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

“Six seconds is a really long time. Almost nobody can endure six full seconds of silence. So they'll probably tell you something. So now you've dragged this poor soul out on a conversational limb that they never wanted to go on. They're probably going to say something. The third step is to make sure that you listen with the intent to understand, not to respond.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Simplest way to embrace the discomfort is to close your mouth and count to six Only made it to three just there, and your eyes were popping up”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's one more thing the iPad. And they got immediately very grumpy and very offended. He said, no, we both got it from Colombo, the detective show. Can get tips from anywhere. So you want to make sure that letting the person know that you really do care about what they say and that it's really when they give you this critical feedback that you're going to reward it. But that's not the end. Asking that question is only the first step. The bad news about your question, no matter how hard you think about it and no matter how good a question it is, the other person is still going to feel uncomfortable. There's no such thing as emotional novicane. That's why I don't believe in scripts. Like people believe if I just say the magic words, like the door will open, that's not how it works. It's a give and take. So you want to sort of be prepared to embrace that discomfort. The only way out is through.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Never Never. I mean, you don't have there are some people who really don't like to be put on the spot. So if I can tell that I'm inflicting a cruel and unusual punishment on the person, I'll say, look, you know I'm not perfect. I know I'm not perfect. Next time we meet, I want you to think of something. Notice something. It's the thing that you can do that would help me more than anything else that you could do is to tell me when I'm wrong because I need to know that. In fact, Andy Grove, who was the CEO of Intel, said he used to, at the end of his one-on-ones, say to people, there's one more thing. And he explained to me that that was coded Intel for like, this is the most important thing. I was working at Apple at the time. And I said, oh, did you get that from Steve Jobs? Because that was always how he introduced.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a really good one. What's one way I could help you be more successful? Or Jason rose off my co-founder at Radical Candor likes to ask, what could I have done this week? So he time bounds it. What could I have done this week to better support you in your work? In fact, with Jason told me after we had worked together for about a month, he was like, Kim, you know, I really hate your go-to question. He said, it's too open-ended for me. If you can tell me what you're working on and ask me at the end of a meeting specifically what I noticed, then that is much better.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, tell me why I'm wrong. Tell me why I'm wrong Or, what am I doing wrong? What could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me? What should I stop doing? What should I start doing? What should I continue doing? Those are some common ones. What do you like to ask, Lenny?”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Time it'll start to sound like you don't really want the answer, but you want to make this part of your daily, weekly routine with the people who you interact most closely with.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think if you are a manager, you need to be soliciting every week feedback from each of your direct reports. And you need to sort of, I would budget five minutes at the end of your one-on-one to solicit feedback. So mostly a one-on-one should be your employees setting the agenda and your employees time. And don't, by the way, save up when you have to give feedback. Don't save it up for your one-on-one and definitely don't save it up for a performance review. You want to give that in the moment. We can talk more about that in a second. But when you're soliciting feedback, say five minutes at the end of your one-on-one and ask that go-to question. And you also want to ask that go-to question of your cross-functional peers who you work most closely with and of your boss. And I think you don't want to ask the same question every single time.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, you want to think about your question. You want to think about who you're going to ask that question of. And if everybody can write down their question, who they're going to ask it of and then pop it into their calendar right now, this will be one of the most productive podcasts in all of podcast land.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so you want to think about how you're going to ask the person that's going to be most likely to elicit a response. The question that I like to ask is what could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me? But do not write down my question because if you sound like Kim Scott and not like yourself, then other people are not going to believe you want the answer. It needs to sound authentic to you. I was working with Krista Quarles when she was CEO of OpenTable. And she said, Kim, I could never imagine those words coming out of my mouth. She said, the way I like to ask is tell me why I'm wrong. Okay, that's fine too. It demands an answer, her question. But of course there were a couple of people on her team who felt that that was too aggressive. Like that shut them down. So she had to adjust her question. Like being authentic does not mean ignoring the impact you're having on others.