May 7, 2024 • 52 mins
New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling author Kim Scott returns to On Leadership for a third time to discuss Radical Respect: How to Work Together Better, which focuses on creating a workplace culture that optimizes collaboration and honors individuality. Kim shares insights on how leaders can demonstrate institutional courage, disrupt bias, define boundaries for prejudice, and create consequences for bullying.
- Manage Your Biases to Better Manage Your Team: Understanding bias helps leaders notice and adjust for it, cultivate meaningful connections, and choose courage to make real change and unleash their own and others' potential.
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Episode Transcript
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(00:10):
Hello and welcome back toFranklinCovey's twice weekly podcast,
On Leadership with Scott Miller. It'sme. I'm your host, an interviewer now,
six years, nearly 400 episodes wherewe've had the honor and the privilege to
speak with many of the world's mosticonic thought leaders, business leaders,
CEOs, entrepreneurs,intrapreneurs, athletes, experts,
(00:32):
celebrities, authors, scientists,researchers, academics, you name it.
They have come to on leadershipand on occasion some of them come
back, rarely,
but when they have such seminalwork like today's guest,
we invite them back and hopethey will grace us with their
new learnings. I will tell youin nearly 400 interviews taped,
(00:56):
today's guest is clearlyone of my top five favorite,
primarily because her work has, I think,
changed the landscape of notjust large organizations,
but Inc. 500 and Russell 2000,
mom and pops and startups becauseshe herself has been a lifelong
entrepreneur and intrapreneur. Her book,the first book she wrote, of course,
(01:19):
is called Radical Candor.
This book has permeated all thebooks that I have written about,
I give her credit on, I think reallyreshaping the landscape of communication.
Of course,
the opposite of radical candoryou might call is ruinous empathy
and talk about a great term thatcompanies have wrestled with.
Her first book was called Radical Candor:
(01:41):
Be a Kick-Ass Boss WithoutLosing Your Humanity.
This book went on to shapethe conversations and cultures of organizations
worldwide. But then Kim Scott,as a renowned entrepreneur,
did what a lot of authors do.
She went on and created a second bookthat launched a couple of years ago called
Just Work. We had her back on to interviewher for the second time on Just Work,
(02:04):
and it was an interesting departurefrom her early writings around Radical
Candor and through her own conversationtoday she'll talk about how she actually
has retooled the key tenets of JustWork in this new release called
Radical Respect (02:17):
How to Work Together Better.
Very excited to talk about lessons learnedinsights and how to make sure all of
us work better together. Kim Scott,welcome back to On Leadership.
Thank you so much. I'mthrilled to be here.
I always love a goodconversation with you.
I have told the story of yourlearnings from Google when you
(02:39):
were presenting the AdSense results withEric Schmidt and the co-founder and of
course your boss at the timeand all that you've learned.
I have shared that hundreds oftimes from stages because if Kim
Scott can talk about it,everybody else can be self-aware.
I would love for you just to indulge meand could you please our conversation
(03:00):
and recreate the discussion Youand Sheryl Sandberg have, I had,
I'm sorry to belabor that,
but there's so many great insights inthe debrief you and she had from your
conversation as you were sharingAdSense. Will you just take five minutes,
indulge me and reshare that conversation?
I would love to do that. I mean,
it's incredible how much youcan get out of just a moment of
(03:23):
conversation.
So I had just started a new jobat Google and I had to give a
presentation of the founders and theCEO about how the AdSense business was
doing,
and I walked into the room and therein one corner of the room was Sergey
Brin on an elliptical trainerstepping away wearing toe
(03:44):
shoes and a bright bluespandex unitard, not,
super tight,
not what I was expecting orfrankly wanting to see in the room.
And there in the other corner of theroom was Eric Schmidt doing his email
banging away on his computer.
It was like his brain hadbeen plugged into the machine.
So probably just like youand all of your listeners,
(04:05):
I felt a little bit nervous. How was Isupposed to get these people's attention?
Luckily for me, the AdSensebusiness was on fire,
and when I said how many newcustomers we had added, Eric Schmidt,
the CEO almost fell off his chair.What did you say? This is incredible.
Do you need more marketing dollars?Do you need more engineers?
So I'm feeling like the meeting'sgoing all right. In fact,
(04:27):
I now believe that I am a genius.
And I walked out of the roomafter the meeting was over,
I walked past Sheryl and I'm expectinga high five, a pat on the back,
and instead she says to me, why don'tyou walk back to my office with me?
And I thought, oh, wow,
I messed something up in there andI'm sure I'm about to hear about it.
(04:47):
But of course I was kind ofopen to hearing from her because
I felt dread.
But also she had solicited feedbackfrom me in the past and rewarded the
candor when she got it.So I knew the context.
And as we started walking,
Sheryl began not by telling mewhat had gone wrong in the meeting,
(05:09):
but by pointing out thethings that had gone well,
not in the feedbacksandwich sense of the word.
I think there's a less polite way to saythat, but not in the sort of kiss me,
kick me, kiss me sense of the word, butreally seeming to mean what she said.
But of course, all I wanted to hearabout was what I had done wrong.
And eventually she said to me,you said I'm a lot in there.
(05:31):
Were you aware of it? And with this,
I breathed a huge sigh of reliefif that was all I had done wrong,
who really cared? And I kind of madethis brush off gesture with my hand.
I said, yeah, I know it's a verbaltick. It's no big deal, really.
And then she said to me, Iknow this great speech coach.
I bet Google would pay for it. Would youlike an introduction? And once again,
I made this brush-off gesture withmy hand. I said, no, I'm busy.
(05:53):
I don't have time for a speech coach.Didn't you hear about all new customers?
And then she stopped. She lookedme right in the eye and she said,
I can tell when you do that thing withyour hand that I'm going to have to be a
lot more direct with you.When you say every third word,
it makes you sound stupid.
Now she's got my full attention.
(06:16):
And some people might say it wasmean of her to say I sounded stupid,
but in fact,
it was the kindest thing that she couldhave done for me at that moment in my
career. Because if she hadn't used justthose words with me, and by the way,
this is a really important point,
she never would've used those wordswith other people on her team who are
perhaps better listeners than I was.
(06:37):
But if she hadn't usedjust those words with me,
I never would've gone to visit speechcoach and I would not have learned that
she was not exaggerating.
I literally said "um" every third word,
and this was news to me because I hadbeen giving presentations my whole career.
I had raised lots of money for severaldifferent startups giving presentations.
(07:01):
I thought I was pretty good at it.
It was almost like I suddenly realizedI'd been marching through my whole career
with a giant hunk ofspinach between my teeth.
And nobody had told me about it.
Nobody had had the commoncourtesy to tell me about it.
And this really got me thinkingwhy had no one told me,
but also perhaps more interestingly,
(07:22):
what was it about Sheryl'smanagement style that
made it so seeminglyeasy for her to tell me.
And as I thought abouther management style,
I realized it really boiled down to twopretty basic seemingly basic things.
She cared personally and shechallenged directly. At the same time,
(07:42):
I knew that she cared about me,
not just as an employee but as ahuman being because she would do
things like when I firstmoved from New York to
California,
I didn't know anyone outhere in California and I was lonely and she could tell
I was lonely.
And she said to me thatshe knew this great book
(08:05):
group and introduced me to them.
I'm still friends withthose people to this day
when also shortly after I movedout here and took the job,
my father was diagnosed with latestage cancer and I was devastated.
And she could tell that I wasdevastated. And she said, Kim,
(08:25):
you need to go to theairport, fly home to Memphis.
You need to be withyour family in Memphis.
Your team and I will sit down andwe will write your coverage plan.
That is what greatteams do for each other.
They've got each other's back.
And those were the kinds of thingsthat she did not just for me,
but for everyone who worked closelywith her. She couldn't, of course,
(08:47):
do those kinds of things for all5,000 people in her organization.
No matter how talented youare, relationships scale, but culture does scale.
And when a leader treats their directreports with that kind of care,
it's much more likely that their directreports in turn will treat their direct
reports with that kind of care.And that creates a caring culture,
(09:10):
and it does, that does scale. But ofcourse, it wasn't all sunshine and roses.
There was also this challengedirectly part of Radical Candor.
That's the part I thinkthat a lot of us fail to
deliver on. We remember to show we carebecause most people are pretty nice,
(09:31):
but we fail to challenge directly.
And as I thought aboutthose two basic tenants
care personally, challenge directly,
I thought this doesn't seem thatcommon. It doesn't seem radical,
doesn't seem even like it ought tobe all that rare. And yet it is rare.
(09:53):
It's so rare.
I've worked with tons of different kindsof people and I've never met anyone who
said, oh, feedback iseasy for me. In fact,
I was teaching a class at StanfordGraduate School of Business the other day
and somebody said,
feedback is a source ofexistential dread for me.
And so that is what really prompted meto sit down and really think through
(10:17):
Radical Candor,
which is what I call the combinationof caring personally and challenging
directly.
Kim, thank you for indulgingme. Not that you need me to,
but I implore you to keep tellingthat story because there's such
great insight to teaseout of it. Stephen Covey,
his oldest son, Stephen M. R. Covey,who wrote the book, The Speed of Trust,
(10:40):
will tell you that one of the top twocontributions that leaders make is giving
feedback on people's blind spots,
moving outside of their comfort zoneand giving feedback. And your book,
Radical Candor is by degrees of magnitude,
the best framework in which to do that.
So thank you for talking aboutthat and resharing that story.
Now here's an interesting pivot.
(11:02):
A couple of years ago you wrotethis book called Just Work.
It was a solid book on working togetherand understanding boundaries and
sensitivities and kind ofwhere society was moving.
It was sort of in the middle of thepandemic and DEI and all of that
important stuff, Black LivesMatter and the Me Too Movement.
(11:23):
And it did not hit aswell as your first book.
And I would love to just kind of open itup to have you talk about what was that
like as an author to have hit it outof the park with your first book,
Radical Candor, where youcouldn't even find the ball.
This book has done so well.
And then you launched a second bookto a little bit of a less you can
(11:45):
find the ball.
Yeah, less fanfare.
Less fanfare, but you did somethingbold, which you rarely see in authors,
you picked up what was great ofJust Work and you listened to
feedback, you teased out the best parts,
and then you have relaunchedit, renamed it, and rebranded.
And this is why we're here today to talkabout this new book, Radical Respect.
(12:07):
Talk about that journey, someinsights to be teased out from that.
