How to lead with radical candor | Kim Scott | TEDxPortland
Summary
TLDRThe speaker passionately shares her insights on the concept of 'Radical Candor' – the ability to challenge directly while showing you care personally. Through compelling personal stories, she illustrates the pitfalls of 'Ruinous Empathy' where we avoid candid feedback to spare feelings. She emphasizes the importance of soliciting feedback, giving praise, addressing performance issues, and gauging reactions to build better relationships, foster a healthy team culture, and even bridge societal divides. Her thought-provoking perspective encourages us to embrace open dialogue, respect differing viewpoints, and foster an environment of trust and growth.
Takeaways
- 😃 Radical Candor is the ability to care personally while also challenging directly. It involves showing respect and human decency towards others while providing honest feedback.
- 😐 Obnoxious Aggression occurs when we challenge directly but forget to show care, hurting people and making communication ineffective.
- 🤥 Manipulative Insincerity involves withholding direct feedback and engaging in passive-aggressive behavior, leading to toxic workplace environments.
- 🥺 Ruinous Empathy is when we care personally but fail to provide honest feedback, ultimately doing a disservice to the person and the team.
- 👥 Team cultures can drift towards Ruinous Empathy, allowing disruptive behavior to go unchecked and promoting mediocrity.
- 🇺🇸 Unchallenged beliefs and lack of open dialogue can lead to societal polarization and loss of common ground.
- 👂 Effective feedback requires soliciting input, giving praise, addressing performance issues, and gauging the listener's reaction.
- 🤔 If the listener seems sad or mad, move up on the 'care personally' dimension. If they brush you off, challenge more directly.
- 🙌 Radical Candor fosters better one-on-one relationships, builds a culture of excellence, and promotes societal confluence.
- 🌟 The key is maintaining respect and human decency while providing honest feedback, even with those we disagree with.
Q & A
What is radical candor, and how is it different from being obnoxiously aggressive or ruinously empathetic?
-Radical candor is the ability to care personally and challenge directly at the same time. It avoids the extremes of being obnoxiously aggressive (challenging without caring) or ruinously empathetic (caring without challenging).
What is the radical candor order of operations?
-The radical candor order of operations is: 1) Solicit feedback, 2) Give praise, 3) Tell people when their work is not nearly good enough, and 4) Gauge how the feedback is landing and adjust accordingly.
What incident from the speaker's career illustrates the consequences of ruinous empathy?
-The speaker failed to provide direct feedback to an employee named Alex, whose work was poor. Eventually, the speaker had to fire Alex, who felt betrayed because no one was candid with him about his performance issues.
How can ruinous empathy affect team culture?
-Initially, teams may start out being radically candid with each other. However, as the team grows, they may succumb to ruinous empathy, avoiding direct feedback. This can lead to a culture where the jerks begin to win and manipulative insincerity becomes common.
How can radical candor help bridge societal divides?
-The speaker suggests that by engaging in respectful dialogue with those who hold different views, we can find common ground and deepen our understanding of each other's perspectives, rather than dismissing them as enemies.
What is the significance of respect in the context of radical candor?
-The speaker states that the floor on the care personally dimension of radical candor is respect. Respect is something we owe to everyone and can serve as a foundation for caring about and challenging others in a productive way.
How should one respond when feedback is met with sadness or anger from the recipient?
-If the recipient seems sad or mad, it is a cue to move up on the care personally dimension by showing more empathy and concern. If they seem dismissive, it may be necessary to challenge more directly.
Why did the speaker initially hesitate to give a talk at a company with policies they disagreed with?
-The speaker was tempted not to go because they disagreed with the company's policies. However, they realized that avoiding dialogue would go against the spirit of radical candor and the belief that unchallenged beliefs become prejudices.
What is the virtuous cycle that radical candor can create in relationships?
-When we care about someone, it becomes easier to challenge them directly. And when we challenge them directly, it becomes easier to care about them, creating a virtuous cycle of mutual understanding and respect.
How can radical candor contribute to better relationships, team culture, and societal cohesion?
-By practicing radical candor, we can build better one-on-one relationships, help foster a more open and honest team culture, and potentially bridge divides in society by promoting respectful dialogue and understanding different perspectives.