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sort of steps on how to solicit feedback. And this is true especially if you're a boss, but it's true in all your relationships. You can use this at home as well. So if you say, do you have any feedback for me? You're wasting your breath. The other person's going to say, oh no, everything's fine. Nobody in your life.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think you can only hire people who are open and ready for direct feedback because it's hard for all of us. I just want to acknowledge that. It's hard for me. I mean, I wrote the book. I believe in it to my core, and sometimes it's still hard for me. It's hard for me to hear it, and it's hard for me to deliver it. This is a really difficult thing to do. The good thing about that two by two is it makes it look easy, which is useful, but it's not easy. So anyway, I think there are, to answer Pete's question, I think there are a few things that can help. There's really an order of operations, sabbatical candor. And if you begin with soliciting criticism, then you take the first and most important step to improving your relationship with that person enough that it becomes easier for you to give it as well as to get it. So I want to leave folks with some”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, he has a hundred pages on career conversations. And he's also built sort of some tools that help people. So check that out”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Where you want to go, what are the skills that it would be useful for you to develop so that you can get where you want to go? And who can I introduce you to? What are the educational opportunities? Can we tweak your job so that you're gaining those skills so you're at least taking a step in the direction of your dreams, even if you're not there yet.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think one of the really important things that all managers can do for their direct reports to show that they care is to have real meaningful career conversations where you talk about sort of their life story, sort of their past, whatever part of it they're comfortable talking to you about so that you understand what motivates them at work. And I would have like three separate 45 minute conversations. So one about their past, one about their future, their dreams for the future. And it's not just the next couple of years. It's like imagine at the height of your career you have everything you want. What does it look like? And give me three or four different pictures of that because very few of us know what we want to do when we grow up. The third conversation is to sort of sit down with your director Port and come up with a career action plan. So given what motivates you and”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And I think also for me to say to myself going into that conversation, it's more important for me to demonstrate care that I care about Bob than it is for Bob to like me. And if I demonstrate that I care about Bob, then I'm going to do the right thing that will ultimately create the conditions for a good relationship with Bob. Me pulling my punches did not create the conditions for a good relationship with Bob.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can you go back and look at it again? And the person will notice a few of them. And then you got to go, you know, sometimes it's useful to show someone a pattern, all of the careless mistakes, especially if someone is defensive or if you think they're likely to be defensive. If you think they're likely to do to you what I did to my boss, oh no, everything's fine. It's no big deal. You need to move out on the challenge directly dimension. You need to be prepared to keep going until you have communicated with a person. And that was really the problem with Bob. He probably would not have started to cry. I think my fear around his tears was probably more about my fear than what was actually likely to happen. But I think we do fear someone else getting upset more often than they actually get upset. We have kind of a negative bias.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think also another thing I've learned about noticing, I said earlier that there's a lot of evidence that we often misinterpret each other's facial expressions and body language. So I would have tried to say that with some humility. Like it seems like you're not, maybe I'm wrong, but you don't look to me like you're happy with this. And I would have given him an opportunity to say, yeah, maybe I need to do it again. Let's imagine, though, that he said, oh no, it's awesome. It's ready. So then I get it and I look at it. I would have not been shy about pointing out very specifically every problem that I saw in that piece of work, every single one. Sometimes it can be tempting when you're giving someone feedback to say, oh, there's a number of careless mistakes here.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think probably what I would do, and I would love to hear what you would have said to Bob too, because I certainly don't have all the answers, but probably what I would have said is, you know, let's go back to the first time Bob-handed work into me with shame in his eyes. I would have said Bob May I'm misinterpreting the expression on your face, but it looks to me like you are not happy with this. What's going on? And so I would have asked him to diagnose it himself. And I want to pause on that because that can be very risky. He might have said to me, I think this is awesome. This is my best work. And now I've kind of made my job of giving him feedback a little bit harder. So it's not always the right thing to ask questions. But I would have tried to ask it before I had examined the work when I noticed that he looked uncomfortable himself.