And then we'll talk about some ofthe key concepts in Radical Respect.
Yes. So Just Work. I mean,
I think it's fair tosay it just didn't work,
at least it didn't work theway that I wanted it to work.
And I think there were a number of issues,
(12:29):
partly was just the title.
Some people read the title andthought it was about return to office,
which is not what the book was about.
They missed the justice part of Just Work.
And it's interesting, whenI wrote the book, for me,
the word justice has nothingbut positive connotations.
(12:50):
But one of the many things thatI learned is that a lot of people
feel resistance to the word justice.
And that really got methinking. The other,
I think I owe a lot to friendsof mine, several friends of mine,
one in particular, Ann Peleti,
who I worked in Russia with and went tobusiness school with and who's a good
(13:12):
friend. After the book came out,
she called me up and she said, Kim, Ithink you lost your voice in that book.
And I realized when she saidthis that she was exactly right,
but I didn't quite know why.
And part of the reason why I knewshe was right is that I had started a
(13:36):
podcast with Ernest Adams who leads
DEI at Ford Motor Company.
And what we would do is we wouldread a passage from just Work
every week.
And as I read these passages suddenly,
and I had that conversationwith Ann Poletti in my head,
(13:58):
and one day I read apassage and I was like,
I know why this book didn't do thatwell. I wasn't finished writing it.
The hardest thing about writing abook is getting inside your head,
and then the second hardestthing is getting back out.
And I think I tried to get backout of my head before I was ready.
(14:18):
And I think part of whatwas going on is that,
so Radical Respect is aboutcreating a workplace that
optimizes for collaboration and thathonors everyone's individuality.
And it talks a lot about what gets inthe way. Bias, prejudice, bullying,
discrimination, harassment andphysical violence, physical violations,
not always violence. And I,
(14:42):
as a white woman,
I felt sort of conflictedas I was writing the book.
Part of me felt like I had anextra obligation to write the book
because Radical Canor had been successful,
I had found some privilegeand just because of the unfair
advantages one has in the world ofbeing white. And at the same time,
(15:05):
I also felt that I had noright to write the book as a
white woman because I hadn't experiencedas much bias, prejudice, bullying,
discrimination, harassment and physicalviolations as other people had.
And I think I hadn't finished wrestlingwith that internal ambivalence as I
wrote the book, and I think it cameout in the way that I used language.
(15:31):
And so that was one of the thingsthat I really wanted to change.
So almost every word in thebook got edited, and in fact,
a lot of them got edited out.It's 40,000 words shorter.
That was another problem.The book was too long.
So those are kind of some of thebig things that I tried to fix.
I think the last bigdifference is that I totally
(15:55):
reordered the book and I startnow with the chapter on what
leaders can do because I realizedthat that is what people were looking
for from me. But it'salso really important.
I left the other chapters aboutwhat we can do as upstanders,
what we can do as people who areharmed by disrespectful attitudes and
(16:16):
behaviors, and what we can dowhen we ourselves are the person
who caused harm with our owndisrespectful attitudes and behaviors,
which we all have. All of usare bound to exhibit those
because leaders cannotsolve this problem alone.
Leaders have a reallyimportant role to play,
but we've all got to come together ifwe're going to solve these problems.
(16:39):
Okay, I'm going to pay you a coupleof compliments. Facts notwithstanding,
I'm a huge Kim Scott fan.
This took some courage because I'm inthe book business, 30 years, right?
I'm an author. I released sevenmyself. I host this podcast.
I helped FranklinCovey produce and sell70 million books across their titles.
I'm a literary agent. I knownothing about Six Sigma or AI,
(17:01):
but I know a two thing about books.
About writing. Yes.
And you have done amasterful but courageous job.
Most authors would say,oh, well, onto the next.
And most publishers would say, oh,well, don't call us. We'll call you.
Probably not your case. But you chosevery deliberately say, no, no, no, no, no.
(17:21):
I got this wrong and Iwant to get it right.
And so you went back to the drawing board.
You were extraordinarily vulnerable byboth receiving and soliciting feedback.
What worked, what didn'twork. Some of it was an aha,
some of it was a no brainer.Re-edited the entire book.
You left 40,000 wordson the cutting floor.
This is a labor of love because youwrote those words and that no, no, no,
(17:43):
that's important. And then yourebranded it. And I'll tell you,
I think it's so smart of you because this
book is not a push DEI book.
This book is,
it's a compendium ofwhat great people do in
2024 and beyond, aboutunderstanding bias and prejudice,
(18:07):
understanding discrimination, harassment,understanding physical violations.
But you write it in a waywhere someone like me,
also a white man of privilegecan say, you know what?
I've done that. You know what? I'vethought that way. I found myself,
and it was not at all in intimidating.
I want to come back to that in justa moment because you said something
(18:28):
profound. You talked about how youare a white woman of privilege.
I think there are many, many, many,
many millions of white Americans whostill do not understand or agree with
this concept. And the only wayto educate people like you and I,
that there is a thing when you arewhite of having an unfair advantage.
And I don't think white Americans canlearn it from people other than white
(18:52):
Americans. Will you just take a minutewithout polarizing the audience,
which you wouldn't do?
What does it mean to have privilege andwhy is that still true in your mind as a
white woman?
Yeah, I don't love the word either.And in fact, Claudia Rankine,
who's a wonderful poet,
says she also doesn't like theword. She wishes it was called.
(19:17):
I think she said she wished itwere called just white being.
And so what am I talking about?
I'm talking about theability to get pulled
over by the police when I speedas I do sometimes and have no fear
about what's going to happen to me.
I can pull over and with great confidence,
(19:39):
feel like the worst that's going tohappen is I'm going to get a ticket.
It is about being ableto walk into a room and
I get all kinds of, it'sinteresting being a white woman,
I get all kinds of automaticcredit that I don't deserve,
and I also get all kinds of automaticassumptions that are incorrect and unfair
(20:04):
that I don't deserve.So I get it both ways,
and I think that's kindof what it's about.
I don't know what's a good way foryou to describe it, right? I mean,
it is an important point and somehowthe way we're talking about it isn't
working for folks.
Here's what I would say is I havelived and traveled around the world,
(20:27):
and maybe other thanbeing in Tokyo or Beijing,
I'm rarely the onlywhite person in the room.
But I have been in numerous scenarios,whether it be a social club,
a religious institution,
or a business event whereI've seen 300 white people and
a person of color.
(20:48):
A single person.
Or 150 men and one or two women.
And I have often thought,
what would it be like to be a person ofcolor and consistently find myself as
the one or two only people inan audience of one or 200 or 300
or 500 people of a different race?We all have some bias within us.
(21:09):
We all have some prejudice within us,
and we all have some racial biases in us.
And so I've really thought,
I believe that being a whiteAmerican gives you a headstart.
And I have read and researched enoughand have enough friends of color to be
very comfortable with that concept.
That doesn't mean I shouldbe ashamed of who I am.
(21:29):
That doesn't mean I shouldn't haveand haven't earned my success,
but I'm much more empathetic andunderstanding of I have never been
in a room where I was the only personof that profile unless I was on stage as
the author.
And so I'm just a little more mindfulof recognizing because I got a headstart
because of my race. I believethat does not mean I am any less.
(21:52):
It doesn't mean I shouldn't be entitledto all that I want to work to achieve,
nor should I be embarrassed or pull back.
I'm just a little more mindful ofwhat it would be like not to be me.
Yeah. Yeah, I think thatis a great way to put it.
I also think we need to talk,
and I probably didn't even talkenough about this in Radical Respect,
(22:13):
we need to talk a little bit about theway our economy is working right now
because there's a whole bunch offolks who are just underpaid right now
and dramatically underpaid.
And I think part of what weneed to respect is people,
but we also need to do abetter job respecting all different kinds of work that
all different kinds of peopledo. I was just talking,
(22:34):
I had this conversation on Guy Kawasaki's
podcast, and he talked about an incidentthat he talks about in his book,
Remarkable, where he was out,
he was in front of hisyard in San Francisco,
kind of a neighborhood, andhe was trimming his hedges.
And a white woman came up to himand said, do you do lawns too?
(22:59):
Trying to hire him?
And then we had this interestingconversation about what happened.
I also love to work in my yard
and what happens to me as a white womanwhen I'm out pulling the weeds along
the street,
and very often people willstop and they'll make a
(23:20):
joke. They'll say, oh,did you get a new job?
As though somehow that work is beneath me,
as though that work doesn'thave dignity with it?
And I think that part of what we,
and that is like that'scast system kind of stuff.
And I think we really need to learn howto respect all different kinds of work
and all the people who do the work.
(23:42):
Big fan of Guy Kawasaki,and I remember that story.
He's coming on in a few weeks. Okay,let's get into Radical Respect.
I think what you've written here is agift on how to be a better human. Yes,
I hope so. And how to applythat in the workplace.
So let's put behind the DE and I
thing that is alive in some placesand dead in others and debate.
(24:05):
But you've just written a book abouthow to be a better human in 2024 and
beyond, and how to get stuff done.Your book is organized into two parts.
Part one is Everyone Has a Role to Play,
and part two of the book is ManagePower So Power Doesn't Manage
You.
Your second chapter is titledHow Leaders Can Demonstrate
Institutional Courage. Riff on that.
(24:30):
So, it is so tempting. I mean,
I'm sure everybody listening can thinkprobably in the last day of a time when
you were in a meeting andsomebody sat or did something that
kind of was awful, thatleft you gobsmacked,
but everybody just ignored what happened.
(24:51):
And so why do we do that?
And what can leaders doto make sure that they are
creating an environment? I mean,
it can't be the leader every single timewho intervenes because a lot of this
stuff that happens theywon't be in the room for.
But what can leaders do to preventbias, prejudice and bullying
(25:14):
from disrupting their teams,
from creating the kind of disrespect ontheir team that's going to make it hard
for their team to collaboratewell and to achieve its
goals?
And so I think the first thing that isuseful for leaders to do is to learn
to break these things apart. Veryoften when we're faced with bias,
(25:34):
prejudice and bullying, we kind ofconflate them as though they're one thing.
And then the problem seemslike this impossible,
monolithic problem that we'll never solve.
And we say it's just human nature andthere's nothing we can do about it.
But if we break a complicated problemdown into its component parts,
then we can solve the problem. Andso let's break apart bias, prejudice,
(25:58):
and bullying because they'renot all the same thing.
