[Music] Hi and welcome to Radical Candor, a podcast from Panoply in Gretchen Rubens' Onward project about how not to hate the boss you have or be the boss you hate. I'm Kim Scott, co-founder of Candor Inc. and author of Radical Candor, be a kickass boss without losing your humanity. I'm Russ Laraway, also a co-founder of Candor Inc. and I'm a career-long operational manager across the Marines, Google and Twitter. And Russ is the very best manager I've ever worked with in my whole career. That's ridiculous. It's not ridiculous. Pretty. Thank you for saying it. It's amazing that someone can sincere, and I know you mean that. It's amazing someone can sincerely say that. And yet I constantly feel like I'm messing things up. You and me both. Management is hard. Yeah. So on this episode we'll introduce you to a new way to think about management and the ideas behind Radical Candor. Along the way, we're going to talk about why we need this new way of managing. We're going to look back at some of our worst and best moments as bosses. And we're going to give you some concrete tips for changing your relationships with the people you work with. But first, let's tell everyone a little bit about ourselves and the podcast. Kim, why don't you kick off? Sure. So I had three failed startups and then I went to Google which worked out a little bit better than Kevin's. And it was it was when I was at Google that I realized that the thing that I love most was building the team was actually being a manager, helping people who were working with me to love their work and also to love each other. And that's why I wrote the book. Why I started Candor Inc. with Russ and why I'm excited about this podcast. Awesome. I've had a bit of a unique career in that I've always been a manager. Does that mean you've never done anything? Correct. Well, for some, for some would say, some would say I've never worked a day in my life in 22 years of being a manager, whether that was in the Marine Corps as an infantry officer, whether at Google. And kind of similar to you, what really got me out of bed in every case where these sort of underlying people dynamics and how could we work on those to create an environment where people just felt better about what they were doing and we could sort of unlock their potential and help them achieve. That's why we work so well together. We share a philosophy of managing through relationships, I think. All right, Kim. Let's dive into our new way of thinking about management and the radical candor framework. The idea is really, really simple. You need to simultaneously care personally and challenge directly. Absolutely. But you may be wondering what is so radical about that? Doesn't sound so radical, does it? It doesn't sound so radical. And yet, it is pretty radical because people are really afraid to be candid. And I think that part of the reason why people are often afraid to be candid is they don't want to look like the jerk, the obnoxious boss. We have so many negative images in our mind, in fiction, in movies of what a boss is and not enough positive ones. There's very few examples of the good boss. Three hours late. What's the deal? I was at your father's funeral. Well, maybe they're excused for the phone when my dad was here, but I'm in charge now. Yeah, you apparently didn't put one of the new cover sheets on your TPS reports. Oh, yeah. I'm sorry about that. I forgot. Yeah. Would I rather be feared or loved? I want people to be afraid of how much they love me. Those are awful. Those are absolutely awful. Hi, Hilariam. Yeah, and those are, those are, those are clips from horrible bosses, office space and the office love. Wonderful movies. In fact, my brother became a bartender because he watched office space and decided he never wanted to live that way. I'm trying to think of a good boss in a movie and I'm unable to think of one right now. And I think part of the reason for that is that being a boss is actually, it's like a new relationship in human history. There's only been such a thing as a boss really since the Industrial Revolution. For most of human history, the really great collaborative projects that we've done, building the pyramids or draining the swamp in St. Petersburg to build a new capital of Russia, these things have been achieved through terrible brutality. And along came the Industrial Revolution and we sort of substituted, Ross always laughs at me because I sound like a, what do I sound like when I say a lot of it? He sounded like you're on NPR. Do you mind if I ask our producer, Kristen, for a little help here? No. Yeah, just Kristen, if there's, do you have some sort of sound effect that we could put in that helps to convey that I'm rolling my eyes? So. I think I can put something in there. Yeah. Okay, great. So while Kim goes on about the Industrial Revolution, that way our listeners can get a feel for how I'm sitting here rolling my eyes at her. The overly academic one. But it's a good point because at some point, along about 18, call it 1820, we started to substitute bureaucracy for brutality. And that, to be fair, was a giant step in the right direction. Even the Marine can agree with that, right? But bureaucracy is hardly inspiring. It's a source of terrible discontent. And I believe that if we can replace bureaucracy with relationships, we can accomplish more at work and be happier at work. And that's where we came up with care personally challenged directly. Yeah. You have to be able to sort of talk to each other day to day. You have to demonstrate day to day that you care about the people that you work with, that you give a damn about them. But you also need to be able to give criticism when necessary. And so really building a strong relationship that allows you to sort of do both things really enables you to do the best work of your lives. Yeah. I think that's exactly right. And you want to show both the caring and the challenging and the way that you give people feedback and the way that you build your team and then the way that you achieve your results. Yeah. And if you want to learn more about this anytime outside the podcast, you can of course go to www.radicalcander.com or you can follow us on Twitter @cander. So we just talked an awful lot about the idea of care personally