Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542

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The whole point of hiring people is to encourage them to make a contribution. I mean, there's no point at all in hiring great people and then telling them to sit down and shut up, which is really what bias, prejudice, and bullying in different ways do to people.
I think it's important for leaders to learn how to teach their teams to disrupt bias in the moment. If we ignore these comments, then we reflect and reinforce them.
Welcome to Passion Struck. Hi, I'm your host, John R.
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Hey, PassionStruck fam. Welcome back to episode 542 of the PassionStruck podcast.
I'm your host, John Miles, and I am so grateful for your continued energy, passion, and commitment to living a more intentional life. Week after week, you show up ready to elevate yourselves, and that's what makes this community so powerful.
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Before we dive into today's episode, let's take a moment to recap my conversation from earlier this week. On Tuesday, we were joined by Cody Sanchez, author of Main Street Millionaire, who challenged us to rethink wealth creation through her innovative approach to investing in sweaty and boring businesses.
Cody shared actionable strategies for building financial freedom by acquiring established, cash-flowing businesses. This is an unmissable episode for anyone looking to escape the grind and unlock generational wealth.
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Today, we're diving into a transformative conversation that will reshape how you think about leadership, collaboration, and building thriving relationships. I'm joined by Kim Scott, celebrated author of Radical Candor and her latest release, Radical Respect.
Kim's pioneering work has redefined how leaders approach feedback, foster resilient teams, and create workplace cultures where everyone can thrive. Kim's journey is a testament to resilience, adaptability, and purpose.
Before co-founding Radical Candor, she held pivotal leadership roles at tech giants like Google, coached executives at companies like Dropbox and Twitter, and taught at Apple University. Her intentional approach to leadership has made a profound impact on countless organizations.
In today's episode, Kim shares actionable strategies to help you master the art of feedback, balancing kindness and clarity to elevate your personal and professional relationships. You'll learn how to tackle common obstacles that undermine collaboration, avoid the traps of ruinous empathy and obnoxious aggression and build a culture of

intentional respect. If you're ready to grow as a leader, improve your relationships, and create

environments where respect fuels high performance, this conversation is for you. Kim's insights will

inspire you to lead with purpose, authenticity, and compassion. So let's get started with this

dynamic and empowering discussion with Kim Scott. Thank you for choosing PassionStruck and choosing

me to be your host and guide on your journey to creating an intentional life. Now, let that journey begin.
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Visit IXL.com slash 20 to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. I am so honored to have a guest I've always wanted to have on the show today.
Kim Scott, welcome to the PassionStruck podcast. Thank you so much.
The honor is mine. I love what you do, and I'm excited to have a great conversation with you today.
I first read this book, which we're going to talk about, Radical Candor, during my time as I was transitioning from Lowe's to Dell. And the wisdom, especially when I was in the Dell environment, was truly transformational for me.
And then more recently, I picked up an audio book of Radical Respect. So I can't show it, unfortunately, for those who are watching.
But to kick things off, there it is. You've got it.
Can you share with us the journey that took you from writing Radical Candor to Radical Respect? What inspired you to build on that earlier work? Sure. In many ways, Radical Respect is a prequel to Radical Candor.
Radical Candor is all about feedback and caring personally and challenging directly. And if you write a book about feedback, you're going to get a lot of it.
And indeed I did. And some of the best feedback I got came when I was at a tech company in San Francisco giving a Radical Candor talk.
And I was really excited to do this talk because the CEO of that company had been a colleague of mine for the better part of a decade. She's a person I like and respect enormously.
And when I finished giving the Radical Candor talk, she pulled me aside and she said, Kim, I'm excited to roll out Radical Candor. I think it's going to help me build the kind of innovative culture that I need in order to succeed.
But I got to tell you, it's much harder for me to roll it out than it is for you. And she went on to explain to me that as soon as she would offer people even the most compassionate, gentle criticism, they would call her an angry black woman.
And as soon as she said it, I knew it was true. And I knew how unfair it was, because she's one of the most even-keeled, cheerful people I've ever worked with.
And as soon as she said this to me, I had four different realizations at the same time. And these actually became the four chapters of the book.
The first thing that I realized was that I had not been the kind of colleague that I imagined myself to be. I had not been an upstander.
Instead, I had been a silent bystander, which is not who I want to be, not how I imagined myself to be. But I had never taken into account the toll that it must take on her to have to show up unfailingly cheerful and pleasant in every meeting we had ever been in together, even though she had what to be pissed off about at work, as we all do.
And so that was realization number one. I wanted to think about how I could be a better upstander in the future.
The second thing that I realized was that not only had I been in denial about what