They're three very different things.
Bias I define as sort of not
meaning it, it's unconscious,whereas prejudice is meaning it.
It's very consciously held belief,
usually incorporating some kind ofunfair and inaccurate stereotype and
bullying. There's no belief,conscious or unconscious going on.
(26:20):
It's just being mean. And so whatcan leaders do about these things?
In the case of bias,
I recommend that they teach theirteams to disrupt bias In the
moment. Bias is kind of a pattern,
and we as human beings are pattern makers.
And the only way to changethe pattern, a bad one,
is to acknowledge that it's abad one so that we can do better.
(26:42):
Whereas with prejudice,
you as a leader are kind ofresponsible for defining,
there's a boundary between one person'sfreedom to believe whatever they want,
but they can't impose thatbelief on the rest of the team.
And so how do you define?
It's easy to say that really hardto know where that boundary is.
So you've got to create a space forconversation for open conversation so that
(27:06):
you can have a shared understanding onyour team of where that boundary is.
And then when it comes to bullying,
it's really important that leaders createconsequences for bullying because if
they don't, behavior that istolerated will be repeated.
So leaders need to createconversational consequences.
(27:26):
They need to shut it down in the moment.
They also need to createcompensation consequences.
You don't want to give good ratings andbig bonuses to people on your team who
bully others. And yetthat happens all the time.
So you want to be very consciousof how you are giving ratings,
how you're giving bonuses. Atlassianhad a no brilliant jerks rule,
(27:50):
and if someone was bullied theircolleagues and they couldn't
get a good rating, no matterhow good their results were,
same thing I saw at leastwhen I was at Apple.
The performance managementsystem worked that way.
Whereas if it was found thatyou bullied your colleagues,
you were going to get a bad ratingno matter how good your results.
(28:12):
And then the third thing you wantto do is create sort of career
consequences.
The last thing you as a leader want todo is promote people on your team who
bully others.
I think too often we think thatbullying is like a leadership attribute,
and it is not a leadership attribute.
It is a disqualifier for being aleader. So you don't want to promote.
(28:34):
There comes a moment on too many teams,histories where the jerks begin to win,
and that's the moment where the culturebegins to lose. So whatever you do,
don't promote people who bully others.
You want to give them feedback andhopefully they'll knock it off.
They'll stop behaving that way. But ifthey don't, then you have to fire them.
And this is very hard becausevery often that person maybe
(28:58):
thinks they can get away with bullyingbecause they play a particular role on
the team. And if you fire thatperson, it'll leave a hole,
but better to have a hole than an a-hole.
That's my word of wisdom on that.
This book is a great leadership book.It's not really a human resource book.
It's a book for people like me andothers that really need to understand.
(29:22):
So where did it all shake out?From Covid, from virtual work,
from Me Too and from BlackLives and from DEI and how as a
leader now to be aware of when areyou accidentally or do you have some
unconscious bias? We all have biases.
I think it's healthy to talk about themand acknowledge them and how do you have
some prejudices that may be ingrainedin you that you need to be a
(29:45):
transformative figure and acknowledgeit and then do better the more.
And then of course thereis bullying. As I hear you,
I can talk about times whenI've been a bully. Me too.
I thought it was the right thing tomove the business forward, right?
To create the EBITDA. And I justifiedit as we, but we're saving your job.
And I look back now and I'm horrifiedat some of the legal and ethical,
(30:07):
but quite frankly,
not acceptable things I mighthave done that I justified for
other greater noble things. And soyour book has been a great gift to me.
I encourage every personwho is leading others to buy
Radical Respect and just findyourself in it. And for that matter,
if you're working for a leader who maybe a good person but is a bad leader,
(30:30):
I really believe mostpeople are good people.
They're just untrained leaders becauseyou write a lot about how to respond to
bullying, how to deal on the receivingend of someone diminishing you.
Is there anything you'd like to sharebefore we talk about when and how and if
ever to drop the F-bomb, my favoritechapter. Anything you might,
(30:51):
is there any insight you might give tosomeone who maybe isn't an individual
contributor,
they're not a formal or a person ofpositional power on how to set some
boundaries and speak up for themselvesif they find them that they're being on
the receiving end of some of the morenegative behaviors you talk about in the
book?
Yeah, I think one of the mistakesI made for a lot of my career was
(31:14):
I just pretend it's hard for the authorof a book called Radical Candor to
admit, but I pretended stuffwas not happening to me that was in fact happening.
And there's a place in time for that.You want to choose your battles,
but if you default tosilence every single time,
then over time you lose your senseof agency. And that's not good.
(31:36):
So if this stuff ishappening to you, I recommend
doing a quick return oninvestment of speaking up.
There are risks of speaking up,
but there's also a risk of remainingsilent and make sure that you're making,
if you choose silence, that's fine,
but make sure you'remaking a conscious choice.
Now if you decide you want to speak up,
(31:57):
or if you're an individualcontributor and you're an upstander,
you don't want to be a silent bystander,
but you notice something happeningand you want to be a good upstander,
one of the things that I findreally helpful is to think about
whether you're going touse an I statement, an it statement or a you statement.
(32:18):
So if you think it's bias and youdon't have to be sure what's going on,
but if you think it'sbias, try an I statement.
I don't think you meantthat the way it sounded.
One of my favorite stories of thiscomes from a colleague of mine
who had started a company and shewent into a meeting with two men.
She sat down in the center of the tablebecause she had the expertise that was
(32:41):
going to win her team the deal, andthen her two colleagues sat to her side.
And when the first person came in, hesat across from the guy to her left,
the next person sat acrossfrom the guy to his left,
and then everybody else filed on downthe table leaving her dangling alone by
herself in the center of the table.
She started speaking and whenthe other side had questions,
(33:03):
they directed them at hertwo colleagues who were men.
And it happened once. It happened twice.
And finally one of hercolleagues stood up and he said,
I think we ought to switchseats. That was an I statement,
and that was all he had to do tototally change the dynamic in the
room because once he did that,
the other side realized what theywere doing and they knocked it off.
(33:24):
And he did that forthree important reasons.
He did it because he cared about her.
There's always kind of anemotional aspect to this,
and he didn't like seeingher get interrupted.
He also did it because hejust wanted to win the deal.
And he knew that if the other sidewasn't going to listen to her,
they wouldn't win the deal.
And the third reason he did it is becausethere's kind of an efficiency gain.
(33:45):
If you're the upstander,
it was going to be easier for them tohear it from him than to hear it from her.
So that's just an example ofhow you can use an I statement.
I think we should switch seats. I don'tthink you meant that the way it sounded.
An I statement kind of holds up a mirrorto the other folks in the room and lets
them know what they're doing wrong.And usually because they don't mean it,
(34:05):
when they become aware ofwhat they're doing, they stop,
they change their behavior.
Now if it's prejudice an I statementis not going to work because the
other person's going togrin in the mirror, they're going to like what they see.
So if it's prejudice, you need an itstatement. An it statement, as I said,
kind of helps show the other person wherethe boundary is between their freedom
(34:27):
to believe whatever they want, butthey can't impose that belief on you.
And it statement can appeal to the law,
it can appeal to an HRpolicy or it can appeal
to sort of common sense.So for example, I was,
I'd just come back from maternity leaveand I was chit-chatting with a guy
before a meeting and he said to me, well,
(34:50):
my wife doesn't work becauseit's better for the children.
This is like a gut punch. I've justcome back from maternity leave.
But I didn't really think hemeant that the way it sounded.
So I tried to make a joke of it. Itried an I statement. I said, oh,
I decided to show up at work todaybecause I wanted to neglect my children.
(35:11):
And I was expecting him to kindof laugh and we would move on.
He would acknowledge, butno, that's not what happened.
I learned it was prejudice. Hedoubled down. He was like, oh no, Kim,
this is no laughing matter. Youreally shouldn't be working.
And so now I realize I need anit statement. So I said to him,
it is an HR violation for you totell me I'm neglecting my children by
(35:32):
showing up at work today. And that hadthe desired impact. He backed way off.
And then I used kind ofcommon sense. I said, look,
I'm not going to make abig deal of this with HR,
but I think that we can agree that it is
my decision together with my partner,
how we raise our children just as it isyour decision together with your wife,
(35:55):
how you raise your children.
And at that point we could kind ofagree to disagree and move on and keep
working together, but he didn't feel likehe had to tell me how to live my life.
So that's an it statement.Now if it's bullying,
I think you want to you statement.
If an I statement kind of bringsa person closer than a you
(36:17):
statement pushes them away.
And I learned this from my daughterwhen she was in third grade.
She was getting bullied on the playground.
And I said to her, I wassort of recommending she say,
I feel sad. Tell this kid I feel sadwhen you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And she banged her fist onthe table and she said, mom,
they are trying to make me feel sad.Why would I tell them they succeeded?
(36:41):
I thought, oh my gosh,that's a really good point.
And so we realized a youstatement would be better.
You can't talk to me like that.
Or maybe a you questionwhat's going on for you here?
Or even just a you non sequitur,where'd you get that shirt?
The idea of the you statement is thatyou're now not accepting what the other
person is dishing out at you.You are in an active stance.
(37:04):
You're not submitting to them.
You're in an active stance andasking them to answer your questions.
So those are some thoughts.I, it, you. If it's bias,
start with the word I and seewhat comes out of your mouth next.
If it's prejudice,
start with the word it and seewhat comes out of your mouth next.
And if it's bullying,
(37:25):
start with the word you and seewhat comes out of your mouth next.
Kim,
speak to the concept ofreinforcing what you call is a
culture of consent.
I'd like for people to kind of thinkabout what their role is in that.
Yeah,
so a culture of consentjust means that if someone
(37:47):
doesn't want to be touched in anyway, maybe it's just a handshake.
Maybe someone has decided after Covid,they're never shaking another hand again.
So don't shake their hand. Ifsomeone doesn't want to be touched,
don't touch them.
And if you don't know whether or notsomeone wants to be touched, don't touch.
It's really not that complicated.
(38:09):
And yet we get it wrong all the time.
All the time. And so if you're not sure,
if someone wants a hug,ask them, is it okay?
Are you okay with hugs or would yourather elbow bump if you're not sure if
someone wants a handshake? In fact,
there was one time in my career whereI stuck my hand out to shake it.
(38:32):
It was very clear to me that the personwhose hand I was offering to shake
didn't want to shake my hand,but this was before Covid.
And so I sort of had no idea why.