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The sort of likability competence bias that a lot of women face pushed me, especially early in my career, in the wrong direction on challenge directly. And it made it much harder for me to, because often I would say something and I would say it even more gently than my colleagues who were men, but people would say, ah, you know, Kim is a real, whatever. And they weren't saying Kim is a knockout. I was being unjustly accused of obnoxious aggression. And it wasn't, you know, obnoxious. They were accusing me of being bossy or bitchy or abrasive or whatever. And it's really hard. I would also say when it comes to soliciting feedback, it's really important to be open to it and it's really important to separate the wheat from the chaff and the feedback you're getting.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that one of the things that was helpful for me anyway, so you can tell me if it's helpful for you, what was realizing that my job was not to be liked, my job was to care about other people and to get out of my own head and to become others focused is what helped me kind of let go of the need to be liked. I think that also as a woman, I think there was an extra, there was something extra as my teenage children would say. There was something extra for me because”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. You're going to lose your top performers. And I think very often people are afraid to tell someone on their team when their work isn't good enough because they're afraid of losing them. But that's not a good reason. You know, you should be helping this person to improve. This person deserves to have a job where they can excel. And you either help them excel on this team or you help them find a different job where they can excel. Because everyone can do great work somewhere. And Bob, you know, Bob could have done great work. Maybe I would have helped him, you know, keep it to the weekends because he's very creative and very smart. But the sloppy mistakes just got in the way of his ability to do his best work.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I want all of your listeners to avoid making that mistake because it's the most painful and the most common mistake that I think leaders, and not just leaders. I mean, all of us make this mistake in all of our relationships.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thinking I was being so nice. I'm having to fire him as a result, not so nice after all. But it was too late to say Bob because at this point even he 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 avoid making that mistake. Because it was so painful. It was painful for me. It was painful for Bob much more painful for Bob, actually. And it was bad for the whole team and it was bad for our investors. We weren't getting results because of my ruinous empathy and ruinous empathy slash manipulative insincerity. It's much harder to admit that manipulative insincerity part. And that is really why I'm here talking to you because”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With Bob, that I should have begun, frankly, 10 months previously. And when I finished explaining to him where things stood, he kind of pushed his chair back from the table. He looked me right in the eye and he said, why didn't you tell me? As 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 realized that by not telling Bob that”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the issues, perhaps, was that Bob was smoking pot in the bathroom three times a day, which maybe explained all that candy that he had at old times. But I didn't know any of that at the time. All I knew was that Bob was consistently doing bad work. But I wasn't really dealing with it. And eventually the inevitable happened. I realized that if I didn't fire Bob, I was going to lose all my best performers because not only had I been unfair to Bob not to tell him, I also had been unfair to everyone on the team and they were frustrated. Their deliverables were late because his deliverables were late. They weren't able to do their best work because they were having to spend so much time redoing his work. And the people who were best at their jobs were going to quit because they wanted to be able to do their best work. They were going to go to a different company where they could do their best work. And so I sat down to have a conversation.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then everybody would think I was a big, you know what. So the part of me that was worried about my reputation as a leader, that was the manipulative and sincerity part. The part of me that was worried about Bob's feelings, that was the ruinous sympathy part. And this went on for 10 months, ten long months. And I was so puzzled the whole time. I couldn't understand what was going on. I learned much later that the problem”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So let's pause for a moment. Why did I say such a banal thing to Bob? I think part of the problem was that I liked Bob. And I really didn't want to hurt his feelings. So that was the ruinous empathy part of why I said that. But also part of the problem was something more insidious, a little bit of manipulative insincerity, because Bob was popular. And Bob was also Sensitive, kind of. And there was part of me that was afraid if I told Bob in no uncertain terms that his work wasn't nearly good enough, he would get upset. He might even start to cry.