was happening to her, I'd also been in denial about what was happening to me in the workplace. Hard for the author of a book called Radical Candor to admit, but I was pretending that a whole host of disrespectful attitudes and behaviors were not happening to me that were actually happening.
And by being in denial that way, I was not able to choose a response. I defaulted to silence.
Again, not how I want to go through life. But so often I was just pretending that these things were not happening when they were in fact happening.
And I think I did that because I never wanted to think of myself as a victim. But even less than wanting to think of myself as a victim, did I want to think of myself as the culprit? So the third thing that I recognized was that I had been most deeply in denial about the times when I was the one who had been disrespectful to my colleagues, making it harder than it needed to be for them to get their work done.
And the fourth thing that I realized is that I imagined myself to be this leader who creates these zones where everybody does the best work of their lives and builds the best relationships of their career. But by pretending that these disrespectful attitudes and behaviors were not happening when they were in fact happening, I was not able to live up to the person that I, the kind of leader that I want to be.
So that was a big drink of water, but that was really what made me decide to take a step back and to think about what are the things we can do as leaders, as upstanders, as people who have been on the receiving end of disrespectful attitudes and behaviors, and also as people who have hurt other people inadvertently, I hope, with disrespectful attitudes and behaviors. So what are the things we can do to get the workplace back on track, to build a respectful culture? The company culture is so interesting to me, and I'll just talk about Lowe's and Dell for a second.
When I was at Lowe's, even though we were $48 billion in revenue, much of the company, especially before the headquarters moved to Mooresville and was still up in Wilkesboro, still felt like it was a small family-owned company. And everywhere you went, the leadership constantly talked about the values.
It was on our walls. It was right when you walked in.
The CEO, every time he talked, would emphasize the points. Store operators would emphasize the points.
And then when I went to Dell, it was quite a change because the values were rarely talked about at all. And when I looked at it even deeper, when you walk the halls of Lowe's, I bet you one out of every two employees, weared some Lowe's branded apparel, whether it was a lot of pricing.
Yeah, lots of pride. And at Dell, during my time there, people didn't want to be seen, especially out in town wearing a Dell shirt.
So it was such a difference. That was 10, 12, 13 years ago.
And you would think that we would be better at transforming workplace culture. So why do you think having a respectful, candid workplace is still relatively rare? I think that let's start with the radical candor framework.
Radical candor is just about caring personally and challenging directly at the same time. And that hardly sounds radical.
I mean, it seems like table stakes. Like very few people say, oh, I don't care about others.
So I'm going to be a great leader, employee, colleague, whatever. And we imagine that we challenge directly.
So I think there's a couple of things that make it hard. I mean, there's a million things, but I'll boil it down to two.
I think that very often we don't show that we care because we're told from the time that we get our first job, we're 18, 19, 20 years old, we're told be professional. When you're right at that moment, when you get your first job, where your ego is maximally fragile and your persona, your mask of command is beginning to solidify.
And when someone says be professional to a young person at that moment, it's easy to translate that to mean leave who you really are, leave your emotions, leave your humanity, leave everything that's best and most real about you at home and show up at work like some kind of robot. And you can't possibly care personally if you're showing up at work like some kind of robot.
You also, by the way, cannot possibly compete with AI. So don't bother showing up like a robot.
You've got to bring your full humanity to work. And in terms of challenge directly, I think the problem begins not when we are 18 years old, but when we're 18 months old.
We have a parent or somebody, a teacher who says, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. And tons of people that I talked to were told that.
And that makes it really hard to challenge directly. The instinct becomes to say nothing.
But if you say nothing, problems get worse. Problems of behavior, problems of poor performance.
And so we need to learn how to show we care and the challenge at the same time. And when we do both at the same time, that's radical candor.
But it's easy if you think about it in terms of a two by two, there's three different mistakes you could make. Sometimes we do remember to challenge directly, but we forget to show that we care personally.
And that is what I call obnoxious aggression. And obnoxious aggression is a problem because if I act like a jerk to someone, I hurt them.
But it's also a problem for a more subtle reason. It's a problem because if I am a big jerk to you, you're likely to go into fight or flight mode.
And then you literally cannot hear what I'm saying.

So I'm wasting my breath. So it's inefficient.
It's mean, it's inefficient. And there's a third and more subtle problem, which is, I don't know about you, but for me, when I realize I've landed in the obnoxious aggression quadrant, when I realize I've been a jerk, it's not my instinct to go the right way on care personally.
Instead, it's my instinct to go the wrong way on challenge directly. 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 where passive aggressive behavior, political behavior, all of the things that erode trust in the workplace most quickly creep in.
And yet, these two mistakes, although that's where the drama is, so when we talk about things going wrong, we tend to talk about those two mistakes, but those are not the most common mistakes we make. The vast majority of people make the vast majority of their mistakes when we remember to show that we care personally, but we're so worried about not hurting someone's feelings or offending them that we fail to tell them something they'd be better off knowing in the long run.
And that's what I call ruinous empathy. So that's like a quick snapshot of what radical candor is and what it's not and why it's so hard, why it's so rare, because it's not instinctive.
It's not instinctive at all. And in fact, most of us consciously, or I should say unconsciously default to one of those areas in the quadrant based on what I've done in my career.
This leads me to one of the most famous and impactful stories that's in Radical Candor, the one about Bob. And I think that this is something I too have seen as a leader.
You have someone on your team, like a Bob. I used to call him a plotter because they were typically a really nice person, got along with everyone, but they really weren't moving the needle in their career.
But you want to keep them along because they're not hurting the culture. People like them, but you're just moving the person along, but you're not really helping them improve their performance.
And this is what was happening with Bob. You were avoiding giving him honest feedback to spare his feelings.
And it ultimately led to a situation that you admit could have been prevented. Can you share a little bit more about this story of Bob and what the experience taught you about the power of our choices as leaders, especially when it comes to balancing kindness with the need to be direct? Yeah, absolutely.
And I think as I tell you the Bob story and for all the folks out there listening, I want you to think about your Bob story because everyone, I'm going to tell a painful story about a big mistake I made, but I'm not alone. I think almost everyone has made some version of this mistake.
And if you think about your Bob story, that is what will help you move from ruinous empathy to radical candor more than anything else you could do is just think of your story, your Bob story, and give it a title. And then when you're tempted not to say the thing, you'll remember the story and you'll say the thing.
So here's what happened to me. I had hired this guy.
I really liked him a lot. He was smart.
He was charming. He was funny.
His name was not really Bob, by the way. And he would do things like we were at a manager offsite and we were playing one of those endless get to know you games.
And everybody was getting more and more stressed out. It was a software startup.
There was what to be stressed out about. and Bob was the guy who had the courage to raise his hand and to say, I can tell everyone wants to get back to work.
I've got an idea. It'll be really fast.
Whatever his idea was, if it was fast, we were down with it. And then Bob says, let's just go around the table and confess what candy our parents used when potty training us.

Really weird, but really fast.

Weirder yet, we all remembered Hershey Kisses right here.

And then for the next 10 months, every time there was a tense moment in a meeting, Bob

would pull out just the right piece of candy for the right person at the right moment.

So Bob brought a little bit of levity to the office. Quirky, but funny.
Everybody loved working with Bob. There was one problem with Bob.
He was doing terrible work. He would hand stuff in, super creative, but filled with messy mistakes, sloppy mistakes, careless mistakes.
And I would say something to him along the lines of, oh, Bob, this is a great start. You're so smart.
You're so awesome. We all love working with you.
Maybe you can make it just a little bit better, which of course he never did. So let's pause.
Why did I say that to Bob? Part of it was truly ruinous empathy. I really did love Bob and I really did not want to hurt his feelings.
But if I'm honest with myself, there was something more insidious going on because Bob was popular and Bob was sensitive. And there was part of me that was afraid that if I told Bob in no uncertain terms that his work wasn't nearly good enough, he would get upset.
He might even start to cry.