And so I pulled it back and I said,
I am fine not shaking handsif you'd rather I'm happy to
wave. And he looked enormously relieved.
(38:55):
And he told me that hehad in his religion,
he wasn't allowed to touch a womanwho was not his wife in any way,
shape or form.
And this caused a lot oftrouble for him in corporate
America because thatis not the assumption.
So I think just alerting how to be aware
(39:15):
of what someone else wants anddoesn't want in the way of physical
touch.
It is incumbent upon you asthe initiator of the touch
to know if the person wants to betouched in that way, whatever it is.
Well, speaking of which, I alsothink it's incumbent upon all of us,
regardless of our role,
(39:36):
to be aware of what is thesocial landscape in the
workplace.
There are different cultures and differentorganizations and also society is
shifting. I'd love it if youmight coach me for just a moment.
I am a 55-year-old white,
straight married husband,parent of three young boys.
(39:58):
I was raised in the seventies inan upper middle class Caucasian
family, a college educated myentire career in corporate America.
I lean a little bit to theright of center and I have a lot
of friends from a lot ofdifferent walks of life. Perfect.
And I was raised as a southerngentleman with years of
(40:21):
cotillion to say yes and no,and thank you and no thank you.
And sir and ma'am,
I'll now be in the Nordstrom Cafe withmy three young boys who are being raised
in a somewhat conservative family,
but they attend a fairlyliberal private school where
gender diversity and genderfluidity isn't just a reality.
(40:44):
It's almost kind of an obsession. I mean,
my boy spent a lot of time trying tofollow the bouncing ball and are called to
the principal's office because theygot the gender wrong because the person
changed their gender last week.My point is it is hard to keep up.
And so we'll go to the Nordstrom Rackand there is a woman there that is
transgender and her name is, itdoesn't matter what her name is,
(41:06):
but she has a femalename tag and she hasn't
fully transitioned.
My point is I will frequentlysay when this person,
we'll call her Mary, her chosenname, not her birth name.
And we're very respectful and thiswaiter likes me and I like her.
(41:27):
And I will sometimes at theend find myself accidentally saying, thank you, man.
Or hey man, have a good weekend.
And this person is clearlytransgendering and my boys are horrified.
And I apologized once to this person.
This person has waited onus on numerous occasions
and I find myself, these what were social
(41:49):
norms of referring topeople by their gender?
They come out and my boysjust think I'm a cretin,
I'm a trogledite when itcomes to everything in life.
Do you have any advice on what used tobe respect and good manners is now in
many cases offensive to people?
How do you calibrate? I don'tknow your age, but like me,
(42:13):
you were probably inculcated in decades.You talk a certain way. Yeah, 57, yes.
Okay.
Grew up in the south.
There you go. I'm 56 next month.
Give me some advice to the millions ofpeople who are like me that we want to be
respectful. We also don't want toresearch every morning for half an hour.
What's the new trend for the day and howdo I make sure that you get the point
(42:33):
there? What's the centerline of just good judgment?
Yeah, I think it comes back torespect you like this waiter,
and when people are transitioning,you have to transition with them.
And that means you're goingto get it wrong sometimes.
And I think the key thingwhen you get it wrong,
(42:54):
when you get someone's gender wrong,
is to first of all extend alittle bit of grace to yourself
and then you can sort ofacknowledge, I got that wrong.
And you can make amendsby getting it right
or what, it depends on what the thing is.
(43:16):
And then you can apologize andthen you can try to change.
But I think it all starts,
I think we're so harshly judgmentalright now of ourself and others,
and I think if we can just extendourselves a little bit of grace
and then it'll become mucheasier to extend grace to
others. I think that'sthe most important thing.
(43:39):
And also I think it's important toremember what's okay for one person.
And we already know this, this isnot a new thing I'm talking about,
but what's okay for one personis not okay for someone else.
So for example, I really don'tlike it when people call me girl.
I am actually, I'm not 57, myhusband had his 57th birthday.
(44:01):
I am still 56 for a couple of months, but
I am not a child. And so ifyou call me girl, it jars,
it's like fingers on a chalkboard.But other people don't mind that.
So I'm not going to say there's arule you have to call women, women.
I'm just going to saywhen you're talking to me,
please don't refer to me as agirl. Refer to me as a woman.
(44:21):
And I think remembering that this issometimes people want rules that will
work for everyone, and there isno such rule, and this is not new.
This has always been true
in radical candor.
I talk about a story whereI was in a meeting and
there's a guy on my teamwho I like and respect.
(44:44):
We've been friends for ages,we had worked together for ages
and we had a really good relationship andhe kept confusing something and he got
it wrong. Once I corrected him, hegot it wrong. Again, I corrected it.
And it was about the differencebetween Slovakia and Slovenia.
We were localizing something,
so it didn't have anything to do withsomething that might have more emotional
(45:06):
impact. And he got it wronga third time. And I was like,
it's Slovakia, not Slovenia, dumb ass.
And that was fine in the contextof our relationship because he knew
I respected him and hethought it was funny,
and I knew he would think itwas funny. And he knew I knew.
We had that relationship,
(45:27):
but I realized that the other peoplein the room were sort of horrified
by the way I had treatedhim. And so I had still,
even though it was fine that I calledhim that and talked to him that way,
it wasn't fine withthe others in the room.
And I could tell from their facesthat they were sort of horrified.
And so I took the extra beat to say,look, Jared knows I respect him.
(45:50):
He knows how brilliant I think he is.
It's okay that I called him thatin the context of our relationship.
But I want to reassure the rest of youthat I'm not going to talk to you that
way if it's not okay with you.And that is like, that's respect.
That's what we're talking about here.
Great story.
What I have learned is I need to be moredeliberate with my language because I'm
(46:11):
so deeply inculcated in saying,no, sir. Yes sir, yes ma'am.
No ma'am. And occasionally this waiter,she has come to our table and said, hey,
would like some more iced tea? AndI might say, no, thank you, sir.
And it's because this personpresents themself as a female,
but it's not fullytransitioned in any way.
Well, and you knew thembefore, so it takes.
(46:33):
Well, I actually didn't. I didn't. But
you get the point. It's kind ofcomplicated. And this person is listening.
I just want her to know that I respectyour decisions in light aren't my
decisions on how I'm raising my boys,
but I am raising my boys to be respectfulof everyone and their choices and
we're trying to do better. And Ithink if this waiter were here,
(46:54):
I think she would say, Scott, you'reone of the nicest customers I have.
And if your biggest infraction is oncein a case, I hope that's the case. Okay.
Most importantly, tell us a story ofwhen we can and cannot use the F-bomb.
So one of my favoritestories from Radical Respect
(47:15):
was I was in business school and
we were reading Charles Murray,
and there was somethingthat he had written that was
basically, young men areessentially barbarians for whom
marriage and childrentaking responsible for a
(47:38):
woman and the children is anessential civilizing force.
And for me,
I just couldn't believe I was beingassigned to read this at business school,
although you and I, it sounds likeScott had very similar upbringings.
I'm maybe left of left center.
And so I was mad and Iwas in a study group,
(47:59):
and I read this out loudand I said, F that noise,
I assume we're not allowed todrop an F-bomb on your podcast,
but correct me if I'm wrong.
And the next day in classand at business school,
your grade is mostly class participation,
so it's really important that you talk.
But I sort of felt like I was so angryabout what I had read that I felt almost
(48:24):
like I couldn't talk about itwithout dropping an F-bomb.
And this was
bias on top of prejudice because theguys in the class dropped F-bombs with
some frequency. But Iwas raised in the south.
I was raised as a girl in thesouth, and now I was a woman,
(48:44):
and I didn't feel like I could dropan F-bomb. And so I was silent.
And this guy who had been in my studygroup was an excellent upstander,
and he kept trying to catch my eye. Andfinally he raised his hand and he says,
Kim has something tosay. And I just said it.
I just said, F that noise.
I read the paragraph and the professorthought it was funny. And you know what?
(49:05):
It turned out it was okay. It wasokay in that context that I do that.
So I think good communicationas you know gets measured,
not at the speaker's mouth,but at the listener's ear.
I think this comes fromyou all, not from me.
And so it's really important to knowhow that's going to land for another
(49:26):
person. So it's not essential for me to,
I do kind of tend toin the normal course of
events, swear like a sailor,
but I don't want to do that if it's goingto make it harder for other people to
understand what I'm trying to say.
So it's the same thing as gettingsomeone who's transitioning,
(49:47):
getting their gender right.
It's about communicating in a way thatshows respect to the other person.
I think that's it. It doesn't matterwhether you agree with it or not,
whether it's something thatis dear to you or don't care.
It's about communicating in a way thatis respectful to the other person that
may require you to separate yourphilosophy or your emotions or
(50:11):
your religiosity or your -.
Or your habits of speech.
Or your habits of speech. That'sexactly right. And so for me,
what I am taking away from RadicalRespect is just being a little more
thoughtful and deliberate and careful,
and being aware of my ingrainedresponses, ingrained habits.
If you have not yet read RadicalCandor, what the heck, man?
(50:35):
Get on the bandwagon. If you lovedRadical Candor, I'm just telling you,
you're going to love RadicalRespect: How to Work Together Better.
From Kim Scott,
author of The New York Times andWall Street Journal bestselling book,
Radical Candor. Kim, tell me,
other than launching this book into thestratosphere and maintaining all of the
interest in both RadicalCandor and Radical Respect,
(50:57):
what's on the horizon for you next?
I'm writing a utopian novel.One of the things that I find,
I have kids who are 15,and I find that kids,
my kids are very pessimisticabout the future,
and a lot of their friends arepessimistic about the future.
And when I was growing up inthe seventies and eighties,
(51:18):
I was very optimistic about the future,
and I think that optimism was useful.I think it's really important.
One of the people who workedfor me had been a fighter pilot,
and he talked about positivetarget identification. And he said,
if you're flying a planethrough the mountains,
you don't want to get too fixated onthe mountain that you're afraid of
(51:42):
crashing into.
You want to find the gap throughthe hills and focus there.
And so I'm trying toimagine a world that is fair
and reasonable and where all theseproblems that seem so intractable
where we've sorted out climate change,
and even in the best of circumstances,
(52:04):
it's not all sweetness and lightpeople, it's hard to live your life.
It's hard to raise kids,it's hard to be married,
but it doesn't have tobe as hard as it feels
like things are right now.