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Person at the right moment. So, and we all remember that was the weirder thing. Like Hershey Kisses right here. That was what my parents used to body treatment. And so Bob was quirky, but he brought a little levity to the office. Everybody kind of loved working with Bob. There was one problem with Bob. He was doing terrible work. He would hand stuff into me and there was shame in his eyes. He kind of knew it wasn't good enough. Middled, he was very creative, but riddled with sloppy mistakes. And I would say something to Bob along the lines of, oh, Bob, this is such a great start. You're so awesome. We all love working with you. Maybe you can make it just a little bit better.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had just hired this guy. We'll call him Bob. And I liked Bob a lot. He was smart, he was charming. He was funny. He would do stuff like we're at a manager all site playing one of those endless get-to-know-you games. And everybody was getting more and more and more stressed out. So start up, we've got a lot going on. And Bob was the guy who had the courage to raise his hand and to say, I can tell everyone is getting stressed. I want to get to know all of you. I've got an idea. It'll help us do that. And it'll be really fast. Whatever his idea was, if it was really fast, we were down with it. And 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. And then for the next ten months, every time there was a tense moment in a meeting, Bob would whip out just the right piece of candy for the right.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How about that? Because that is the mistake, I think, that I am really focused in the book, Radical Candor, and also in my next book, Radical Respect. That's the mistake. I really want to eliminate. Because ruinous empathy kind of creates this false harmony, which is really bad. So here is my ruinous empathy story.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can call it core. You can think about that as core. I used to call it corn, but I got some feedback that corn is like some shorthand for porn on TikTok. So I call it core instead. Hippy Core.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In private, and you don't want to give people either praise or criticism about their personality. So if you want to remember all that, it's hip. 2H's, 2I's kind of three P's depending on how you count. And so let's double click, though, on this not about personality point. I think it's really important to remember that for both praise and criticism, you want to use sort of context observation result next step. So context in the meeting observation, when you said every third word, result, it made you sound stupid. Next step, go to the go to the speech coach. Also is important for praise. In the meeting context, when you offered both sides of the argument observation, result is it earned you credibility. Next step is do more of that.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because what you want to do next is gauge how it's landing. So I'll talk about that in a minute. And you can't gauge how something is landing if you're sending an email or a text. And Slack is just a feedback train wreck waiting to happen. I once coached someone who kept giving feedback over Slack and I finally just quit coaching him. I was like, if you keep making this mistake, I can't be your coach. So don't do, don't do that. Take a moment to pick up the phone and call the person to, you know, go back to those old AT&T commercials when I was a kid. Reach out and touch someone. You know, you want to show you care. So you want to be, so let's review. You want to be humble. You want to be helpful. You want to do it immediately. You want to do it in person or at least synchronously. If you can't do it in person, you also want to praise in public and criticize.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You also want to in the before times I used to say had these conversations in person. Now I say have these conversations synchronously. And I'm going to recommend phone over video. There's a lot of evidence coming out of University of Chicago and probably other places, but that's the article I've read that there's more noise than signal in facial expressions and body language, especially if somebody is just a little square on a computer screen. But it also may be true in real life. Like the phone actually may be one of our best communication innovations of all time. Because when you're talking to someone on the phone, you're listening to the words that they are saying to you. And that is really what you want to do in this moment. So make sure that you're having these conversations single.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If the purpose of praise is to tell people what to do more of, and the purpose of criticism is to tell them what to do less of, why wait. So you want to do it immediately unless you are so upset that you're going to say it in a terrible way or the other person is so upset that they can't hear you. But usually that's not the case.