RADICAL CANDOR: COMMUNICATION AT WORKHOSTED BYKIM SCOTT, JASON ROSOFF & AMY SANDLER
Learn to love your job and kick ass at work without losing your humanity by practicing the principles of Radical Candor. Improve your feedback and communications skills, become a better leader, manager or team player, and drive your #careergoals in the direction of your dreams. Host Amy Sandler leads discussions with Radical Candor co-founders Kim Scott and Jason Rosoff about what it means to be Radically Candid, why it’s simple but not easy to Care Personally and Challenge Directly on the daily, and why it’s worth it. Tune in to get actionable tips for doing the best work of your life and building the best relationships of your career, and don't forget to read Kim Scott's New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestselling book Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity!
To do actual work. And so, Jason, just to kick off off this conversation, one of the things that you do that is unique, I think, in your role as CEO at Radical Candor, we also as you know, call you the chief tinkerer. And given your background, you have a lot of direct experience with apps with actually building apps, which I think gives you an an interesting lens into the the leadership part of, like, how do I even, as a leader, think about organizing communication apps? What kind of apps do we use? How do we decide them? How do we engage with them as team members? Like, how do you even think about that as a leader? Part of the problem is that most leaders don't really think about it. There's there's a fundamental issue that appeared about 40 years ago with, like, with the popularization of email, which was e wait a minute. 40 email 40 years ago? Yeah. Yes. From DARPA or from actual usage? No. Like, in the eighties, email was started to be popular becoming popular use. In the nineties, it came off as like a consumer thing, and ever since, we've been living with it. My brain is toggling between what you just said and my own personal history with email. I my first email address, I was working at a university, so it was in the early nineties. When was your first email address? My first email address was an AOL email address, and it was Yep. Probably right around 1990, 91 maybe, something like that. I just have to tune in. This is Brandy, the producer, writer. That's, like, blowing my mind, Jason, because I graduated from high school in 1996, and I took typing on a typewriter. I don't think I had email until, like, 1998. I don't even think
Called us right away. It's not like I would have said, oh, your kid's sick. Tough shit. You know? Keep working. I would have said, okay. Let's get let's get Sarah and put her on this project, to cover for you. Like like, I got his back, but he's gotta tell me that I need you know, that there's a problem, and he didn't. Yeah. I think that that is, like, an entirely justified reaction. And I would add that in the moments when we were having that conversation and other people were observing, it was very clear that you were annoyed, with James. It wasn't exactly clear why. And so the concern that I have is that could come across as you're annoyed because James' kid is sick. I think Yeah. I mean, I I certainly don't wanna give that impression, but, like, you kinda shut me down. You're like, oh, we gotta be nice to James. And then I was like, well, what you know? I like bad news early, and now now I look like an asshole. Yep. I I could I can see how I could do a potentially do a better job in the moment of acknowledging, of being clear. Like, I'm being clear with you now that there's 2 things that we're trying to accomplish in this conversation. 2 things can be true at the same time. Absolutely. Totally believe that. Yeah. And So what are we gonna do? Like, James James works for you, and so I I kinda think it's your job to to tell James this. You know, I I don't know. I've but I feel like part of the problem that we have is I always have to be the heavy. Like, you're I I don't have great confidence that you're gonna make this clear enough to James. That's something I think you and I need to work on because I do feel like I'm giving this kind of feedback on a regular basis. And so, there's probably something that we can do differently to make sure that you feel confident about that. That's not Maybe you're giving that feedback, but James didn't do what he what he should have known. Like, if James were working for me, he would have known to call me as soon as he got the diagnosis. I I mean, maybe