Well, if Beyonce can crush country,
Kim Scott can crush autopian novel. Kim Scott,
(52:27):
thanks for joining us today. Appreciatehaving you back on the podcast.
Best of success with RadicalRespect. Thank you for your time.
Thank you so much.
And we'll see you back herenext week for a new conversation
On
Leadership.
Hello and welcome back toFranklinCovey's twice weekly podcast,
On Leadership with Scott Miller. It'sme. I'm your host, an interviewer now,
six years, nearly 400 episodes wherewe've had the honor and the privilege to
speak with many of the world's mosticonic thought leaders, business leaders,
CEOs, entrepreneurs,intrapreneurs, athletes, experts,
(00:32):
celebrities, authors, scientists,researchers, academics, you name it.
They have come to on leadershipand on occasion some of them come
back, rarely,
but when they have such seminalwork like today's guest,
we invite them back and hopethey will grace us with their
new learnings. I will tell youin nearly 400 interviews taped,
(00:56):
today's guest is clearlyone of my top five favorite,
primarily because her work has, I think,
changed the landscape of notjust large organizations,
but Inc. 500 and Russell 2000,
mom and pops and startups becauseshe herself has been a lifelong
entrepreneur and intrapreneur. Her book,the first book she wrote, of course,
(01:19):
is called Radical Candor.
This book has permeated all thebooks that I have written about,
I give her credit on, I think reallyreshaping the landscape of communication.
Of course,
the opposite of radical candoryou might call is ruinous empathy
and talk about a great term thatcompanies have wrestled with.
Her first book was called Radical Candor:
(01:41):
Be a Kick-Ass Boss WithoutLosing Your Humanity.
This book went on to shapethe conversations and cultures of organizations
worldwide. But then Kim Scott,as a renowned entrepreneur,
did what a lot of authors do.
She went on and created a second bookthat launched a couple of years ago called
Just Work. We had her back on to interviewher for the second time on Just Work,
(02:04):
and it was an interesting departurefrom her early writings around Radical
Candor and through her own conversationtoday she'll talk about how she actually
has retooled the key tenets of JustWork in this new release called
Radical Respect (02:17):
How to Work Together Better.
Very excited to talk about lessons learnedinsights and how to make sure all of
us work better together. Kim Scott,welcome back to On Leadership.
Thank you so much. I'mthrilled to be here.
I always love a goodconversation with you.
I have told the story of yourlearnings from Google when you
(02:39):
were presenting the AdSense results withEric Schmidt and the co-founder and of
course your boss at the timeand all that you've learned.
I have shared that hundreds oftimes from stages because if Kim
Scott can talk about it,everybody else can be self-aware.
I would love for you just to indulge meand could you please our conversation
(03:00):
and recreate the discussion Youand Sheryl Sandberg have, I had,
I'm sorry to belabor that,
but there's so many great insights inthe debrief you and she had from your
conversation as you were sharingAdSense. Will you just take five minutes,
indulge me and reshare that conversation?
I would love to do that. I mean,
it's incredible how much youcan get out of just a moment of
(03:23):
conversation.
So I had just started a new jobat Google and I had to give a
presentation of the founders and theCEO about how the AdSense business was
doing,
and I walked into the room and therein one corner of the room was Sergey
Brin on an elliptical trainerstepping away wearing toe
(03:44):
shoes and a bright bluespandex unitard, not,
super tight,
not what I was expecting orfrankly wanting to see in the room.
And there in the other corner of theroom was Eric Schmidt doing his email
banging away on his computer.
It was like his brain hadbeen plugged into the machine.
So probably just like youand all of your listeners,
(04:05):
I felt a little bit nervous. How was Isupposed to get these people's attention?
Luckily for me, the AdSensebusiness was on fire,
and when I said how many newcustomers we had added, Eric Schmidt,
the CEO almost fell off his chair.What did you say? This is incredible.
Do you need more marketing dollars?Do you need more engineers?
So I'm feeling like the meeting'sgoing all right. In fact,
(04:27):
I now believe that I am a genius.
And I walked out of the roomafter the meeting was over,
I walked past Sheryl and I'm expectinga high five, a pat on the back,
and instead she says to me, why don'tyou walk back to my office with me?
And I thought, oh, wow,
I messed something up in there andI'm sure I'm about to hear about it.
(04:47):
But of course I was kind ofopen to hearing from her because
I felt dread.
But also she had solicited feedbackfrom me in the past and rewarded the
candor when she got it.So I knew the context.
And as we started walking,
Sheryl began not by telling mewhat had gone wrong in the meeting,
(05:09):
but by pointing out thethings that had gone well,
not in the feedbacksandwich sense of the word.
I think there's a less polite way to saythat, but not in the sort of kiss me,
kick me, kiss me sense of the word, butreally seeming to mean what she said.
But of course, all I wanted to hearabout was what I had done wrong.
And eventually she said to me,you said I'm a lot in there.
(05:31):
Were you aware of it? And with this,
I breathed a huge sigh of reliefif that was all I had done wrong,
who really cared? And I kind of madethis brush off gesture with my hand.
I said, yeah, I know it's a verbaltick. It's no big deal, really.
And then she said to me, Iknow this great speech coach.
I bet Google would pay for it. Would youlike an introduction? And once again,
I made this brush-off gesture withmy hand. I said, no, I'm busy.
(05:53):
I don't have time for a speech coach.Didn't you hear about all new customers?
And then she stopped. She lookedme right in the eye and she said,
I can tell when you do that thing withyour hand that I'm going to have to be a
lot more direct with you.When you say every third word,
it makes you sound stupid.
Now she's got my full attention.
(06:16):
And some people might say it wasmean of her to say I sounded stupid,
but in fact,
it was the kindest thing that she couldhave done for me at that moment in my
career. Because if she hadn't used justthose words with me, and by the way,
this is a really important point,
she never would've used those wordswith other people on her team who are
perhaps better listeners than I was.
(06:37):
But if she hadn't usedjust those words with me,
I never would've gone to visit speechcoach and I would not have learned that
she was not exaggerating.
I literally said "um" every third word,
and this was news to me because I hadbeen giving presentations my whole career.
I had raised lots of money for severaldifferent startups giving presentations.
(07:01):
I thought I was pretty good at it.
It was almost like I suddenly realizedI'd been marching through my whole career
with a giant hunk ofspinach between my teeth.
And nobody had told me about it.
Nobody had had the commoncourtesy to tell me about it.
And this really got me thinkingwhy had no one told me,
but also perhaps more interestingly,
(07:22):
what was it about Sheryl'smanagement style that
made it so seeminglyeasy for her to tell me.
And as I thought abouther management style,
I realized it really boiled down to twopretty basic seemingly basic things.
She cared personally and shechallenged directly. At the same time,
(07:42):
I knew that she cared about me,
not just as an employee but as ahuman being because she would do
things like when I firstmoved from New York to
California,
I didn't know anyone outhere in California and I was lonely and she could tell
I was lonely.
And she said to me thatshe knew this great book
(08:05):
group and introduced me to them.
I'm still friends withthose people to this day
when also shortly after I movedout here and took the job,
my father was diagnosed with latestage cancer and I was devastated.
And she could tell that I wasdevastated. And she said, Kim,
(08:25):
you need to go to theairport, fly home to Memphis.
You need to be withyour family in Memphis.
Your team and I will sit down andwe will write your coverage plan.
That is what greatteams do for each other.
They've got each other's back.
And those were the kinds of thingsthat she did not just for me,
but for everyone who worked closelywith her. She couldn't, of course,
(08:47):
do those kinds of things for all5,000 people in her organization.
No matter how talented youare, relationships scale, but culture does scale.
And when a leader treats their directreports with that kind of care,
it's much more likely that their directreports in turn will treat their direct
reports with that kind of care.And that creates a caring culture,
(09:10):
and it does, that does scale. But ofcourse, it wasn't all sunshine and roses.
There was also this challengedirectly part of Radical Candor.
That's the part I thinkthat a lot of us fail to
deliver on. We remember to show we carebecause most people are pretty nice,
(09:31):
but we fail to challenge directly.
And as I thought aboutthose two basic tenants
care personally, challenge directly,
I thought this doesn't seem thatcommon. It doesn't seem radical,
doesn't seem even like it ought tobe all that rare. And yet it is rare.
(09:53):
It's so rare.
I've worked with tons of different kindsof people and I've never met anyone who
said, oh, feedback iseasy for me. In fact,
I was teaching a class at StanfordGraduate School of Business the other day
and somebody said,
feedback is a source ofexistential dread for me.
And so that is what really prompted meto sit down and really think through
(10:17):
Radical Candor,
which is what I call the combinationof caring personally and challenging
directly.
Kim, thank you for indulgingme. Not that you need me to,
but I implore you to keep tellingthat story because there's such
great insight to teaseout of it. Stephen Covey,
his oldest son, Stephen M. R. Covey,who wrote the book, The Speed of Trust,
(10:40):
will tell you that one of the top twocontributions that leaders make is giving
feedback on people's blind spots,
moving outside of their comfort zoneand giving feedback. And your book,
Radical Candor is by degrees of magnitude,
the best framework in which to do that.
So thank you for talking aboutthat and resharing that story.
Now here's an interesting pivot.
(11:02):
A couple of years ago you wrotethis book called Just Work.
It was a solid book on working togetherand understanding boundaries and
sensitivities and kind ofwhere society was moving.
It was sort of in the middle of thepandemic and DEI and all of that
important stuff, Black LivesMatter and the Me Too Movement.
(11:23):
And it did not hit aswell as your first book.
And I would love to just kind of open itup to have you talk about what was that
like as an author to have hit it outof the park with your first book,
Radical Candor, where youcouldn't even find the ball.
This book has done so well.
And then you launched a second bookto a little bit of a less you can
(11:45):
find the ball.
Yeah, less fanfare.
Less fanfare, but you did somethingbold, which you rarely see in authors,
you picked up what was great ofJust Work and you listened to
feedback, you teased out the best parts,
and then you have relaunchedit, renamed it, and rebranded.
And this is why we're here today to talkabout this new book, Radical Respect.
(12:07):
Talk about that journey, someinsights to be teased out from that.
And then we'll talk about some ofthe key concepts in Radical Respect.
Yes. So Just Work. I mean,
I think it's fair tosay it just didn't work,
at least it didn't work theway that I wanted it to work.
And I think there were a number of issues,
(12:29):
partly was just the title.