And then everyone would think I was a big you-know-what. The part of me that was worried

about my reputation as a leader, that was the manipulative insincerity part. The part of me

that was truly worried about Bob and his feelings, that was the ruinous empathy part. And this went on for 10 months and eventually the inevitable happened.
And I realized that if I didn't fire Bob, I was going to lose all my best performers. Because not only have I been unfair to Bob not to tell him what he was doing wrong, I've been unfair to the whole team and everyone is frustrated.
Their deliverables are late because Bob's deliverables are late. They're not able to spend as much time as they need to on their work because they're having to spend so much time redoing Bob's work and correcting his mistakes.
And the people who are best at the job, they were going to quit. They were going to leave.
They were going to go work somewhere where they could do the best work of their lives. And so I decided it was time, past time, for me to sit down and have a conversation with Bob that I should have begun, frankly, 10 months previously.
And when I finished explaining to him where things stood, he pushed his chair back from the table. He looked me right in the eye and he 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 realized that by not having this conversation with Bob sooner, thinking I was being so nice, I'm having to fire him as a result of it. Not so nice after all.
But it was too late to save Bob because at this point, even he agreed he should go. His reputation on the team was just shot.
All I could do in the moment was make myself a very solemn promise that I would never make that mistake again and that I would do everything and my power to help other people avoid making that mistake. Because it was so painful.
It was painful for me. It was obviously much worse for Bob and his family.
And it was bad for the whole team. And it was bad for our investors because we weren't getting the kind of results that we could have otherwise gotten.
And yet it was a terrible, it was too late to save the situation. Bob had decided he should go.
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 because it's painful. So that's really why I'm talking to you today and talking to your folks today, why I wrote the book, et cetera, et cetera.
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I made a similar mistake. I had this position that was really important for me to fill when I was at Lowe's.
It was a job where I really wanted someone to be creative more than an operational person because I thought we needed that in this job. And I heard this person who during the interview said the right things, seemed to be creative.
And when we were one-on-one would say really creative things. But when he got out in front of his peer group, it was like he was paralyzed and he had these great ideas, but he was almost afraid to express himself.
And it got to a point where my peers started telling me that there was something we needed to do about the situation. And I handled it wrong.
I tried to bolster him up instead of challenging him directly and making things clearer than, so he understood how much he was failing. And it ended up that I had to let him go primarily because no one was willing to work with him and it was causing his peers to lose trust and my other team leaders to start just questioning what is going on here.
And so in a situation like that, how could I have done a better job at being heard? How could I address the emotions in the room to make this person feel more comfortable in giving feedback that they needed to express their creativity? And how could I have done a better job in bolstering them up while also letting them know that they were in a situation that if they didn't correct it quickly, it was going to be unattainable for them to fix it? Yeah. First of all, I have a lot of compassion for you for being in that situation.
Like every great leader has been in that situation. And I think part of the issue is that it's easy to feel like as a leader, your job is to go out and defend your people.
But one of the things that I came to realize over time is that you're not defending your people by not telling them. Like only your employee could fix the problem.
You could say till you're blue in the face that you've heard him say creative ideas, but until his peers hear his ideas and until your peers hear his ideas, he may as well not be having them. And so one of the things that I've done with folks who I know to be brilliant in their work, but somehow they're not showing their brilliance, either because they're afraid or they're too shy or they're introverted, is what I've tried to do is we hired you because you have great ideas.
But if you don't share your ideas with your peers,

if you don't enter the rock tumbler of debate with your peers, then you're never going to make things happen and you're going to fail. And I'm here to help you, but I cannot, if you can't, if you can't share your ideas with your peers, then there's nothing I can do to help you.
So I can help you learn how to find the confidence or maybe it's not lack of confidence. Sometimes people who are introverted feel like the bloviators in the room are taking up all the airspace and they don't want to be that person.
But helping people realize that if they're not contributing to conversation, that they're actually withholding things, they're not being generous to the team, can sometimes help. I mean, what do you think was going on for him? Why do you think he was reluctant to share his ideas more broadly? Well, coming into that environment, his peer group across the board were very strong, and the vast majority of them had been at Lowe's for a very long time it's the same situation I walked into I was the youngest vice president Lowe's I was 10 to 15 years junior in age to almost every one of my peer group and most of these people because they had explosive growth, thought that everything that they were doing- That is a great deodorant, right? And so I was similar to Todd in that I had these creative ideas.
And when you tried to attack them head on, it was meant forcefully with resistance and pushback and topics we're going to get into bullying, et cetera. So I think he might have tried to express himself and got, it wasn't as if one person would just come after you.
I found that they would gang up and come after you. that's what would happen to me.
And so I think what I learned to do and what I should have taught him to do better was to start taking each of these peers one-on-one out for coffee or a lunch to get to know them on a more personal level and to then keep that up so that he could start expressing these ideas to him one-on-one, building some confidence, letting them tell him what they liked about it and what they didn't like about it, and then bring it up in a group meeting when he had socialized it more. And that's something that I learned to do and it worked fairly well.
And I think because he was trying to do this in meetings

