BluestI, is one of my favorites, but also Song of Solomon. It's just such a brilliant, brilliant writer and will help you enter into the lives of people that you haven't entered into. I think that Orlando by Virginia Wolfe is another one of my favorites. And Robertson Davies, the Deptford trilogy, is an incredible. Set of novels to read. I'm cheating now and giving you three.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think just remember you do not have to choose between being successful and being a jerk. You can be a successful kind person.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would love it if everyone would write down their go-to question. 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. They 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. Someone you're going to ask that question of.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 biased 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 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. Everyone is responsible for solving, for creating a more respectful work environment.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Radical respect 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 books.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even less than wanting to think of myself as a victim than I want to think of myself as the culprit. So I've been even more deeply in denial about the times that I had said or done things that hurt other people who I worked with, said 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 imagine that I was creating these BS-free zones, 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.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even though she had what to be ticked off about, as we all do at work. So I had sort of failed to be, I had failed to be an upstander, a good colleague. The 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 reason it's kind of hard for the author of a book called Radical Canner 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.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In tech or in any 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. And 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 when she told me that. The first was that I had not been the kind of colleague that I aspired to be, 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.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's two things. I mean, as I mentioned earlier, when you write a book about feedback, you're going to get a lot of it. One 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 obnoxious 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 candor. 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. So what happened in this meeting? I 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 and respect enormously, and she's one of too few black women CEOs.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to say my impact the other person might hurt their feelings that I don't say it. And 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 keep talking to people in a particular way, then you're focused on what they want. That is really helpful to move past that.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unkind in the long run, 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, at least for me, that's been helpful. And then another thing that is helpful is, again, to get others focused, 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”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I 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 I'm a people pleaser too. And I grew up in the south and I'm a woman. I was not brought up to challenge directly. That was not part of the culture that I was brought up in. I was brought up to be polite. 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 story 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.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah. And, you know, there's plenty of counter 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.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. In 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 candor is that there's this other way that works better and doesn't hurt people.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was silencing them because they were like, Oh my gosh, I don't want to make a mistake. Kim's going to call me a dumbass. So I had to 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 going to 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.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 jobs. I 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, 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.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, I would not put Steve Jobs in the same category as Ray Dalio 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. And I don't know of a word to describe that other than love. You know, 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, radical candor 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 didn't mind rather what other”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no, no, no. In fact, I did an analysis of Dalio's book, Principles. And it's like of, I don't know, three or four hundred page book. And there were I think four or five pages about caring about people. There's very low care personally.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the meeting out to the whole company, including all the people who are not in the meeting, saying this is an example of how to have. So I would say that is like deep, dark, obnoxious aggression. That is not radical candor. That is horrible.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On video, and 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. And the whole meeting was recorded. And then they emailed a record.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 posterity.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, sometimes people talk about inflicted insight, like it's some kind of burden, but usually that kind of self-awareness makes people feel lighter. They're like, ah, now I know what's wrong. And now I know what I can do about it.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that the best thing to do is for me anyway is I start by sharing stories from my career. And stories when I was a jerk. Like I've acted like a jerk too plenty of times, unfortunately. And I show the impact that I've had. And then I ask them for a similar story. And usually sort of me holding up the mirror to me. 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. What's yours, you know? And people, that kind of self awareness.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And they want themselves to succeed, you know, when they realize that's why I say 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?”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes they're leaders who think they're not supposed to care. And so unleashing that capacity that they innately 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 know that we need, that they shouldn't be a manager. That's the solution.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 and 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 personal 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 Maycare, but they do actually care. And also sometimes.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. And if we ignore the emotional signals that are coming at us or say, don't take it personally, then we're just not going to communicate very well.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Instead, what I try to do is get curious, not furious. And, like, why is this person so bad? 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.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're going up on the care person legislation, 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. Oh no, it's no big deal. I didn't mean it, but it is a big deal and I did mean it. 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 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 if somebody's mad, that maybe is even harder. If somebody starts yelling at me, it's tempting for me either to start yelling back and wind up in obnoxious aggression or to crawl off to a self-protective manipulative insincerity.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Neutral place. You don't want to go to the outer edge of challenge directly because then you're going to wind up in obnoxious aggression. So if we go back to that story, my boss started, you know, you said a lot. Were you aware of it? That was my response. And then, you know, I know this great speech coach. Would you like an introduction? It was my response. 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, but 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 let me.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think, yes, if you're the employee, you should also be soliciting feedback on a regular basis from your boss. 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, and 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 bosses 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, 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. You want to be sure that you are prepared to gauge how it lands. So you want to start in kind of a”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's a stitch in time takes nine on all these two minute. And really, 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.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Minute meetings, make your hour long meetings, 50 minute meetings, maybe give yourself a few breaks in the day. But if it's not possible, and often it was not possible for real. 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 be willing to be late to your next meeting. But those were the things that I tried to do.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it also requires you, especially when it comes to giving it, which we talked about before, the humble, helpful, those are impromptu 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. It 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, 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 minutes.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's not as much work as failing to do this 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. So it's not adding time necessarily to your day. And when you hear about problems, you should fix them. Yes, it takes time, but that is your job. And when you disagree with something, you can disagree in your next regularly 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.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even if you're melting inside, if you say thank you and 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, like, it's not enough to say thank you. You got to fix the problem and then show what you did to fix the problem and get more feedback. Did I overcorrect it? I undercorrect. And if you disagree, you got to say that you disagree, but you got to say so respectfully.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 that. A brush off or worse. And so what you want to do is you want to look for that 5% 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 got to 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, Lenny, but a lot of my best professional relationships.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 overcorrect or did I under correct? My boss at Google, the same boss from the story, also told me when she gave me, she gave me some feedback that I tended to move too fast. And she said, Kim, and 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 overcorrect if you get some critical feedback.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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 what the 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. And if you do not reward that risk richly, you're never going to get any feedback again. Be loud. So-and-so 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.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“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. All it means is that you're human. And that's all part of this. So you want to figure out 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 you make sure I understood. You know, I'm jumping to conclusions here. I'm not listening with the intent to understand.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source