Outlines
🤔 Exploring Radical Candor and Obnoxious Aggression
The speaker introduces the concept of radical candor, which involves caring personally and challenging directly at the same time. Obnoxious aggression occurs when people challenge directly but forget to show care, leading to ineffective communication and damaged relationships. The speaker emphasizes the importance of avoiding obnoxious aggression and manipulative insincerity, which can create a toxic workplace culture.
🚫 The Pitfalls of Ruinous Empathy
The speaker narrates a personal experience with an employee named Alex, illustrating the concept of ruinous empathy. Despite Alex's poor work performance, the speaker failed to provide direct feedback out of misguided kindness and fear of damaging their reputation. This resulted in prolonged issues and ultimately Alex's termination. The speaker vows to avoid repeating this mistake and highlights the dangers of ruinous empathy in team cultures and societies.
✨ Embracing Radical Candor and Respecting Differences
The speaker discusses how radical candor can improve team cultures by fostering open communication and addressing issues promptly. They also emphasize the importance of practicing radical candor at a societal level, respecting differences, and engaging in dialogue with those holding opposing views. The speaker shares a personal experience of attending a conference with people whose policies they disagreed with, recognizing the value in understanding their perspective and finding common ground.
🔑 The Radical Candor Order of Operations
The speaker outlines the radical candor order of operations: soliciting feedback, giving praise, providing direct feedback when work isn't good enough, and gauging the listener's reaction. They emphasize the importance of adapting the approach based on the listener's responses, such as showing more care when the listener seems sad or mad, and challenging more directly when the listener brushes off the feedback. The speaker encourages the audience to practice radical candor for better relationships, team culture, and societal confluence.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Radical Candor
💡Ruinous Empathy
💡Obnoxious Aggression
💡Manipulative Insincerity
💡Soliciting Feedback
💡Gauge the Feedback
💡Respect
💡Confluence
💡Team Culture
💡Prejudices
Highlights
I started thinking about this back in 1999 I had started a software company, and I came into the office one day, and about half the people in the company had sent me the same article about how everyone would rather have a boss who is really mean but competent a total jerk but confident then one who is really nice but incompetent.
I learned exactly nothing about management, but I did learn one really important thing all of life's hardest problems can be solved with a good two by two framework so that is how I started thinking about this problem.
I was unwilling to let go of my desire to show that I cared personally that is what for me gave work meaning but also had to learn how to challenge directly, and I had to learn how to do both at the same time and over time I came to think about caring and challenging at the same time as radical Candor.
The easiest way to understand what radical Candor is, is to think about what happens when we mess up on one dimension or another as we are all bound to do from time to time.
Sometimes we remember to challenge directly but we forget to show that we care personally and this I call obnoxious aggression.
Obnoxious aggression is a problem because it hurts people primarily it's a problem because it hurts people but it's also a problem because it's inefficient, if I act like a total jerk to you then you're likely to go into fight or flight mode in your brain and then you literally cannot hear what I'm saying so I'm just wasting my breath.
If obnoxious aggression is front stabbing manipulative insincerity is backstabbing it's passive passive aggressive behavior this is where all the most toxic kinds of workplace Behavior or frankly Behavior at home in any relationship that you have in any part of your life creep in.
The vast majority of us make the vast majority of our mistakes in this last quadrant where we do remember to show that we care personally, because you know what most people are actually pretty nice people so we do remember to show that we care personally, but we're so worried about not hurting someone's feelings or not offending someone that we fail to tell them something they'd be better off knowing in the long run and this is what I call ruinous empathy.
I had just hired this person Alex we'll call this person Alex, and I liked Alex a lot Alex was smart, Alex was Charming Alex was funny Alex would do stuff like we're at a manager off-site playing one of those endless get to know you games and Alex was the person who had the courage to raise their hand and to say I can tell that everyone is really stressed out I've got an idea it'll help us get to know each other better and it'll be really fast.