as opposed to winning them over more gradually, that's where the issue came in. Yeah.
I think that's such an important point. When you bring someone new into an organization, especially an organization with a lot of people who have a long tenure and there's a strong culture, and you bring someone in part to make change, they often get punished for the change they're trying to make.
And it can feel unfair and infuriating and enraging to that person and helping people. In fact, there's a term for what happens to people who come in to make change.
It's called mobbing. They get mobbed.
And so I think as a leader, figuring out how to help that person learn how to build those one-on-one relationships is really important. I had a similar kind of situation.
I'd been at Apple. I'd left Google.
I'd been at Google for a long time. And then I went to Apple, which had, you would think they're both tech companies and they're a 10 minute drive apart.
They're very different cultures. And after I'd been there a year, this guy who I had worked very closely with said, oh, you are doing this because you care, not because you're trying to drive me crazy.
And I realized I should have taken mouth to lunch a long time ago. Absolutely.
It is so amazing how companies right next door to each other are so different. Yes.
So different. So I had one more question I wanted to ask you on the radical candor front.
You have pointed out, we've been talking about hiring in my scenario, that some leaders believe their job is to simply hire right and then give their team full autonomy, essentially stepping back and becoming hands off. And I love the metaphor that you use for this.
You've compared it to the idea of marrying the right person, but then never spending any time with them. Yeah, that's not going to work out so well for your man.
So how using this as a metaphor, how can leaders strike the right balance between giving autonomy and staying actively engaged with their teams? Yeah. I think one of the things that you want to do is you want to think of yourself as a partner to each of the people who work for you, not like the boss, because telling people what to do doesn't work.
But you want to be, your job is to be a coach, a mentor, a thought partner. Your job is not to be a micromanager.
So I think when people are like, oh, I'm just going to hire the right people and then get out of their way, they're avoiding being a micromanager, which is good, but then they become an absentee manager, which is bad. You don't want to be an absentee manager.
People take a job with you because they want to work with you. They think that you're going to help them grow in their career, succeed in this job.

And that, in fact, is your job as their leader.

You take care of your people and your people take care of the mission.

So one of the things that I think can be really helpful is to become aware of when you're veering too far towards being a micromanager and when you are veering too far towards being an absentee manager. And it's going to be different.
But this is one of the things that I, even after I wrote the book, learned. There's someone who I work very closely with and I like a lot of time alone.
I don't want too much engagement. I like working on projects independently.
I mean, I'm a writer. It's the ultimate independent project.
Although I got a lot of, there were a hundred people giving me feedback on the book. So it wasn't as independent as you might think.
But one person who I work closely with said, I feel like I'm being ignored. I feel like I'm being sent out to do stuff on my own.
I feel lonely. And so I realized that it's important, like one of the, I recommend soliciting feedback.
Don't dish it out before you prove you can take it. And I recommend soliciting feedback at the end of every one-on-one.
And a good question to ask folks is, this week, where did I get involved that you wished I hadn't? And where did I fail to get involved that you wish I had? And that's going to help you find that right balance and recognize that the balance is going to be different for each of the people who work for you because each of them wants something slightly different from you. If you're a parent and want to help set up your child for success, then IXL is a right for your family.
As an effective and affordable online learning program, IXL covers math, language arts, science, and social studies using interactive practice problems for kids from pre-K to 12th grade. Listeners can get an exclusive 20% off IXL membership when they sign up today at IXL.com slash 20.
Visit IXL.com slash 20 to get the most effective learning program out there at the best price. Thank you for sharing that, Kim.
And I wanted to start this next section off by sharing a quote from someone who I think we both admire, Bob Sutton. I've heard you talk about him, and I love Bob.
His quote is, as much as I believe in tolerance and fairness, I have never lost a wink of sleep about being unapologetically intolerant of anyone who refuses to show respect for those around them. With radical respect, you dive deeper into the issues of bias, prejudice, and bullying as obstacles to respectful workplaces, which really gets at the core of, I think, what Bob is talking about here.
Can you explain why these three elements are so detrimental and how they differ from each other? So when I'm talking about respect, and I think also when Bob is talking about respect, it's important to remember there's two different definitions of respect. And we're talking about one, not the other.
So the definition of respect that we're not talking about is the kind of respect that one has to earn. So I have to earn your respect for me as a writer by writing a good book.
But that is, I'm not talking about earned respect. The second definition of respect is the kind of unconditional regard that we owe each other for our shared humanity.
And that's the kind of respect that I think both Bob and I are talking about. And when I sat down to write Radical Respect,

I tried to think about what gets in the way

of that kind of unconditional regard

for our shared humanity.

There's a lot of things,

and they seem to be particularly salient right now

in this moment in history.

But I boiled it down to three,

bias, prejudice, and bullying.

And I think one of the problems

is that we often conflate bias, prejudice, and bullying as though they're one thing. And then the problem of disrespect can begin to feel monolithic and impossible to solve.
So what do you do if you're facing a hard problem? You break it down into its component parts and you solve it one at a time. So one of the things that I am trying to do with Radical Respect is to offer some super

simple definitions of bias. component parts and you solve it one at a time.
So one of the things that I am trying to do with

Radical Respect is to offer some super simple definitions of bias, prejudice, and bullying so that we can distinguish between them. So bias is not meaning it.
It's an unconscious bias is really what I'm talking about. Whereas prejudice is meaning it.
It's a very consciously held belief, usually incorporating some kind of unfair and inaccurate stereotype.

And bullying is just being mean. It's not about a belief, conscious or unconscious.
You're just trying to dominate or coerce someone. And so those are the sort of core three problems that I try to take a look at what we can do as upstanders, as leaders, in order to prevent those things from getting in our team's way of a good, respectful work environment.
This makes me think of a quote. Do you know who Dolly Chug is? Yes.
Love Dolly Chug. She has this quote that the three hardest tasks in the world are neither physical feats nor intellectual achievements but moral acts return love for hate to include the excluded and to say i was wrong yeah i want to tackle the last one why is it so hard for so many leaders to say that they are wrong it's hard it's hard for all of us uh leaders and i think the special difficulty that leaders have is that they don't have to say they're, they have some power and power corrupts.
And so often you can get away without saying you're wrong as a leader. One of the things that I tried to do is to think about times when I was the leader who had not created the great work environment.
And what happened in those times and why was it so hard for me to say that I was wrong? I will say that when I started a software company back in the 90s, I, in 1999, part of the reason why I started the company was because I thought, well, if I'm the, I mean, I had a great business idea, great software idea, but I also felt like if I were the founder and CEO of the company, that all of the BS that happened in other places where I had worked wouldn't happen if I were in charge.

And you know what?

Just because I was in charge and had good intentions did not mean that human nature had changed.

All that BS happened under my watch too.

And that was really hard to come to grips with.