Some people read the title andthought it was about return to office,
which is not what the book was about.
They missed the justice part of Just Work.
And it's interesting, whenI wrote the book, for me,
the word justice has nothingbut positive connotations.
(12:50):
But one of the many things thatI learned is that a lot of people
feel resistance to the word justice.
And that really got methinking. The other,
I think I owe a lot to friendsof mine, several friends of mine,
one in particular, Ann Peleti,
who I worked in Russia with and went tobusiness school with and who's a good
(13:12):
friend. After the book came out,
she called me up and she said, Kim, Ithink you lost your voice in that book.
And I realized when she saidthis that she was exactly right,
but I didn't quite know why.
And part of the reason why I knewshe was right is that I had started a
(13:36):
podcast with Ernest Adams who leads
DEI at Ford Motor Company.
And what we would do is we wouldread a passage from just Work
every week.
And as I read these passages suddenly,
and I had that conversationwith Ann Poletti in my head,
(13:58):
and one day I read apassage and I was like,
I know why this book didn't do thatwell. I wasn't finished writing it.
The hardest thing about writing abook is getting inside your head,
and then the second hardestthing is getting back out.
And I think I tried to get backout of my head before I was ready.
(14:18):
And I think part of whatwas going on is that,
so Radical Respect is aboutcreating a workplace that
optimizes for collaboration and thathonors everyone's individuality.
And it talks a lot about what gets inthe way. Bias, prejudice, bullying,
discrimination, harassment andphysical violence, physical violations,
not always violence. And I,
(14:42):
as a white woman,
I felt sort of conflictedas I was writing the book.
Part of me felt like I had anextra obligation to write the book
because Radical Canor had been successful,
I had found some privilegeand just because of the unfair
advantages one has in the world ofbeing white. And at the same time,
(15:05):
I also felt that I had noright to write the book as a
white woman because I hadn't experiencedas much bias, prejudice, bullying,
discrimination, harassment and physicalviolations as other people had.
And I think I hadn't finished wrestlingwith that internal ambivalence as I
wrote the book, and I think it cameout in the way that I used language.
(15:31):
And so that was one of the thingsthat I really wanted to change.
So almost every word in thebook got edited, and in fact,
a lot of them got edited out.It's 40,000 words shorter.
That was another problem.The book was too long.
So those are kind of some of thebig things that I tried to fix.
I think the last bigdifference is that I totally
(15:55):
reordered the book and I startnow with the chapter on what
leaders can do because I realizedthat that is what people were looking
for from me. But it'salso really important.
I left the other chapters aboutwhat we can do as upstanders,
what we can do as people who areharmed by disrespectful attitudes and
(16:16):
behaviors, and what we can dowhen we ourselves are the person
who caused harm with our owndisrespectful attitudes and behaviors,
which we all have. All of usare bound to exhibit those
because leaders cannotsolve this problem alone.
Leaders have a reallyimportant role to play,
but we've all got to come together ifwe're going to solve these problems.
(16:39):
Okay, I'm going to pay you a coupleof compliments. Facts notwithstanding,
I'm a huge Kim Scott fan.
This took some courage because I'm inthe book business, 30 years, right?
I'm an author. I released sevenmyself. I host this podcast.
I helped FranklinCovey produce and sell70 million books across their titles.
I'm a literary agent. I knownothing about Six Sigma or AI,
(17:01):
but I know a two thing about books.
About writing. Yes.
And you have done amasterful but courageous job.
Most authors would say,oh, well, onto the next.
And most publishers would say, oh,well, don't call us. We'll call you.
Probably not your case. But you chosevery deliberately say, no, no, no, no, no.
(17:21):
I got this wrong and Iwant to get it right.
And so you went back to the drawing board.
You were extraordinarily vulnerable byboth receiving and soliciting feedback.
What worked, what didn'twork. Some of it was an aha,
some of it was a no brainer.Re-edited the entire book.
You left 40,000 wordson the cutting floor.
This is a labor of love because youwrote those words and that no, no, no,
(17:43):
that's important. And then yourebranded it. And I'll tell you,
I think it's so smart of you because this
book is not a push DEI book.
This book is,
it's a compendium ofwhat great people do in
2024 and beyond, aboutunderstanding bias and prejudice,
(18:07):
understanding discrimination, harassment,understanding physical violations.
But you write it in a waywhere someone like me,
also a white man of privilegecan say, you know what?
I've done that. You know what? I'vethought that way. I found myself,
and it was not at all in intimidating.
I want to come back to that in justa moment because you said something
(18:28):
profound. You talked about how youare a white woman of privilege.
I think there are many, many, many,
many millions of white Americans whostill do not understand or agree with
this concept. And the only wayto educate people like you and I,
that there is a thing when you arewhite of having an unfair advantage.
And I don't think white Americans canlearn it from people other than white
(18:52):
Americans. Will you just take a minutewithout polarizing the audience,
which you wouldn't do?
What does it mean to have privilege andwhy is that still true in your mind as a
white woman?
Yeah, I don't love the word either.And in fact, Claudia Rankine,
who's a wonderful poet,
says she also doesn't like theword. She wishes it was called.
(19:17):
I think she said she wished itwere called just white being.
And so what am I talking about?
I'm talking about theability to get pulled
over by the police when I speedas I do sometimes and have no fear
about what's going to happen to me.
I can pull over and with great confidence,
(19:39):
feel like the worst that's going tohappen is I'm going to get a ticket.
It is about being ableto walk into a room and
I get all kinds of, it'sinteresting being a white woman,
I get all kinds of automaticcredit that I don't deserve,
and I also get all kinds of automaticassumptions that are incorrect and unfair
(20:04):
that I don't deserve.So I get it both ways,
and I think that's kindof what it's about.
I don't know what's a good way foryou to describe it, right? I mean,
it is an important point and somehowthe way we're talking about it isn't
working for folks.
Here's what I would say is I havelived and traveled around the world,
(20:27):
and maybe other thanbeing in Tokyo or Beijing,
I'm rarely the onlywhite person in the room.
But I have been in numerous scenarios,whether it be a social club,
a religious institution,
or a business event whereI've seen 300 white people and
a person of color.
(20:48):
A single person.
Or 150 men and one or two women.
And I have often thought,
what would it be like to be a person ofcolor and consistently find myself as
the one or two only people inan audience of one or 200 or 300
or 500 people of a different race?We all have some bias within us.
(21:09):
We all have some prejudice within us,
and we all have some racial biases in us.
And so I've really thought,
I believe that being a whiteAmerican gives you a headstart.
And I have read and researched enoughand have enough friends of color to be
very comfortable with that concept.
That doesn't mean I shouldbe ashamed of who I am.
(21:29):
That doesn't mean I shouldn't haveand haven't earned my success,
but I'm much more empathetic andunderstanding of I have never been
in a room where I was the only personof that profile unless I was on stage as
the author.
And so I'm just a little more mindfulof recognizing because I got a headstart
because of my race. I believethat does not mean I am any less.
(21:52):
It doesn't mean I shouldn't be entitledto all that I want to work to achieve,
nor should I be embarrassed or pull back.
I'm just a little more mindful ofwhat it would be like not to be me.
Yeah. Yeah, I think thatis a great way to put it.
I also think we need to talk,
and I probably didn't even talkenough about this in Radical Respect,
(22:13):
we need to talk a little bit about theway our economy is working right now
because there's a whole bunch offolks who are just underpaid right now
and dramatically underpaid.
And I think part of what weneed to respect is people,
but we also need to do abetter job respecting all different kinds of work that
all different kinds of peopledo. I was just talking,
(22:34):
I had this conversation on Guy Kawasaki's
podcast, and he talked about an incidentthat he talks about in his book,
Remarkable, where he was out,
he was in front of hisyard in San Francisco,
kind of a neighborhood, andhe was trimming his hedges.
And a white woman came up to himand said, do you do lawns too?
(22:59):
Trying to hire him?
And then we had this interestingconversation about what happened.
I also love to work in my yard
and what happens to me as a white womanwhen I'm out pulling the weeds along
the street,
and very often people willstop and they'll make a
(23:20):
joke. They'll say, oh,did you get a new job?
As though somehow that work is beneath me,
as though that work doesn'thave dignity with it?
And I think that part of what we,
and that is like that'scast system kind of stuff.
And I think we really need to learn howto respect all different kinds of work
and all the people who do the work.
(23:42):
Big fan of Guy Kawasaki,and I remember that story.
He's coming on in a few weeks. Okay,let's get into Radical Respect.
I think what you've written here is agift on how to be a better human. Yes,
I hope so. And how to applythat in the workplace.
So let's put behind the DE and I
thing that is alive in some placesand dead in others and debate.
(24:05):
But you've just written a book abouthow to be a better human in 2024 and
beyond, and how to get stuff done.Your book is organized into two parts.
Part one is Everyone Has a Role to Play,
and part two of the book is ManagePower So Power Doesn't Manage
You.
Your second chapter is titledHow Leaders Can Demonstrate
Institutional Courage. Riff on that.
(24:30):
So, it is so tempting. I mean,
I'm sure everybody listening can thinkprobably in the last day of a time when
you were in a meeting andsomebody sat or did something that
kind of was awful, thatleft you gobsmacked,
but everybody just ignored what happened.
(24:51):
And so why do we do that?
And what can leaders doto make sure that they are
creating an environment? I mean,
it can't be the leader every single timewho intervenes because a lot of this
stuff that happens theywon't be in the room for.
But what can leaders do to preventbias, prejudice and bullying
(25:14):
from disrupting their teams,
from creating the kind of disrespect ontheir team that's going to make it hard
for their team to collaboratewell and to achieve its
goals?
And so I think the first thing that isuseful for leaders to do is to learn
to break these things apart. Veryoften when we're faced with bias,
(25:34):
prejudice and bullying, we kind ofconflate them as though they're one thing.
And then the problem seemslike this impossible,
monolithic problem that we'll never solve.
And we say it's just human nature andthere's nothing we can do about it.
But if we break a complicated problemdown into its component parts,
then we can solve the problem. Andso let's break apart bias, prejudice,
(25:58):
and bullying because they'renot all the same thing.
They're three very different things.
Bias I define as sort of not
meaning it, it's unconscious,whereas prejudice is meaning it.
It's very consciously held belief,
usually incorporating some kind ofunfair and inaccurate stereotype and
bullying. There's no belief,conscious or unconscious going on.