One problem with Alex, Alex was doing terrible work absolutely sort of creative and unusual but tons of sloppy mistakes I was so puzzled I couldn't understand because Alex what was going on because Alex had this incredible resume this great history of accomplishments I learned much later that Alex was smoking pot in the bathroom three times a day which maybe explained all that candy that he had, but I didn't know any of that at the time all I knew is that Alex would hand stuff into me with shame in his eyes, he knew his work wasn't nearly good enough and I would say something to him along the lines of oh Alex you're so smart you're so awesome everybody loves working with you this is a great start, maybe you can make it just a little bit better which of course he never did.
Part of it was truly ruinous sympathy I really did like Alex and I really did not want to hurt his feelings but if I'm honest with myself there was something more Insidious going on as well because Alex was popular and Alex was sensitive and there was part of me that was afraid that if I told Alex in no uncertain terms that his work wasn't nearly good enough he would get upset he might even start to cry and then everyone would think I was a big you know what and so the part of me that was worried about my reputation as a leader that was a manipulative insincerity part the part of me that was worried about Alex's feelings that was the ruinous sympathy part.
When I finished explaining to him where things stood he kind of pushed his chair back from the table he looked me right in the eye and they said why didn't you tell me, and as that question was going around in my head with no good answer he looked at me again and he said why didn't anyone tell me I thought you all cared about me.
Now I want to talk to you not only about how this works how ruinous empathy Works in one-on-one relationships it also works on team culture or doesn't work.
Sometimes it turns out that a whole society is polarized anybody ever know such such a society we're polarized and we're not talking to each other we're talking about each other and we're sticking with the people who agree with us.
I was tempted not to go and then I thought that does not seem like it's in the spirit of radical Candor in fact I believe very deeply that unchallenged beliefs become prejudices so I needed to go to this place and talk to these people not because I was going in prepared to change my mind if I'm honest I was not but I also wasn't going in trying to change their mind I was going in thinking if I understand their point of view it will help me deepen my thinking and maybe I can find some common ground with these people you're going to hear more about common ground maybe I can learn to like these people.
Transcripts
[Music]
thank you
[Applause]
how can you all say what you mean
without being mean
I started thinking about this back in
1999 I had started a software company
and I came into the office one day
and about half the people in the company
had sent me the same article about how
everyone would rather have a boss
who is really mean but competent a total
jerk but confident then one who is
really nice but incompetent and I
thought gosh are they sending me this
because they think I'm a jerk or because
they think I'm incompetent
and surely those are not my only two
choices
now I went to business school and there
I learned exactly nothing about
management
but I did learn one really important
thing all of life's hardest problems can
be solved with a good two by two
framework so that is how I started
thinking about this problem
I was unwilling to let go of my desire
to show that I cared personally that is
what for me gave work meaning but also
had to learn how to challenge directly
and I had to learn how to do both at the
same time and over time I came to think
about caring and challenging at the same
time as radical Candor now the easiest
way to understand what radical Candor is
is to think about what happens when we
mess up on one dimension or another as
we are all bound to do from time to time
sometimes we remember to challenge
directly but we forget to show that we
care personally and this I call
obnoxious aggression
anybody ever seen any obnoxious
aggression and this is a problem
obnoxious aggression is a problem
because it hurts people primarily it's a
problem because it hurts people but it's
also a problem because it's inefficient
if I act like a total jerk to you then
you're likely to go into fight or flight
mode in your brain and then you
literally cannot hear what I'm saying so
I'm just wasting my breath and then
there's a third more subtle problem with
obnoxious aggression I don't know about
you but for me when I realize I've acted
like a jerk it is not my instinct to go
the right way on care personally instead
it's my instinct to go the wrong way on
challenge directly oh it's no big deal
it doesn't really matter and then I wind
up in the worst place of all
manipulative insincerity
if obnoxious aggression is front
stabbing manipulative insincerity is
backstabbing it's passive passive
aggressive behavior this is where all
the most toxic kinds of workplace
Behavior or frankly Behavior at home in
any relationship that you have in any
part of your life creep in
and it is fun to tell stories about
obnoxious aggression and manipulative
insincerity because this is where the
drama is however the vast majority of us
make the vast majority of our mistakes
in this last quadrant where we do