Thank you. charge and had good intentions did not mean that human nature had changed.
All that BS happened under my watch too. And that was really hard to come to grips with.
And so one of the things that I came to realize when I went to work at Google and I was working very closely with Shona Brown, who designed all of Google's management system, she was the head of business operations, is that it's not enough to be a good leader and to have good intentions. It's not enough to be a good person.
You actually need

to design good systems and you need to put some checks on your own power. And so one of the things

that I did as I was writing Radical Respect is I thought about mistakes I had made as a leader

and what I wish I had done. And I also tried to give words to what it's so tempting to do as a

Thank you. radical respect is I thought about mistakes I had made as a leader and what I wish I had done.
And I also tried to give words to what it's so tempting to do as a leader. When I got feedback that I had done something that I had harmed people, I got feedback at one point that I had created a hostile work environment for women, which as a woman was certainly not my intention.
And I dismissed it way too fast. What I did was what Jennifer Fried calls DARVO, deny, attack.
I denied, oh, I didn't do anything wrong. I attacked the person who gave me this feedback.
And then I pretended like I was the victim, reverse victim and offender. That's DARVO, don't DARVO.
And sometimes having a word for a bad response can help us avoid that response, which is why I think Darvo is such a brilliant term that Jennifer Fried coined. In fact, if you want to learn more about it, you can Google Darvo South Park did a whole episode.
So instead of Darvo-ing, what I recommend is, don't say this out loud because it sounds disrespectful, but say in your head, and what does act mean? Be aware of what you did wrong. Like, ignorance is no excuse.
I wasn't aware is not an excuse. Accept the consequences of what you did wrong.
Very often, the reason why we don't do the next thing we should do, which is to acknowledge publicly what we did wrong, is that we're afraid of a lawsuit or something like that.

Accept the consequences.

You made a mistake, you may have to pay for that mistake.

So acknowledge what you did wrong.

Maybe go beyond what the consequences require and actually make amends.

And only after you do those four A's does your apology have any meaning. So then apologize.
And last but not least, the C in ACK stands for change. We all have people in our lives who make the same mistake over and apologize over, and then the apology just becomes an irritant.
So those are some quick thoughts. There's obviously a ton more to it.
Well, thank you for sharing that. And that is absolutely great advice.
And I'm going to have to go and watch that episode of South Park. Yes, it's good.
So on the topic of biases, I wanted to give you a scenario and then I'll ask you a question about it. So Kim, imagine a team meeting where a manager is repeatedly interrupting a female of Indian descent team member.
They're dismissing her ideas while giving more airtime to others. The team senses the bias, but doesn't know how to address it without causing discomfort or escalating tension.
And I was hoping you could attack this as both a bystander and an upstander and how might either group step in to support the team member. Yeah.
So I think as an upstander, the difference between, at least in my mind, the difference between being a bystander and an upstander is that an upstander intervenes in some way. So one way that one can intervene as a bystander, not a bystander, but an upstander is to use an I statement in the meeting.
I think so-and-so just said that. I think that's a great idea.
And that's what so-and-so said a few minutes ago, just point it out. Because again, an I statement, I think an I statement holds up a mirror.
You're assuming that the other person isn't intending to bully or dismiss this person. It's unconscious bias that is playing out.
And so that's what an I statement can do in the moment. One of my favorite stories about the use of an eye stander comes from a guy who went into a meeting with a colleague who's a woman.
They were at a small company. They're meeting with a big company.
So they walk into this conference room and his colleague, the woman had the expertise that was going to win her team the deal. So she sat at the center of the table.
It's this big, long conference table. And the other side came in.
There's 15 of them. The first person sat across, not from her, but from him.
Then the next person sat across from the guy to his left. And then everybody else filed on down the table, leaving her dangling by herself.
And she started talking. That's often how bias shows up, by the way, just who sits next to whom or across from whom.
So she started talking undeterred. And when the other side had questions, they didn't direct them at her.
They directed them at her two colleagues who were met. It happened once.
It happened twice. Finally, the third time it happened, he stood up and he said, I think we should switch seats.
That is all he had to do to totally change the dynamic in the room. Because as soon as he did that, the other side realized what they were doing, and they knocked it off.
They started engaging her. Now, why did he decide to be an upstander in the moment? First of all, there's a practical reason.
He just wanted to win the deal. Second of all, there's an emotional reason.
He liked his colleague and he didn't like seeing her get ignored.

Third of all, he had some compassion for the people who were making this mistake, for the

people who were demonstrating this bias.

He knew that we all have bias.

He had different biases.

And he knew that it would be easier for them to hear it from him than from her.

It wasn't that he thought she couldn't stand up for herself.

But if he had a little compassion for the people who were making this mistake, it would

make it easier for them to correct their mistake.

And for herself, but if he had a little compassion for the people who were making this mistake, it would make it easier for them to correct their mistake. And fourth, there's a self-interested reason for him to do this because I know that everyone listening to us talk has had a moment probably in the last two weeks where someone said or did something that was so outrageous.
It left them just speechless. and then you wake up at three in the morning thinking, why didn't I say anything? So it was a self-protective thing.
He didn't want, because if you are a silent bystander, you wind up suffering what's called a moral injury. You didn't do anything wrong, but you didn't also intervene.
And so you feel slimed by this other person's behavior. So that's an example of using an I statement to be an upstander and using it pretty directly.
However, there's plenty of times in a situation where you can't think of what to say, or you feel like you might make things worse for the person who's on the receiving end of the bias if you intervene directly. So another thing you can do is you can delay your response.
You can just check in with the person who was on the receiving end. So if you didn't feel like it was right to challenge the manager in the meeting, you can check in with that Indian woman afterwards and just say, I'm really sorry this kept happening to you.
I noticed. And that may not feel like much, but it can be really impactful to check in with a person.
I'll give you an example. I one time was giving a presentation to a big team, like 5,000 people.
And the leader of this organization was introducing me and a colleague. And he introduced this colleague first.
My colleague stuck his hand out. The guy shook it.
Then he introduced me. I stuck my hand out for the leader to shake.
And instead of shaking it, he grabbed it and he kissed it, like left spit on the back of my hand. And that was, I mean, that was not the end of the world, but it was a cringe moment.
But what was even worse than his doing that was the fact that not a single one of those 5,000 people came up to me later and said, that was weird. Do you want some hand sanitizer or anything like that? And then I started to gaslight myself.
I was like, maybe I'm overreacting, which is easy to do in those situations. So it can be a big deal to talk to the person afterwards.
You can also just create a distraction. Spill your coffee in the meeting.
See if that helps, especially if you feel like it's not just bias, but maybe this person is bullying. You want to change the dynamic.
You can delegate. If you don't feel like you're the right person to intervene directly, catch someone else's eye, say, and they'll know what you're talking about when you catch their eye and see if they will intervene.
And last but not least, you can document what happened. You can write it down.
We all have these sort of movie cameras in our pockets. But remember, if you document what happened, you don't own that documentation.
The person harmed gets to decide what to do with it. So those are some thoughts on how to be an upstander.
Well, thanks for sharing that. And I'll just give my own quick story.
This is a low story. We, when I got there, had not used any offshore labor.
And we, after a few years, I'd taken over the software development organization and we decided that we were going to do both onshoring and some offshoring. And we hired a company who had put one of their senior executives on the ground at Lowe's to help make this transition better.