challenged directly. We talked about how, look, ideally, ideally you're doing both of those things together. But a lot of times we sort of do one or the other. And so we're going to highlight or sort of motivate kind of what this sounds like with maybe a couple of our own bad moments as bosses. Absolutely. I think stories are the best way to explain what we mean. So Kim, I know you have a couple of great stories about some kind of bad boss moments. And really stories that have specifically led you to the radical candor philosophy. I don't know. You ready to share? Yeah. Yeah. So shortly after I started this company, Juice, where I learned a bunch of lessons and cost my investors, and they are $35 million, but you're going to get all these lessons for free. I opened up my computer and there's 10 emails from different people all sending me the same article from the New York Times. I think it was from the Times. And the article, the article said that most people would rather have a boss who's a total jerk than one who's really nice but incompetent. And now, yeah. And so 10 people sent you this at once. 10 people sent me this. And now so I'm wondering, do they think I'm incompetent or a jerk? I have a guess. What's your guess? Yes. Yes, both, both. The worst of all possible worlds. That's not really. I actually don't have a guess. This is very interesting. I can't. What was it? I'm afraid it was jerk. I thought you're a little bit of a jerk. Yeah, I thought it was a little bit of a jerk. So the problem is a real choice. That is an excellent question. That was my fear. I think this is the fear that a lot of people have when they become a boss. They either think they have to be incredibly nice and never critical, never say what they really think, never challenged directly, or they think they have to be a total and utter jerk and not care personally at all. And that was actually at that point. I was super young and early in my career. That was kind of how I felt. I was sad about it. I thought, "Surely, these are not my two choices as a boss." That's fascinating. By the way, what's really interesting about this, just given my background in the Marines, is they actually train their officers, their young officers quite explicitly about the need to really care about your Marines. It's actually kind of counterintuitive just because of what you see in movies and television. You imagine there are just a bunch of tough guys. Shouting. Yeah, yelling at each other. People are scared and they just go do what they're supposed to do. But it's actually quite the opposite. They really do train their young officers explicitly about you, you got to really care about your Marines. And people really do form intense relationships in the military, right? Yeah, for sure. For sure. The environment helps that too. It's sort of an all for one. One for all kind of environment. And then with always the possibility of heading into a life and death situation. But those relationships will certainly stand the test of time. That's really interesting. By the way, what a great lesson to get exposed to so early in your career. Yeah. So my story is a little different. If I'm going to make a mistake, I'm usually going to make the mistake toward care personally over challenged.
directly. And I was thinking a lot about this, and prepping for the for the show here. And I remember at one point when I was working at Google, one of my teams wanted to hire someone into the client services team. And just for a little bit of context, the Google hiring process was tricky. The ultimate hiring decisions were actually made by a board of the most senior people in the company, including the CEO for a long time. And they made those decisions very difficult for you to get your candidates through. It was a great source of frustration for many frontline hiring managers. But what had happened over time is some people out there doing interviews had developed sort of a reputation that they had a good bar, right? They had a good sort of meter for talent. And after interviewing 500 people, literally 500 people, I had a badge for that. I was sort of a trusted hireer, I guess you'd say. And so with that meant was people would want me to be on their hiring panels because they knew if I liked the person, they'd probably be good to go. And so one of my own teams was doing this for a client services role. Doing this meaning they stuck you on their interview panel. They stuck me on my interview on the interview panel. And they even came to me to say, we really want to get, we'll just say Jennifer through. And the reason, the reason why they did this was because they knew looking at Jennifer's background that she might be a challenge to sort of get through the hiring bar at Google. And if I could endorse her, then they'd probably be good to go. And one of the reasons they wanted to sort of take this route was because they actually knew Jennifer. She'd worked as a contractor. So sort of like a 1099 type employee. And not hiring her would feel almost like firing. Yeah, not hiring her would feel almost like firing her. And they felt like she could do the work. And so I agreed to do it. And I knew kind of what my job was there to rubber stamp. Yeah, I was kind of, I was kind of being asked to rubber stamp. And so Jennifer comes in and I did like to ask people to solve problems and a specific problem. I always asked about and I like to do that because not because I really cared if they could get the right answer. But really, I wanted to just see a few things. I wanted to see, are you excited to solve a problem? Do you structure your thinking? Are you somewhat organized? Are you willing to collaborate? If you don't understand what you asked questions, all of those things mattered a lot more to me than the answer. And then if we're lucky and we got to an answer and it was a really bad answer, then I could ask them, what do you, so that answer is off? What do you think you'd change in your analysis? Right? So that's the idea. And I've joked a lot of times. I'd say to people, look, there's only really two bad answers. The first bad answer is you start crying. And the second bad answer is. Don't cry in an interview with us. It does care personally, but that's pushing it. And the second bad