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be dominant or kick them in the shins or anything like that. You're telling them this because you care about them. So you want to state your intention to be helpful. You want to have these conversations right away, almost immediately. I mean, there's exceptions to everything I'm saying. None of this is absolute. But usually if I'm telling myself, and Lenny, you can tell me if you have the same problem. But if I tell myself, oh, I'm going to wait for a better moment to tell this person this thing. What I'm really saying is I'm never going to say it. So you want to.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But anyway, without offering up. So, anyway, I think that the important thing for these conversations, these sort of two-minute impromptu moments of management, is to go into the conversation being humble. To me, I call it candor and not truth because if I march into a room and I say, Letty, I'm going to tell you the truth. I'm kind of implying, you know, I've got a pipeline to God and you don't know anything. And that's not what this is all about. This is dialogue, not a monologue. So to me, candor implies, here's how I understand the situation. I'm also curious to know how you understand the conversation. So you want to go in being humble. You might be wrong, and that's totally fine. Omniscience is not a requirement for radical candor, thank Heaven. So you want to be humble. You want to state your intention to be helpful. You want to remember in your own head and you want to make it explicit to the other person that you're telling them this to help them. You're not trying to...”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People always want me to give them a script. And the problem with the script is that if I write it, you're going to sound like Kim Scott and not like yourself, and then people won't really think you mean what you're saying. But I do think there are some important things to consider when having these conversations. I think you want to go into the conversation. And by the way, everything I'm about to say applies to praise as much as it does to criticism. And I want to pause for a moment. Like that story is helpful because that's the kind of thing that has happened to so many of us. It's not unique to me. However, praise is even more important than criticism in terms of radical candor. Radical candor is not all about the boss giving the employee criticism. It should always start with soliciting feedback and it should include more praising criticism.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are relationships don't scale. But she did do those things for her director ports and the people who she worked most closely with, all of us. And when a leader treats their team, the people who they interact with on a day-to-day basis with that kind of real care, then it's much more likely that their direct reports in turn are going to treat their teams with real care. And that creates a culture of caring. And even though relationships don't scale, culture does scale. So that was part of it. But of course, there's also this challenge directly part, which is equally as important. And I learned very quickly beyond a shadow of a doubt that if I screwed up, she was going to tell me and she was going to keep telling me until it penetrated my sometimes thick skull.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My whole career with a giant hunk of spinach in between my teeth, and nobody had had the common courtesy to tell me it was there. So why had no one else told me, but what was it about her leadership style that made it so seemingly easy for her to tell me? And as I thought about that, I realized it really came down to those two things. She cared personally and she challenged directly. She cared about me not just as an employee, but as a human being. For example, when my father was diagnosed with late stage cancer, I was devastated. And she could tell that I was devastated. And she said, Kim, look, you go to the airport, fly home to Memphis. You need to be with your family. Your team and I will sit down and write your coverage plan. That's what great teams do for one another. And those were the kinds of things. That was the kind of thing that she did. She couldn't do, of course, for all 5,000 people in her organization, no matter how talented.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you say every third word, it makes you sound stupid. Now she's got my full attention. And some people might say it was mean of her to say I sounded stupid, but in fact it was the kindest thing that she could have done for me at that moment in my career because she knew me well enough to know that if she didn't use just those words with me, and by the way, this is a really important point. She never would have used those words with other people on her team who were perhaps a better listener than I was. But she knew me well enough. She cared personally enough to know that if she didn't use those words with me, I never would have gone to visit the speech coach, and I wouldn't have learned that she was not exaggerating. And this was news to me because I had raised millions of dollars for two different startups, giving presentations. I thought I was pretty good at it. And it really got me to thinking sort of why had no one told me. It was almost like I suddenly realized I'd been marching through.