And this guy had been around some really powerful companies

where he had made some incredible changes.

And I found when he was coming in meetings,

people would talk over him. They didn't respect him, they wouldn't let him function.
And so I, I recognized it. And I went to him, and told him that I saw what was happening.
And then in the next meeting, I told him I was going to show him support. As he started to talk, I came up and said, I agree with what you're saying.
I'd like to hear more. Or I found ways to support what he was doing.
And it opened it up for everyone else to listen to what he had to say as well. I love that example.
It's a great way of using that I statement. I love what you're saying.
I want to hear more. And you were the leader.
So people were going to, if they weren't going to listen to him, they were going to listen to you and you were telling them to listen to him. I love that.
So Kim, I find oftentimes that can be a more complex issue. Yes.
Even in a diverse, especially in a diverse workplace. And I want you to explain the it statement approach, but I'm going to give you another scenario.

Okay.

A company is holding a very collaborative project kickoff.

You've got multiple functions involved.

Let's just say they want to implement a new HR system.

So they've got a number of people there.

They want this to be positive, but a team member makes a casual but offensive joke that reflects cultural stereotypes. The remark causes discomfort for some of the team members, but no one wants to disrupt the positive tone of the meeting.
How could a leader use an it statement to set boundaries around acceptable behavior without escalating the situation? So I think that an it statement is, it does risk escalating the situation a little bit. So I think that at the same time, you can use an it statement to make a nice.
So here's what I mean. An it statement draws a boundary between one person's freedom to believe whatever they want.
And it sounds like this joke had some belief. It wasn't just a biased joke.
So one person can believe whatever they want, but they can't impose that belief on others. An it statement can appeal to a law.
It can appeal to an HR policy or it can appeal to common sense. So one thing that a leader could say is, it's not okay to tell that kind of joke, and then move on.
I'll give you an example of, and then I think I would pull that person aside and say more. I'll give you an example of an it statement that I wish I had used.
I don't think I really did it as well as I'm about to describe in real life. But this happened to me right after I returned to work from maternity leave.
And so I'd been gone for five months. I just had these twins.
And this is my second day back in the office. So I'm having all the feelings that one has at this moment.
And I was chit-chatting with the guy before meeting. And he said to me,

my. at this moment.
And I was chit-chatting with the guy before meeting. And he said to me, my wife doesn't work because it's bad for the children.
And for me at this moment in time, that was like a punch in the gut. But I didn't think he meant it.
I actually didn't think it was prejudice. I thought it was bias.
And so I said, oh, I decided to show up at work today because I wanted to neglect my children. And I was expecting him to laugh and we would apologize and we would move on.
But that's not what happened. He doubled down and he said, oh, no, Kim, it's really not good that you're back at work.
It's bad for your kids. I'm going to send you some research.
And so now I know this is not unconscious bias. It's actually prejudice.
And so I decided to use an it statement. And the first one I used was going to hurt the good vibes of our chit chat.
And that was intentional. I felt like I had to be willing to do that.
So I said, it is an HR violation for you to tell me that I'm neglecting my kids by showing up at work today. And that had the desired impact.
He backed off. And I wanted that impact because I didn't want him to think he could just say things like that.
And then I said to him, it's not necessary to make a thing of this with HR. So now I'm going to try another it statement using common sense.
I said, but it's my decision together with my partner, how we raise our children, just as it is your decision together with your wife, how you raise your children. And thank goodness you and I are not raising children together.
So it's not relevant to our ability to work together. And he grudgingly acknowledged that.
But I realized I needed to take a third crack at this. So I used the third it statement, also appealing to common sense.
And I said, and it's my guess, you don't want to read my research any more than I want to read your research. And then he laughed and he agreed that that was true.
And I'm not saying this solved all the world's problems. But if I had said nothing, then I would have resented him and it would have been hard for us to work well together.
So I think it was important for our working relationship for me to say something. It was also important, I felt like it was an act of kindness for him.
He was going to get into trouble going around saying things like that. And I felt like it was important for me to say something because for my career, because if he thought I shouldn't even be working, he definitely was going to think I shouldn't travel and he was going to try to prevent me from going on trips.
And I didn't need that at that moment in my career. So that's an example of using an it statement to really block someone's And to just show someone like we can disagree.
There's a whole host of topics about which we can disagree and still work together. And so that I think is really important, especially in this moment in time where half of the nation disagrees so vehemently with the other half of the nation.
It's important for us to learn how to work together better. You are absolutely right.
And that's why on this podcast, I try to stay right in the middle. So bringing topics that benefit everyone.
Yeah. And I try to do that with radical respect as well.
Well, Kim, I want to close out this whole section by talking about the role of upstanders in psychological safety. And I'm going to bring another quote of another behavior scientist who I think captures this really well.
And that's Amy Edmondson, another person I've had on this program. And Amy says, to understand why psychological safety promotes performance, we have to step back to reconsider the nature of so much of the work in today's organizations.
With routine, predictable, modular work on the decline, more and more of the tasks that people do require more and more of the tasks that people do require judgment, coping with uncertainty, suggesting new ideas, and coordinating and communicating with others.

