How to lead with radical candor | Kim Scott | TEDxPortland

TEDx Talks

23 Oct 202316:09

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

00:00

🤔 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.

05:00

🚫 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.

10:02

✨ 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.

15:04

🔑 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

Radical Candor is a management philosophy that encourages direct and honest feedback while also showing care and respect for the person receiving the feedback. It involves challenging people directly while simultaneously caring about them personally. The speaker explains that Radical Candor is the key to building better relationships, fostering a positive team culture, and promoting open dialogue in society.

💡Ruinous Empathy

Ruinous Empathy refers to the practice of avoiding difficult conversations or withholding feedback out of a misguided sense of sympathy or fear of hurting someone's feelings. The speaker illustrates this concept through the story of Alex, an employee whose poor performance was never addressed due to the speaker's reluctance to provide direct feedback. Ruinous Empathy can be detrimental as it prevents people from receiving valuable information that could help them improve.

💡Obnoxious Aggression

Obnoxious Aggression is the opposite of Ruinous Empathy, where a person challenges others directly but fails to show care or concern for them personally. The speaker warns that Obnoxious Aggression can be hurtful and ineffective, as it often causes people to become defensive or shut down, making it difficult for the message to be received.

💡Manipulative Insincerity

Manipulative Insincerity refers to passive-aggressive behavior or talking behind someone's back rather than addressing issues directly. The speaker describes it as the worst possible combination, where neither care nor direct challenge is present. Manipulative Insincerity can lead to a toxic work environment and undermine trust and open communication.

💡Soliciting Feedback

Soliciting Feedback is the first step in the Radical Candor process, where one seeks feedback from others before providing feedback themselves. The speaker emphasizes the importance of being open to receiving feedback and proving that one can handle it before dishing it out. Soliciting Feedback demonstrates respect and creates a foundation for open communication.

💡Gauge the Feedback

Gauging the Feedback refers to the process of observing and understanding how the recipient is reacting to the feedback being provided. The speaker suggests using cues like sadness or anger as indications to adjust one's approach, either by showing more care or escalating the directness of the challenge. Gauging the Feedback ensures that the message is being received effectively.

💡Respect

Respect is highlighted as the foundation for Radical Candor, as it is something that should be extended to everyone, regardless of differences or disagreements. The speaker emphasizes the importance of showing respect and common human decency in order to build strong relationships, even with those whose views may differ from one's own.

💡Confluence

Confluence refers to the coming together or meeting of different perspectives or ideas. The speaker suggests that practicing Radical Candor can help build confluence in society by promoting open dialogue, understanding, and finding common ground among diverse viewpoints, rather than engaging in polarization or talking about each other rather than to each other.

💡Team Culture

Team Culture refers to the shared values, behaviors, and norms that shape the way a team operates and interacts. The speaker emphasizes the importance of cultivating a culture of Radical Candor within teams, as it can prevent the gravitational pull towards Ruinous Empathy or Obnoxious Aggression, which can damage team dynamics and performance.

💡Prejudices

Prejudices are preconceived opinions or attitudes, often based on limited or biased information. The speaker cautions that unchallenged beliefs can solidify into prejudices, highlighting the importance of engaging with different viewpoints and perspectives in order to deepen one's understanding and avoid becoming entrenched in fixed mindsets.

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.