remember to show that we care personally
because you know what most people are
actually pretty nice people so we do
remember to show that we care personally
but we're so worried about not hurting
someone's feelings or not offending
someone that we fail to tell them
something they'd be better off knowing
in the long run and this is what I call
ruinous empathy
empathy is a good thing ruinous empathy
is not in order to explain to you what I
mean by this I want to tell you a story
about possibly the most painful moment
of my career I had just hired this
person Alex we'll call this person Alex
and I liked Alex a lot Alex was smart
Alex was Charming Alex was funny Alex
would do stuff like we're at a manager
off-site playing one of those endless
get to know you games and Alex was the
person who had the courage to raise
their hand and to say I can tell that
everyone is really stressed out I've got
an idea it'll help us get to know each
other better and it'll be really fast
whatever Alex's idea was if it was fast
we were down with it
Alex says let's just go around the table
and confess what candy our parents used
when potty training us really weird but
really fast
weirder yet we all remembered Hershey
kisses right here
and then for the next 10 months every
time there was a tense moment in the
meet in a meeting Alex would whip out
just the right piece of candy for the
right person at the right moment
so Alex brought a little levity to the
office everybody loved working with Alex
one problem with Alex
Alex was doing terrible work absolutely
sort of creative and unusual but tons of
sloppy mistakes I was so puzzled I
couldn't understand because Alex what
was going on because Alex had this
incredible resume this great history of
accomplishments I learned much later
that Alex was smoking pot in the
bathroom three times a day which maybe
explained all that candy that he had
but I didn't know any of that at the
time all I knew is that Alex would hand
stuff into me with shame in his eyes
he knew his work wasn't nearly good
enough and I would say something to him
along the lines of oh Alex you're so
smart you're so awesome everybody loves
working with you this is a great start
maybe you can make it just a little bit
better which of course he never did okay
so let's pause for a moment what was
going on there part of it was truly
ruinous sympathy I really did like Alex
and I really did not want to hurt his
feelings but if I'm honest with myself
there was something more Insidious going
on as well because Alex was popular and
Alex was sensitive and there was part of
me that was afraid that if I told Alex
in no uncertain terms that his work
wasn't nearly good enough he would get
upset he might even start to cry and
then everyone would think I was a big
you know what and so the part of me that
was worried about my reputation as a
leader that was a manipulative
insincerity part the part of me that was
worried about Alex's feelings that was
the ruinous sympathy part
so this kind of toxic mixture goes on
for about 10 months and eventually the
inevitable happens and I realized that
if I don't fire Alex
I'm going to lose all my best performers
because not only have I been unfair to
Alex not to tell him so that he could
fix things I've been unfair to the whole
team their deliverables were late
because his deliverables were late they
couldn't spend as much time on their
work as they needed to because they were
constantly having to redo his work and
the people who were the best performers
on my team they were just going to quit
they wanted to be able to work in a
place where they could do their best
work
and so I sat down to have a conversation
with Alex that I should have started
frankly 10 months previously and when I
finished explaining to him where things
stood he kind of pushed his chair back
from the table he looked me right in the
eye and they said why didn't you tell me
and as that question was going around in
my head with no good answer he looked at
me again and he said why didn't anyone
tell me I thought you all cared about me
and now I realize that by not telling
Alex thinking I was being so nice
sparing his feelings he's now getting
fired as a result of it not so nice
after all it was a terrible moment in my
career but it was too late to save Alex
even Alex at this point agreed he should
go because his reputation on the team
was just shot
all I could do in that moment was make
myself a very solemn promise that I
would never make that mistake again and
that I would do everything in my power
to help other people avoid making that
mistake and that is why I'm here talking
to you all today
now I want to talk to you not only about
how this works how ruinous empathy Works
in one-on-one relationships it also
works on team culture or doesn't work
often I'll work with the team and they
start out radically candid small group
of people they know each other really
well it's kind of easy for them to show
they care and Challenge and then because
of that they find some success and they
grow and then they succumb to the
gravitational pull of ruinous empathy
and then things start going wrong but
nobody wants to be mean nobody wants to
talk to anybody else everybody's getting
really agitated and then finally
somebody bursts out and says the thing
anybody ever see that happen
maybe not in the best way but it works
and because it works they do it again
but maybe they do it a little more and
because everybody else is so determined
to be nice they say things like oh she