answer is you just guess. And so this question was, I'd give them a couple formula and I'd say, estimate the number of dimples on a golf ball. It's silly. So I asked Jennifer this dimples on a golf ball question. And she just pauses. She takes a deep breath. Her eyes well up and she erupts in tears. And she was unbelievably scared to enter into this problem solving conversation. And this is worrisome because the only thing I really. I'm not going to have a lot of fun at Google if she can't do that. Yeah, exactly. If there's one thing that was common in every group I worked at at Google, we were solving problems that often were a little unique, right? That company operates at such a scale that very few companies that have ever seen. And so she starts, she starts balling. And I had articulated before this question ever that the worst answer you could give is start crying. And then it was usually a joke, but here it was right in front of me. And I thought really hard about this and I did the wrong thing. I rubber stamped her. You rubber stamped her. And she got hired. And she probably was miserable at Google. Six months and she was out. Yeah. Yeah, that's rough. And then you feel. you feel mean saying no, but you feel worse later when you don't say no in that kind of situation. So here's my question to all of you who are listening. We know you've had these moments too. Do you have a story about a boss who was kind of a jerk like me or one who was too nice like Russ? We'd love to hear your stories. Write to us at
[email protected] or you can call us at 2626Cander. And now it's time for this week's Candor Checklist. What Russ and I want to do is share with you some specific ideas. We've talked so far about why in order to be a good boss you have to build great relationships with your people by caring about them and by challenging them directly. Yeah, those two things can coexist and they must coexist. Exactly. But let's talk a bit about actually how to build those relationships. You build your relationships with the people who report directly to you in the way that you give feedback, in the way that you build your team, and in the way that you achieve results. So our first tip is don't try to build relationships by just smoothing with people. You don't have to do lunch. You don't have to miss dinner with your family. Smoothing sucks. I agree. Unless you're at a cocktail party, but you're not at a cocktail party at work, right? You're trying to get some work done and then you're trying to get home. So you don't have to smootze to build the relationships. Cool. I think a second really important tip is to try to give your feedback and impromptu in person conversations that sort of happen right after the event that requires feedback. Give these, think of these as more like one to three minute conversations happen immediately after there's a feedback event. And it stands in contrast to this idea that a lot of people have that they need to like save things up and write it down and save it maybe for the one on one or something. Just kind of forget all that. This week try to give feedback in one to three minute increments immediately following the thing that you think requires feedback. Give that a shot. What a relief. Not to have to save it up for a one on one. That is a relief. A third tip is try this week with if you can't get this done for all your team, that's okay. Maybe even just one person. Think about offering praise three times and criticism once. And here's why. The purpose of praise is to help people know what to do more of to show them what success looks like to show them what's valued. It's not to make them feel better right exactly. That's praise is not how you show you care personally. You can show you care personally in the way you criticize somebody. Yeah exactly. So let's think about praise as a tool to show people what's valued what success like looks like what to do more of criticism on the flip side is helping people know what to do better right. So think of it that way and when you by the way when you think about it that way. Isn't it crazy that you wouldn't just be given feedback all the time. So let's try that this week. Let's try to do three pieces of praise where you're going to achieve the objective of showing someone what success looks like and one piece of criticism where you're going to help somebody know what to do better. And do those things in one to three minute conversations in between meetings. You don't have to add meetings to your calendar to do what Russ just suggested. Cool. So I think tip number one. No schmoozing. Tip number two in prompt to in person conversations one to three minutes right after the feedbackable event. And then tip number three is three pieces of praise one piece criticism this week for one person on your team. You can do it. You can do it. And this is just an introduction to radical candor over the coming weeks and months we'll be talking about how to build a great team how to be a great team member giving getting and encouraging feedback at work and how to achieve results that everyone can be proud of without telling anyone what to do. Yeah and along the way we really want to hear from you. What are your stories? What are your challenges at work? Where have you seen challenge directly care personally go or I? And we also want to hear your questions for us. So we got a bunch of ways you can get in touch. You can tweet us @cander or you can write to us at
[email protected] or you can call us at 2626cander. That's 2626cander. And if you want to learn more of course you can always go to radicalcander.com. And that's it for radical candor. Our producer is Kristen Minter thanks also to Laura Mayer and Andy Bowers at Panna Plei. Our theme song is written and performed by Cliff Goldmacher. And the radical candor book is available for pre-order at Amelton Barnes and Noble book passage in your local bookseller. And if you like the show please be sure to tell a friend and subscribe to us on iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite podcast app. Don't forget to leave us a rating or comment whenever you subscribe and help other people discover our show. I'm Kim Scott and I'm Russ Leroy. We'll talk to you next time. Thanks for listening.
PodcastTranscript AI