With our lives, know what we wanna do when we grow up, and they confuse the hell out of the rest of us. And so don't feel like you need to know what you wanna do. Just like take the next step. This was this was career advice from f Scott Fitzgerald. He said, just don't stub your toe. Don't spend so much time thinking about things. Just take the next step. Because you can't I mean, life is gonna throw so many, obstacles your way, so many surprises your way, so many wonderful things, so many terrible things your way. Like, you you can't predict it. At a certain point point I mean, another time I remember struggling with this choice was where where did I wanna go to college? And I hadn't even been accepted anywhere to college. Let me let me hasten that. And I was already agonizing about where I wanted to go to college and and sort of obsessing over it. And finally, someone said, look, you're gonna make a choice and then you're gonna make that choice the right choice. So just do the next thing, make the next choice, and then get the most out of it. And if it's not working, you can try something different. There was a young man who I love recently came over, relative came over to talk to my husband and me about, like, his future. He was he was just about to go to college. He's 17. And he said, you know, everybody's like, you have to have this vocation, and why can't I just get a job that is okay that pays that pays the rent? Like, what what is there anything wrong with that? And, no, there's everything right with that because the thing that you love may not pay, which it didn't for me. I mean, novel reading and writing doesn't pay. I've written several novels, none of them have been published. So Bill
Point a certain amount of privilege, and I didn't use it. And so I I was leaving behind other women who were also gonna be sort of treated badly by this by this, by my boss. And indeed they were. And and so I felt bad about that as well. So in retrospect, I mean, I'm not gonna give myself too hard a time. I understand. I mean, in the end, he did something wrong, not me. But in if I had to do it over again, I think I would have made a bigger stink of it. Yeah. I mean, I think another way to say that is that you didn't your ROI calculation was incomplete. Yes. And and I think that, to me, anyway, that that seems normal to to not have all the factors, but especially in a situation where, let's call it toxic, if not abusive or toxic behavior. Like, you you know, it's Or obnoxious. Yeah. You know? I would I would say I would say that the in all of the examples, the bird example, your example, like, there's a scarce resource that that if some if there's a thing, a being that controls your access to that scarce resource, I think it can be very tempting to try to politic your way like, be politic with that being that controls your access to that to that resource. And for you, it was like it was career it was career advancement. I think for the birds, it's like a normally scarce resource, is like all of a sudden, suddenly plentiful. And now it's sort of like a free it's sort of like a free for all. Right? You're you're trying to get as much as you can. Best buy, like, the day before Christmas with, you know, a special But literally before because the thing that they're they're trying to protect against, at least in my model, is another bigger being coming.
Keep going. Sorry. Okay. That no. That's great. I get the sense that my feedback is never well received by this person. They're referring to the this this individual. And they more often than not reject it instead of receiving it as a learning opportunity, especially when it comes to quality, and quality matters. Am I overthinking it? Am I being nitpicky? I did listen to your podcast about this and don't feel that I was. How do I balance giving them openness to challenge and letting them know that it's fee versus letting them know that it's feedback that must be implemented? What do you think, Kim? This is a great question and a difficult one. I think at a at a certain level, I have found kind of the way one of the ways out of this conundrum is to say to the person, it seems like you disagree with my feedback. And I'm wide open to you disagreeing with it. But since I'm your manager, what you need to do next is to persuade me that I am wrong and you are right. And you haven't persuaded me yet that I am wrong and you are right. I still think that the quality bar that I have, that I have laid out is the right one. So tell me why I'm wrong. I think that phrase, tell me please tell me why I'm wrong is is helpful in this kind of situation. I don't know, Jason. What do you think? I completely agree. Like, I know this isn't an exact one to 1, but I often think of the the sort of, like, new ideas are fragile, when it comes to discreet encouraging disagreement, which is you want to encourage disagreement, but that might be a new behavior for some people. They might be very nervous about disagreeing. So I understand this manager's apprehension about squashing what he sees or she sees as a very positive behavior, which is the willingness to disagree with them. Right? Yeah. But and so it it's I I think that your phrase, tell me why I'm wrong, is an acknowledgment that I could in fact be wrong, and I'm open to changing my mind. And I think that that is one of the best ways