didn't mean any harm or oh he's a good
guy and then the next thing you know
this person is promoted now
anybody ever see this happen there comes
a moment on every team's history when
the jerks begin to win and that is when
the culture begins to lose because what
happens next everybody moves down to
manipulative insincerity they're talking
badly about this person behind this
person's back but they are not talking
to the person
it does not have to be this way folks if
you notice this happening your team's
sort of drifting over to ruinous empathy
it's possible to move over to radical
Candor that's not going to solve all
problems people will still make a
mistake but you can tell them about that
mistake in a way that allows them to
make things better
now it's not only the culture on teams
where this happens sometimes it happens
in a whole society sometimes it turns
out that a whole society is polarized
anybody ever know such such a society
we're polarized and we're not talking to
each other we're talking about each
other and we're sticking with the people
who agree with us and I am no better
than the rest of us on this I recently
was invited to give a talk at a company
whose policies I disagreed with pretty
vehemently
and I was tempted not to go and then I
thought that does not seem like it's in
the spirit of radical Candor in fact I
believe very deeply that unchallenged
beliefs become prejudices so I needed to
go to this place and talk to these
people not because I was going in
prepared to change my mind if I'm honest
I was not but I also wasn't going in
trying to change their mind I was going
in thinking if I understand their point
of view it will help me deepen my
thinking and maybe I can find some
common ground with these people you're
going to hear more about common ground
maybe I can learn to like these people
and as I gave the talk I got to the Q a
and it was going really well we were
having a great conversation there was
this voice inside my head like screaming
at me saying Kim
these people are not your enemies these
are your fellow Americans
and it really made me take a deep breath
I was like why would I not have come to
speak with these people after the after
the conference was over somebody came up
to me and said Kim do you believe this
do you believe that I said yes I did
they kind of cocked their head and they
said huh you don't seem like an evil
person
and I would have thought that person was
ridiculous except that I had just had
pretty much the same thought myself five
minutes previously so how does this work
uh some of the best relationships of my
career have happened with people who I
disagree with and because I care about
these people it's easier for me to
challenge them and because I challenge
them it's easier to care it's a virtuous
cycle radical Candor and the reason why
it works is that we both of us believe
that the floor on the care personally
dimension of radical Candor is respect
respect is something we owe to everyone
and we when we can show respect and
common human decency we actually wind up
loving the people who we work with not
in the HR disaster sense of the word
that we read so much about today but in
the true sense of collegiality so to
understand how to do this I want to
explain to you the radical can or order
of operations going back to this Alex
story
I failed pretty much on all Dimensions
with Alex I failed to solicit feedback
radical Candor no matter who you are
should always start with soliciting
feedback don't dish it out before you
prove you can take it but I didn't do
that with Alex so let's give me a report
card I failed to solicit praise and I
failed to ask Alex what I could do or
stop doing that might make it easier for
him to work with me
maybe just maybe I was doing something
that was frustrating Alex so much he was
forced to took up in the bathroom three
times a day I don't know because I never
asked him right so solicit feedback
you also need to give praise the kind of
Praise I gave to Alex was really just a
head fake and you need to tell people
when their work isn't nearly good enough
but because I failed to do that I
couldn't possibly gauge how my feedback
was Landing so I'm going to give myself
an incomplete there so what do I mean by
gauge the feedback this is where you can
use this framework
remember radical Candor gets measured
not in the speaker's mouth
but at the listener's ear so but how do
you know what's going on inside someone
else's ear
you can use this framework if the other
person seems sad that is your cue to
move up on the care personally Dimension
if the other person seems mad that is
also your cue to move up on the care
personally Dimension but it's pretty
hard to care personally about someone
who's yelling at you so what can you do
in these moments you're probably mad
back when you're Furious get curious or
get curious not Furious if you're
batting above average try to move up on
why is this person so mad
last but not least there are times when
you'll say the thing you'll work up your
courage to say the thing and then the
person will just brush you off this is
your cue to move out further than you're
comfortable going on the challenge
directly dimension
so if you can all go forth and be
radically candid you will have better
relationships one-on-one relationships
you can help build a better
culture at work and you can help build
Confluence in society thank you all so
much
[Applause]
thank you thank you thank you
[Applause]
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