(26:20):
It's just being mean. And so whatcan leaders do about these things?
In the case of bias,
I recommend that they teach theirteams to disrupt bias In the
moment. Bias is kind of a pattern,
and we as human beings are pattern makers.
And the only way to changethe pattern, a bad one,
is to acknowledge that it's abad one so that we can do better.
(26:42):
Whereas with prejudice,
you as a leader are kind ofresponsible for defining,
there's a boundary between one person'sfreedom to believe whatever they want,
but they can't impose thatbelief on the rest of the team.
And so how do you define?
It's easy to say that really hardto know where that boundary is.
So you've got to create a space forconversation for open conversation so that
(27:06):
you can have a shared understanding onyour team of where that boundary is.
And then when it comes to bullying,
it's really important that leaders createconsequences for bullying because if
they don't, behavior that istolerated will be repeated.
So leaders need to createconversational consequences.
(27:26):
They need to shut it down in the moment.
They also need to createcompensation consequences.
You don't want to give good ratings andbig bonuses to people on your team who
bully others. And yetthat happens all the time.
So you want to be very consciousof how you are giving ratings,
how you're giving bonuses. Atlassianhad a no brilliant jerks rule,
(27:50):
and if someone was bullied theircolleagues and they couldn't
get a good rating, no matterhow good their results were,
same thing I saw at leastwhen I was at Apple.
The performance managementsystem worked that way.
Whereas if it was found thatyou bullied your colleagues,
you were going to get a bad ratingno matter how good your results.
(28:12):
And then the third thing you wantto do is create sort of career
consequences.
The last thing you as a leader want todo is promote people on your team who
bully others.
I think too often we think thatbullying is like a leadership attribute,
and it is not a leadership attribute.
It is a disqualifier for being aleader. So you don't want to promote.
(28:34):
There comes a moment on too many teams,histories where the jerks begin to win,
and that's the moment where the culturebegins to lose. So whatever you do,
don't promote people who bully others.
You want to give them feedback andhopefully they'll knock it off.
They'll stop behaving that way. But ifthey don't, then you have to fire them.
And this is very hard becausevery often that person maybe
(28:58):
thinks they can get away with bullyingbecause they play a particular role on
the team. And if you fire thatperson, it'll leave a hole,
but better to have a hole than an a-hole.
That's my word of wisdom on that.
This book is a great leadership book.It's not really a human resource book.
It's a book for people like me andothers that really need to understand.
(29:22):
So where did it all shake out?From Covid, from virtual work,
from Me Too and from BlackLives and from DEI and how as a
leader now to be aware of when areyou accidentally or do you have some
unconscious bias? We all have biases.
I think it's healthy to talk about themand acknowledge them and how do you have
some prejudices that may be ingrainedin you that you need to be a
(29:45):
transformative figure and acknowledgeit and then do better the more.
And then of course thereis bullying. As I hear you,
I can talk about times whenI've been a bully. Me too.
I thought it was the right thing tomove the business forward, right?
To create the EBITDA. And I justifiedit as we, but we're saving your job.
And I look back now and I'm horrifiedat some of the legal and ethical,
(30:07):
but quite frankly,
not acceptable things I mighthave done that I justified for
other greater noble things. And soyour book has been a great gift to me.
I encourage every personwho is leading others to buy
Radical Respect and just findyourself in it. And for that matter,
if you're working for a leader who maybe a good person but is a bad leader,
(30:30):
I really believe mostpeople are good people.
They're just untrained leaders becauseyou write a lot about how to respond to
bullying, how to deal on the receivingend of someone diminishing you.
Is there anything you'd like to sharebefore we talk about when and how and if
ever to drop the F-bomb, my favoritechapter. Anything you might,
(30:51):
is there any insight you might give tosomeone who maybe isn't an individual
contributor,
they're not a formal or a person ofpositional power on how to set some
boundaries and speak up for themselvesif they find them that they're being on
the receiving end of some of the morenegative behaviors you talk about in the
book?
Yeah, I think one of the mistakesI made for a lot of my career was
(31:14):
I just pretend it's hard for the authorof a book called Radical Candor to
admit, but I pretended stuffwas not happening to me that was in fact happening.
And there's a place in time for that.You want to choose your battles,
but if you default tosilence every single time,
then over time you lose your senseof agency. And that's not good.
(31:36):
So if this stuff ishappening to you, I recommend
doing a quick return oninvestment of speaking up.
There are risks of speaking up,
but there's also a risk of remainingsilent and make sure that you're making,
if you choose silence, that's fine,
but make sure you'remaking a conscious choice.
Now if you decide you want to speak up,
(31:57):
or if you're an individualcontributor and you're an upstander,
you don't want to be a silent bystander,
but you notice something happeningand you want to be a good upstander,
one of the things that I findreally helpful is to think about
whether you're going touse an I statement, an it statement or a you statement.
(32:18):
So if you think it's bias and youdon't have to be sure what's going on,
but if you think it'sbias, try an I statement.
I don't think you meantthat the way it sounded.
One of my favorite stories of thiscomes from a colleague of mine
who had started a company and shewent into a meeting with two men.
She sat down in the center of the tablebecause she had the expertise that was
(32:41):
going to win her team the deal, andthen her two colleagues sat to her side.
And when the first person came in, hesat across from the guy to her left,
the next person sat acrossfrom the guy to his left,
and then everybody else filed on downthe table leaving her dangling alone by
herself in the center of the table.
She started speaking and whenthe other side had questions,
(33:03):
they directed them at hertwo colleagues who were men.
And it happened once. It happened twice.
And finally one of hercolleagues stood up and he said,
I think we ought to switchseats. That was an I statement,
and that was all he had to do tototally change the dynamic in the
room because once he did that,
the other side realized what theywere doing and they knocked it off.
(33:24):
And he did that forthree important reasons.
He did it because he cared about her.
There's always kind of anemotional aspect to this,
and he didn't like seeingher get interrupted.
He also did it because hejust wanted to win the deal.
And he knew that if the other sidewasn't going to listen to her,
they wouldn't win the deal.
And the third reason he did it is becausethere's kind of an efficiency gain.
(33:45):
If you're the upstander,
it was going to be easier for them tohear it from him than to hear it from her.
So that's just an example ofhow you can use an I statement.
I think we should switch seats. I don'tthink you meant that the way it sounded.
An I statement kind of holds up a mirrorto the other folks in the room and lets
them know what they're doing wrong.And usually because they don't mean it,
(34:05):
when they become aware ofwhat they're doing, they stop,
they change their behavior.
Now if it's prejudice an I statementis not going to work because the
other person's going togrin in the mirror, they're going to like what they see.
So if it's prejudice, you need an itstatement. An it statement, as I said,
kind of helps show the other person wherethe boundary is between their freedom
(34:27):
to believe whatever they want, butthey can't impose that belief on you.
And it statement can appeal to the law,
it can appeal to an HRpolicy or it can appeal
to sort of common sense.So for example, I was,
I'd just come back from maternity leaveand I was chit-chatting with a guy
before a meeting and he said to me, well,
(34:50):
my wife doesn't work becauseit's better for the children.
This is like a gut punch. I've justcome back from maternity leave.
But I didn't really think hemeant that the way it sounded.
So I tried to make a joke of it. Itried an I statement. I said, oh,
I decided to show up at work todaybecause I wanted to neglect my children.
(35:11):
And I was expecting him to kindof laugh and we would move on.
He would acknowledge, butno, that's not what happened.
I learned it was prejudice. Hedoubled down. He was like, oh no, Kim,
this is no laughing matter. Youreally shouldn't be working.
And so now I realize I need anit statement. So I said to him,
it is an HR violation for you totell me I'm neglecting my children by
(35:32):
showing up at work today. And that hadthe desired impact. He backed way off.
And then I used kind ofcommon sense. I said, look,
I'm not going to make abig deal of this with HR,
but I think that we can agree that it is
my decision together with my partner,
how we raise our children just as it isyour decision together with your wife,
(35:55):
how you raise your children.
And at that point we could kind ofagree to disagree and move on and keep
working together, but he didn't feel likehe had to tell me how to live my life.
So that's an it statement.Now if it's bullying,
I think you want to you statement.
If an I statement kind of bringsa person closer than a you
(36:17):
statement pushes them away.
And I learned this from my daughterwhen she was in third grade.
She was getting bullied on the playground.
And I said to her, I wassort of recommending she say,
I feel sad. Tell this kid I feel sadwhen you blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
And she banged her fist onthe table and she said, mom,
they are trying to make me feel sad.Why would I tell them they succeeded?
(36:41):
I thought, oh my gosh,that's a really good point.
And so we realized a youstatement would be better.
You can't talk to me like that.
Or maybe a you questionwhat's going on for you here?
Or even just a you non sequitur,where'd you get that shirt?
The idea of the you statement is thatyou're now not accepting what the other
person is dishing out at you.You are in an active stance.
(37:04):
You're not submitting to them.
You're in an active stance andasking them to answer your questions.
So those are some thoughts.I, it, you. If it's bias,
start with the word I and seewhat comes out of your mouth next.
If it's prejudice,
start with the word it and seewhat comes out of your mouth next.
And if it's bullying,
(37:25):
start with the word you and seewhat comes out of your mouth next.
Kim,
speak to the concept ofreinforcing what you call is a
culture of consent.
I'd like for people to kind of thinkabout what their role is in that.
Yeah,
so a culture of consentjust means that if someone
(37:47):
doesn't want to be touched in anyway, maybe it's just a handshake.
Maybe someone has decided after Covid,they're never shaking another hand again.
So don't shake their hand. Ifsomeone doesn't want to be touched,
don't touch them.
And if you don't know whether or notsomeone wants to be touched, don't touch.
It's really not that complicated.
(38:09):
And yet we get it wrong all the time.
All the time. And so if you're not sure,
if someone wants a hug,ask them, is it okay?
Are you okay with hugs or would yourather elbow bump if you're not sure if
someone wants a handshake? In fact,
there was one time in my career whereI stuck my hand out to shake it.
(38:32):
It was very clear to me that the personwhose hand I was offering to shake
didn't want to shake my hand,but this was before Covid.
And so I sort of had no idea why.
And so I pulled it back and I said,
I am fine not shaking handsif you'd rather I'm happy to
wave. And he looked enormously relieved.
(38:55):
And he told me that hehad in his religion,
he wasn't allowed to touch a womanwho was not his wife in any way,
shape or form.