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not in the sand sandwich sense of the word, but really seeming to mean what she said. But of course, all I wanted to do was hear about what I had done wrong. And eventually she said to me, you said I'm a lot in there. Were you aware of it? And with this, I breathed a huge sigh of relief. Because if that was all I had done wrong, who really cared? And I kind of made this brush off gesture with my hand. I said, yeah, I know. It's a verbal tick. It's no big deal, really. And then she said to me, I know this great speech coach. I bet Google would pay for it. Would you like an introduction? And once again, I made this brush off gesture with my hand. I said, oh, I'm busy. I don't have time for a speech. Coach, didn't you hear about all these new customers? And then she said to me, I can tell when you do that thing with your hand, then I'm going to have to be a lot more direct with you.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm thinking the meeting's going all right. In fact, I now believe that I am a genius and I walked out of the room. I walked past my boss and I was expecting a high five, a pat on the back. And instead, she said to me, why don't you walk back to my office with me? And I thought, oh gosh, I screwed something up in there. And I'm sure I'm about to hear about it. She began not by telling me what I had done wrong, but what had gone well in the meeting, not in the feedback sandwich. I think there's a less polite term for that. I'm not sure how you feel about cussing on your acceptable.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So shortly after I joined Google, this was now a very long time ago, 2004, I had to give a presentation to the founders and the CEO about how the AdSense business was doing. And I walked into the room, and there in one corner of the room was one of the founders on an elliptical trainer wearing toe shoes and a bright blue spandex unitard, super tight. Not what I was expecting or frankly wanting to see in the room. And there in the other corner of the room was the CEO doing his emails like his brain had been plugged into the machine. So probably like you in such a situation, I felt a little bit nervous. How was I supposed to get these people's attention? Luckily for me, the AdSense business was on fire, and when I said how many new customers we had added, the CEO almost fell off his chair. Why did you say this is incredible? Do you need more engineers? Do you need more market?”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When we get better at radical candor, I mean, I'll tell you a story, in fact, about the impact it had on my life, some radical candor, but the sort of abstract answer to your question is we build better relationships and we do better work. And we're more successful and we're happier. You ready for a story”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, extreme frustration. So I want us, you know, I want people to use this framework not to judge themselves or other people harshly, but like a compass to guide specific conversations with specific people to a better place and to help us understand when we're going in the wrong direction, which we are all bound to do on a daily basis”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I would say 90% of us make 90% of our mistakes in that ruinous empathy bucket. It's by far and away the most common problem. But I think all of us make mistakes in the other quadrants as well. And very often we kind of, I think one of, if I'm going to offer some self-criticism of this framework, it's much easier to notice when one has been ruinously empathetic. It's almost like, you know, give yourself some critical feedback. I work too hard, you know. But it's much harder to notice when we've been manipulatively insincere and obnoxiously aggressive. And maybe I could have named those things. I mean, because very often manipulative insincerity is sort of self-protective in sincerity.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or any show about problems at work, or problems in any kind of relationship, really. You're going to see a lot of episodes about obnoxious aggression and manipulative insincerity. But I think the real rub comes in the fact that these, even though this is what we like to talk about, these two problems are what we like to talk about, these are not the most common problem. By far and away, the most common problem occurs when we do remember to show that we care personally. Because, you know what? Most people try to be nice people. So we do remember to show that we care personally, but we're so worried about not hurting someone's feelings or not offending them that we fail to tell them something they'd be better off knowing in the long run. And that is what I call ruinous empathy. So that is radical candor in a nutshell. That's the TLDR, but please do read.”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Garden variety jerk. And that is not the spirit of radical candor. That's the spirit of obnoxious aggression. An obnoxious aggression is a big problem. It's a problem because it hurts other people. It's also a problem because it's inefficient. If I'm a jerk to you, Lenny, then I'm going to send you in a fight or flight mode and then you literally cannot hear what I'm saying. So I'm wasting my breath. But I don't know if this is true for you. But for me, there's a third problem. And the third problem is that when I realize I've acted like a jerk, when I realize I've landed in obnoxious aggression, it's not actually my instinct to go the right way on care personally. Instead, it's my instinct to go the wrong way on challenge directly and to pretend that I agree when I disagree. And then I wind up in the worst place of all, manipulative insincerity. And it's kind of fun to tell stories about obnoxious aggression and manipulative insincerity. If you watch the office,”
2023-12-10 · Lenny's Podcast · Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source