This means that voice, a person's voice is mission critical.

And so for anything, but the most independent of routine work, psychological safety is intimately

tied to freeing people up to pursue excellence.

I love what she writes there.

Yes.

And being an upstander at times can be challenging and sometimes awkward. So how can leaders make sure that this psychological safety is there and respected over pure performance? I think that it's really important for leaders to remember that one of the most important things they can do is solicit feedback.
They can lay their power down and get on a level playing field with others. In fact, Amy Edmondson and I wrote an article together about how important soliciting feedback, not giving it, but soliciting feedback is to creating that culture of psychological safety.
And part of the reason why I think it's so important for leaders to really prevent bias, prejudice, and bullying from getting in their team's way of collaborating is that the whole point of hiring people is to encourage them to make a contribution. I mean,

there's no point at all in hiring great people and then telling them to sit down and shut up,

which is really what bias, prejudice, and bullying in different ways do to people.

And so I think it's important for leaders to learn how to teach their teams to disrupt bias in the moment because if if we ignore bias, if we ignore that joke, if that joke was biased, or I don't know whether the joke was biased or prejudiced, but if we ignore these comments, then we reflect and reinforce them. It's also really important for leaders to create a space for conversation, to talk about where that line is on their team between one person's freedom to believe whatever they want, but not to impose it on others.
Because there's not an absolute, I can't tell you where that line is on your team. Like you've got to define it for yourself.
There's not an absolute answer to where that line ought to be. And so you've got to sit down with your team and make sure that people understand the company's policies and where that line is so that people can use its statements appealing to company policy and your team's norms appropriately.
And then last but not least, I think in terms of preventing bullying on your team, it's really important for leaders to create consequences for bullying. Because if you don't create consequences, it's going to escalate, I can promise you.
And so you want to create conversational consequences. You need to learn how to shut down bullying in a meeting when you notice it happening.
You also need to create compensation consequences. You don't want to give people high ratings if they bully others or a bonus because then you're rewarding it.
Not only are you not stopping the behavior, but you're actually rewarding it. So it's definitely going to escalate.
And thirdly, you've got to create career consequences for bullying on your teams. I think that there comes a moment on too many teams where the jerks begin to win.
And that is the moment when the culture begins to lose. And ultimately, the results will follow.
But it doesn't happen immediately. That's part of the problem.
People think they get away with their bullying. And so you've got to make sure that you're not promoting people who bully others, that you're giving them feedback.
Sometimes people bully others, but they're not aware of the impact. So you want to give the person feedback, give them an opportunity to fix their behavior.
And if they can't fix it, you've got to fire them. Because, and this is really maybe one of the most difficult things, because very often it feels like that person is doing some essential work that they'll leave a hole on your team.
But I'm just going to say it, it's better to have a hole than an asshole. So that's your job as a leader.
And I think I've got a great scenario that this plays into one that everyone can probably relate to. So sales is important to everything that a company does.
And companies want to have high-performing sales executives. And I have seen so many of these executives who consistently hit their targets.
But on the other side, they're reporting to their chain of command that this person is undermining and belittling to other team members and often saying, look how great I'm doing and how poor you're doing and I'm a god and you're not. And the leader who's getting these reports is hesitant to take action because maybe this person is driving 40% of their sales performance and on the surface, they can't afford to have that hole, as you just expressed.
Yes. So could you walk us through the types, starting from conversational to compensation to career consequences, that you could take as that leader who's the boss over this person to address their behavior more effectively? So I think the first thing to realize is that maybe that person is getting 40% of the results of your team because they're preventing other people from getting good results.
And that if you remove that person, your team might not do better. In fact, there's a lot of evidence.
Bob Sutton has evidence in his books about how when you remove that person who is making it hard for the rest of the team to do their best work, the collective efforts of the team improve. So I think that's the important thing to remember.
That kind of behavior is it accrues benefit to the bully and it hurts everybody else. And your job as the leader is to optimize for the collective results, not for one person's results and not to be fooled by that.
So that's number one. So what are the kinds of conversational consequences? Let's say in a meeting, this salesperson says something humiliating or arrogant to others on the team.
I think that is where you say, you can't talk. Use that you statement.
You cannot talk like that in these meetings. You can't talk to your colleagues that way on this team.
Just saying it like that, and you have the authority as the leader to talk that way. It's much harder for the person who's being bullied to say, you can't talk to me like that.
Much easier for you as a leader to say, you can't talk that way on this team. And that will shut the person down and create a small conversational consequence for the person.
You can also make sure that you, there was one tech company where I worked, where they were redoing their compensation system. And you, every employee got rated on three things.
They got a rating on their results, they got a rating on their innovation, and they got a rating on their teamwork. And if you got a low rating for teamwork, that was your rating.
It was not an average. The point is that bullying others, being a bad teammate, is disqualifying for a bonus.
So because there have to be consequences, like if all you give to a bully is feedback, that may not be enough to get them to change their behavior. They may not believe that it really matters.
They often don't because it has worked for them since they were in middle school. So that's part of the problem.
And then thirdly, you got to make sure that you're not, that you're not promoting bullies and that you, in the end, give people that feedback. And because there are, there have been times where I've worked with people who didn't understand the impact that they were having on others.
And so explaining it to them and giving them an opportunity to show me that they care about the impact and that they're trying to change is really important. Not every bully is, I think it's really important.
We're awfully fast to judge at this moment in time. And I think it's really important to work with people.
I absolutely agree. And Kim, to wrap up today, what is one practical step anyone who's listening can do to start implementing and creating a culture of radical candor and respect? I think the most important thing that we can do as leaders is to get on a level playing field and build real human relationships with each of our direct reports.
So the one thing, practical, tactical thing I'm going to leave folks with is make sure that you are soliciting feedback every single time you have a one-on-one with each of your employees and have a one-on-one once a week with each of your employees. Spend that time with them.
And there's four things to remember when you solicit feedback. Because if you say, do you have any feedback for me? You're wasting your breath.
Oh no, everything's fine. So think about the question that you're going to ask.
I like to ask, what could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me? But don't write down my question. Because if you sound like Kim Scott and not like yourself, then people won't believe you really want the answer.
I was working with Krista Quarles when she was CEO of OpenTable, and she said, I could never imagine your words coming out of my mouth, Kim. The question I like to ask is, tell me why I'm wrong.
Okay, that's fine. Ask it in a way that feels authentic to you.
So that's number one, is be. Number two is remember that authenticity does not mean ignoring the impact you're having on others.
So there were some people on Krista's team who found her question too aggressive. So she had to soften it for a couple of people in order to get an answer.
Number three, remember that your question shouldn't be answered with a yes or a no. So don't say, is there anything I could do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me? But what could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me? So if everybody can write down their question, whom they're going to ask it of and when they're going to ask it, our time today will be extremely well spent.
Well, thank you for sharing that. And I