And this caused a lot oftrouble for him in corporate
America because thatis not the assumption.
So I think just alerting how to be aware
(39:15):
of what someone else wants anddoesn't want in the way of physical
touch.
It is incumbent upon you asthe initiator of the touch
to know if the person wants to betouched in that way, whatever it is.
Well, speaking of which, I alsothink it's incumbent upon all of us,
regardless of our role,
(39:36):
to be aware of what is thesocial landscape in the
workplace.
There are different cultures and differentorganizations and also society is
shifting. I'd love it if youmight coach me for just a moment.
I am a 55-year-old white,
straight married husband,parent of three young boys.
(39:58):
I was raised in the seventies inan upper middle class Caucasian
family, a college educated myentire career in corporate America.
I lean a little bit to theright of center and I have a lot
of friends from a lot ofdifferent walks of life. Perfect.
And I was raised as a southerngentleman with years of
(40:21):
cotillion to say yes and no,and thank you and no thank you.
And sir and ma'am,
I'll now be in the Nordstrom Cafe withmy three young boys who are being raised
in a somewhat conservative family,
but they attend a fairlyliberal private school where
gender diversity and genderfluidity isn't just a reality.
(40:44):
It's almost kind of an obsession. I mean,
my boy spent a lot of time trying tofollow the bouncing ball and are called to
the principal's office because theygot the gender wrong because the person
changed their gender last week.My point is it is hard to keep up.
And so we'll go to the Nordstrom Rackand there is a woman there that is
transgender and her name is, itdoesn't matter what her name is,
(41:06):
but she has a femalename tag and she hasn't
fully transitioned.
My point is I will frequentlysay when this person,
we'll call her Mary, her chosenname, not her birth name.
And we're very respectful and thiswaiter likes me and I like her.
(41:27):
And I will sometimes at theend find myself accidentally saying, thank you, man.
Or hey man, have a good weekend.
And this person is clearlytransgendering and my boys are horrified.
And I apologized once to this person.
This person has waited onus on numerous occasions
and I find myself, these what were social
(41:49):
norms of referring topeople by their gender?
They come out and my boysjust think I'm a cretin,
I'm a trogledite when itcomes to everything in life.
Do you have any advice on what used tobe respect and good manners is now in
many cases offensive to people?
How do you calibrate? I don'tknow your age, but like me,
(42:13):
you were probably inculcated in decades.You talk a certain way. Yeah, 57, yes.
Okay.
Grew up in the south.
There you go. I'm 56 next month.
Give me some advice to the millions ofpeople who are like me that we want to be
respectful. We also don't want toresearch every morning for half an hour.
What's the new trend for the day and howdo I make sure that you get the point
(42:33):
there? What's the centerline of just good judgment?
Yeah, I think it comes back torespect you like this waiter,
and when people are transitioning,you have to transition with them.
And that means you're goingto get it wrong sometimes.
And I think the key thingwhen you get it wrong,
(42:54):
when you get someone's gender wrong,
is to first of all extend alittle bit of grace to yourself
and then you can sort ofacknowledge, I got that wrong.
And you can make amendsby getting it right
or what, it depends on what the thing is.
(43:16):
And then you can apologize andthen you can try to change.
But I think it all starts,
I think we're so harshly judgmentalright now of ourself and others,
and I think if we can just extendourselves a little bit of grace
and then it'll become mucheasier to extend grace to
others. I think that'sthe most important thing.
(43:39):
And also I think it's important toremember what's okay for one person.
And we already know this, this isnot a new thing I'm talking about,
but what's okay for one personis not okay for someone else.
So for example, I really don'tlike it when people call me girl.
I am actually, I'm not 57, myhusband had his 57th birthday.
(44:01):
I am still 56 for a couple of months, but
I am not a child. And so ifyou call me girl, it jars,
it's like fingers on a chalkboard.But other people don't mind that.
So I'm not going to say there's arule you have to call women, women.
I'm just going to saywhen you're talking to me,
please don't refer to me as agirl. Refer to me as a woman.
(44:21):
And I think remembering that this issometimes people want rules that will
work for everyone, and there isno such rule, and this is not new.
This has always been true
in radical candor.
I talk about a story whereI was in a meeting and
there's a guy on my teamwho I like and respect.
(44:44):
We've been friends for ages,we had worked together for ages
and we had a really good relationship andhe kept confusing something and he got
it wrong. Once I corrected him, hegot it wrong. Again, I corrected it.
And it was about the differencebetween Slovakia and Slovenia.
We were localizing something,
so it didn't have anything to do withsomething that might have more emotional
(45:06):
impact. And he got it wronga third time. And I was like,
it's Slovakia, not Slovenia, dumb ass.
And that was fine in the contextof our relationship because he knew
I respected him and hethought it was funny,
and I knew he would think itwas funny. And he knew I knew.
We had that relationship,
(45:27):
but I realized that the other peoplein the room were sort of horrified
by the way I had treatedhim. And so I had still,
even though it was fine that I calledhim that and talked to him that way,
it wasn't fine withthe others in the room.
And I could tell from their facesthat they were sort of horrified.
And so I took the extra beat to say,look, Jared knows I respect him.
(45:50):
He knows how brilliant I think he is.
It's okay that I called him thatin the context of our relationship.
But I want to reassure the rest of youthat I'm not going to talk to you that
way if it's not okay with you.And that is like, that's respect.
That's what we're talking about here.
Great story.
What I have learned is I need to be moredeliberate with my language because I'm
(46:11):
so deeply inculcated in saying,no, sir. Yes sir, yes ma'am.
No ma'am. And occasionally this waiter,she has come to our table and said, hey,
would like some more iced tea? AndI might say, no, thank you, sir.
And it's because this personpresents themself as a female,
but it's not fullytransitioned in any way.
Well, and you knew thembefore, so it takes.
(46:33):
Well, I actually didn't. I didn't. But
you get the point. It's kind ofcomplicated. And this person is listening.
I just want her to know that I respectyour decisions in light aren't my
decisions on how I'm raising my boys,
but I am raising my boys to be respectfulof everyone and their choices and
we're trying to do better. And Ithink if this waiter were here,
(46:54):
I think she would say, Scott, you'reone of the nicest customers I have.
And if your biggest infraction is oncein a case, I hope that's the case. Okay.
Most importantly, tell us a story ofwhen we can and cannot use the F-bomb.
So one of my favoritestories from Radical Respect
(47:15):
was I was in business school and
we were reading Charles Murray,
and there was somethingthat he had written that was
basically, young men areessentially barbarians for whom
marriage and childrentaking responsible for a
(47:38):
woman and the children is anessential civilizing force.
And for me,
I just couldn't believe I was beingassigned to read this at business school,
although you and I, it sounds likeScott had very similar upbringings.
I'm maybe left of left center.
And so I was mad and Iwas in a study group,
(47:59):
and I read this out loudand I said, F that noise,
I assume we're not allowed todrop an F-bomb on your podcast,
but correct me if I'm wrong.
And the next day in classand at business school,
your grade is mostly class participation,
so it's really important that you talk.
But I sort of felt like I was so angryabout what I had read that I felt almost
(48:24):
like I couldn't talk about itwithout dropping an F-bomb.
And this was
bias on top of prejudice because theguys in the class dropped F-bombs with
some frequency. But Iwas raised in the south.
I was raised as a girl in thesouth, and now I was a woman,
(48:44):
and I didn't feel like I could dropan F-bomb. And so I was silent.
And this guy who had been in my studygroup was an excellent upstander,
and he kept trying to catch my eye. Andfinally he raised his hand and he says,
Kim has something tosay. And I just said it.
I just said, F that noise.
I read the paragraph and the professorthought it was funny. And you know what?
(49:05):
It turned out it was okay. It wasokay in that context that I do that.
So I think good communicationas you know gets measured,
not at the speaker's mouth,but at the listener's ear.
I think this comes fromyou all, not from me.
And so it's really important to knowhow that's going to land for another
(49:26):
person. So it's not essential for me to,
I do kind of tend toin the normal course of
events, swear like a sailor,
but I don't want to do that if it's goingto make it harder for other people to
understand what I'm trying to say.
So it's the same thing as gettingsomeone who's transitioning,
(49:47):
getting their gender right.
It's about communicating in a way thatshows respect to the other person.
I think that's it. It doesn't matterwhether you agree with it or not,
whether it's something thatis dear to you or don't care.
It's about communicating in a way thatis respectful to the other person that
may require you to separate yourphilosophy or your emotions or
(50:11):
your religiosity or your -.
Or your habits of speech.
Or your habits of speech. That'sexactly right. And so for me,
what I am taking away from RadicalRespect is just being a little more
thoughtful and deliberate and careful,
and being aware of my ingrainedresponses, ingrained habits.
If you have not yet read RadicalCandor, what the heck, man?
(50:35):
Get on the bandwagon. If you lovedRadical Candor, I'm just telling you,
you're going to love RadicalRespect: How to Work Together Better.
From Kim Scott,
author of The New York Times andWall Street Journal bestselling book,
Radical Candor. Kim, tell me,
other than launching this book into thestratosphere and maintaining all of the
interest in both RadicalCandor and Radical Respect,
(50:57):
what's on the horizon for you next?
I'm writing a utopian novel.One of the things that I find,
I have kids who are 15,and I find that kids,
my kids are very pessimisticabout the future,
and a lot of their friends arepessimistic about the future.
And when I was growing up inthe seventies and eighties,
(51:18):
I was very optimistic about the future,
and I think that optimism was useful.I think it's really important.
One of the people who workedfor me had been a fighter pilot,
and he talked about positivetarget identification. And he said,
if you're flying a planethrough the mountains,
you don't want to get too fixated onthe mountain that you're afraid of
(51:42):
crashing into.
You want to find the gap throughthe hills and focus there.
And so I'm trying toimagine a world that is fair
and reasonable and where all theseproblems that seem so intractable
where we've sorted out climate change,
and even in the best of circumstances,
(52:04):
it's not all sweetness and lightpeople, it's hard to live your life.
It's hard to raise kids,it's hard to be married,
but it doesn't have tobe as hard as it feels
like things are right now.
Well, if Beyonce can crush country,
Kim Scott can crush autopian novel. Kim Scott,
(52:27):
thanks for joining us today. Appreciatehaving you back on the podcast.
Best of success with RadicalRespect. Thank you for your time.
Thank you so much.
And we'll see you back herenext week for a new conversation
On
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