think I'll leave everyone with a good story that I had from my time at Lowe's. One of the most respected people in the entire company was a gentleman named Larry Stone.
Larry, by the time I was working with him, had been in the company for 39 years. He started in the mailroom, had held every job you could have in a store, eventually became president and chief operating officer by the time I really got to work with him.
And I did a number of store visits with him. And every store visit he would do, he would walk up to a cashier or someone in one of the aisles and he would say, if I were wearing your red vest, what is something that I could do to make your job and your life better? Which was a way for them to opening up to him without making them feel like he was putting them on the spot.
I love that. Switching roles is really important.
Like putting yourself in someone else's shoes and letting them step into your shoes is a great way to get on a level playing field. And I think the other thing he did that was so important is before he would go to any store, he knew the stores so well that he would look at all the analytics before he came in.
So if anyone would ever challenge him, he could spout out almost any performance about the store, which also showed to the people there that he cared. Well, Kim, thank you so much for sharing your insights.
Where can the audience find more about your work, your podcast, your books, and how they can apply Radical Candor and respect in their own lives and in their businesses. Absolutely.
If you go to

radicalcandor.com, you can go from there to our podcast, to our newsletter, to the talks and workshops we do for folks. So we'd love to love to hear from people.
You can also send us one of the things we do. I love the stories, John, that you shared with everyone.
And so one of the things you can do is submit dilemmas and we will give you some free advice on the podcast. So we'd love to hear from folks about radical candor and radical respect.
I also want to say we're recording this on Veterans Day. So I want to thank you and all the veterans of our country for their service.
Thank you so much. And I really appreciate that.
And all the veterans who tune into the show on a regular basis. Thank you so much for your service as well.
Well, Kim, such an honor to have you on the show. Thank you again so much for joining us.
Such an honor to chat. Really love the conversation.
Thank you. Wow.
What an insightful conversation that was with Kim Scott. From mastering the balance of care and candor to understanding how respect can transform workplace culture, today's discussion has been a true masterclass in intentional leadership.
Kim's approach to addressing obstacles like bias, prejudice, and bullying is both powerful and practical, reminding us that it's within each of our control to create environments where everyone feels valued. As we wrap up, I encourage you to think about what you can do to bring more radical candor and radical respect into your life whether it's offering clear feedback with empathy or stepping up as an upstander when you see disrespect remember it's these intentional actions that build stronger relationships and healthier cultures not just at work but in all areas of life if kim's message resonated with you please leave us five-star rating and review.
Your support helps keep bringing these impactful conversations to the PassionStruck community. And if you know someone who could benefit from Kim's insights, please share this episode with them.
A single conversation can be the spark for meaningful change. You can find links to everything discussed today, including Kim's books, Radical Candor and Radical Respect in the show notes at passionstruck.com.
The video version is available on YouTube. And don't forget to check out our sponsors and deals at passionstruck.com slash deals.
Supporting those who support the show keeps us going strong. Before we close, I want to remind you that I'm passionate about sharing these insights with organizations and teams through speaking engagements.
If today's episode resonates with you and you think my message can inspire your company, head over to johnrmiles.com slash speaking to learn more. Let's work together to create intentional change and ignite growth.
Now, here's a sneak peek at what's coming up next on Passion Struck. I'm joined by Jessica Zweig, bestselling author of The Lightwork.
Jessica's profound teachings on embracing both your inner light and darkness will inspire you to step into your most authentic self and unlock your infinite potential. In this episode, we'll explore how to reconnect with your purpose, align with your cosmic truth, and cultivate a life that radiates intention and empowerment.
Jessica's wisdom will equip you with actionable tools for overcoming self-doubt, finding your voice, and creating a life of meaning and fulfillment. You won't want to miss this transformative conversation.
The synonym for the word light is information. That's it.
Imagine yourself in a pitch black room and you switch on the light. You can see.
You can see what is factually, actually, truthfully there. Our light that's within us is our truth and the truth of who we really are.
I don't just believe I know that we as human beings are limitless, are innately loved, are innately worthy, are innately powerful and quantum and abundant. That's the information, the information of truth that lives inside of all of us.
And darkness isn't evil. We hear the word dark.
We're like, ooh, that's something to be afraid of. That's bad.
It's not. It's just lack of information.
It's actually quite neutral when you think about it. When we're in a dark room, we can't see.
And when we can't see and we are in the dark, things do happen. We get scared.
There is a vibration of fear in the dark. We are technically ignorant.
And what happens in ignorance? Well, we make up stories. We project things that simply aren't true.
And it is in the dark that things do get dangerous if we let the dark stay dark too long. As always, the fee for the show is simple.
If you found value in today's episode, share it with someone who could benefit from it. And remember, apply what you hear on the show so that you can live what you listen.

Until next time, live life passion struck. spring is here and so are the deals at dd's discounts from trendy outfits to home makeovers dd's has all the deals you need i'm talking everything from sandals and sundresses to spring throw pillows and scented candles you love a good deal get in your bag and get to dd's discounts last year americans ate 32 billion chicken wings who knows just how many helpless sides of celery were heartlessly thrown away.

But this year, celery neglect can stop with you and irresistible Jif peanut butter.

Because you can make a snack to make a difference.

You can buy a jar of Jif to save the celery.

So please, don't let celery be decoration for wings. Tap the banner to save the celery.
So please, don't let celery be decoration

for wings.

Tap the banner to save the celery.