Kim Scott: Radical Candor
EPISODE 204
Radical Candor is a simple idea: to be a good boss, you have to Care Personally at the same time that you Challenge Directly. When you challenge without caring it's obnoxious aggression; when you care without challenging it's ruinous empathy. When you do neither it's manipulative insincerity.
Author Kim Scott was an executive at Google and then at Apple, where she worked with a team to develop a class on how to be a good boss. She has earned growing fame in recent years with her approach to effective management, Radical Candor. From the time we learn to speak, we're told that if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. When you become a manager, it's your job to say it--and your obligation.
INTRO
Kim Scott talks about why she wrote the book
The way of Google and Apple (1m41)
HOW DO WE DO IT
Kim Scott breaks down Radical Candor
The 4 quadrants condensed (2m59)
Kim Scott continues to explain how we can avoid going the wrong way up the framework
Encourage team radical candor (2m06)
HOW TO GIVE AND GET FEEDBACK
Flux Academy dig into Kim Scott’s second-half of the book
Cycle of Productivity (1m32)
OUTRO
Kim Scott closes the show with an insight into how to give useful feedback
Cultivate radical candor moments (2m04)
READING:
If you would like a short bite-sized read you can find it here on Blinkist.
TRANSCRIPT
Hello and welcome to the Moonshots Podcast. It's episode 204. I'm your co-host Mike Parsons, and as always, I'm joined by Mark Pearson Freeland. Good morning, Mark. Hey,
Good morning, Mike. What an exciting episode. For our listeners and subscribers as well as you and I today, which is all about achieving your goals.
Not only are we achieving goals, we're gonna get into the gritty stuff, which is talking about it, sharing it with our peers, our colleagues, and our friends. And it's not always easy, is it,
Mark? It's not always easy. But rest assured we have the solution, and that is for a show 204 with Kim Scott Radical Candor. Radical Candor Mike by Kim Scott. The title is really a little bit longer than that. It's how to Be a Kick Ass Boss without Losing Your Humanity. And I think this is a big piece of advice, a big lesson that we can learn as we are within our Achieving Your Goals series about how to be not only a good boss, but also an individual, a colleague who's perhaps receiving advice, receiving feed.
From your boss. I think what we're gonna learn today within Kim Scott radical candor is how to achieve and build better relationships at work. More open-minded growth mindset when it comes to collaborating with your colleagues as well as your people leaders. I think we've got a really great framework ahead of us that'll help you and I and our listeners really understand how to be that best version of yourself at work, Wouldn't you?
I think radical candor is a great chance for us to get into that sticky, awkward moment where things aren't quite going as planned and we either need to give or receive some feedback. A little bit of radical candor, Kim would hope. And the truth really is if we do these things earlier, Giving feedback in a constructive way, in the right way.
We avoid the Kous Armageddon crisis when at the end of the month or the quarter of the year, everybody goes, Oh my gosh, we're we're way off. Our targets were way off our gold. The way you avoid this, the way you get a team that's like humming, that's like the Golden State Warriors, like everyone's just on fire, is when you are able.
From the basis of good OKRs, good objectives and key results. You know where you've gotta go is to have the capacity to give feedback in a way that is absent of judgment that doesn't tear people down, but it actually builds them up. And in this book and in this very show mark, we're gonna break it all down so we know how to actually give feedback.
That builds people up. We've got four quadrants from the book, Radical Candor, by Kim Scott. We've got a whole bunch of insights that she learned from working with high performance teams. It's gonna touch on a lot of things that if you are working with others, You will be able to turbocharge the way you give and receive feedback.
And what I propose to you, Mark, is that is the way teams win when they can hold each other accountable, where people listen, where they grow together, and you get that sort of compound interest, right? Everybody gets better together. People wanna be in the room together. They want to be ambitious, bold.
Challenges they want to get after it and it's all about working as a team, giving that feedback, making sure that everyone is making each other better.
That's exactly right, Mike. I think it's a perfect build on our Achieving Your Goals series so far, where we've learned from John, Duh. Measure what matters all about OKRs.
We've heard from Christina Woodkey with radical focus and achieving those most important goals that you set yourself, as well as Michael D. Watkins, the first 90 days of how to get up to speed with your team and your business. I think Kim Scott's gonna take us today is exactly as you've just described.
How can we. Build upon this idea of setting those personal goals and go out and achieve them as a team. So Mike, should we get started?
Let's rock and roll. Let's get into some Radical Candor. Mark, where do you wanna start?
I want to be a maybe, perhaps a little bit un radical by going and starting with the author herself, Kim Scott, who's gonna tell you and I, and all of our listeners why she wrote.
Hi, my name is Kim Scott and I wrote this book, Radical Candor. Be a Kick Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. I wrote it because it's always been really important to me to love my work and to love the people who I work with. Of course, just like you, I had a bunch of jobs that I hated early in my career that usually were bad because I had a boss who felt much more like a dementor than a mentor.
They sucked the joy out of life. And then I got a job at Google and things were really different at Google. I learned so much there about how to build a great team that enjoyed working together, how to give feedback in a way that helped people grow and how to achieve results that we were all proud of without telling people what to do, which, as we all know, doesn't work.
And what I wanted to do next was to figure out how to. Operationalize the magic of Google how anybody could do the things that I saw at Google and I had the opportunity to go work at Apple University where they were throwing away all their management training and starting from a. Blank sheet of paper.
And I designed and taught a class there called Managing at Apple. And I realized in the course of doing that, that the things that I had learned at Google really were pretty universal. That, they would work at any company and not just tech companies, really. My brother worked in a liquor store and a lot of the same principles applied there.
And so I decided to write the book so that you can join me and my quest to rid the world of bad boss. I hope you love it.
Reading the world of bad Bosses. , I think, we've all had those moments where we've received feedback and gone that didn't feel very good. Now, the interesting thing is whether or not that manager.
It was within their rights to give us that feedback. The point of the matter is the message wasn't heard, cuz it didn't feel right. It felt like it came maybe with some judgment or it was building, tearing me down, not building me up. I think that the interesting thing that she Framed for us is an experience that we've all had, which is that boss that gives feedback, either bad feedback or in a bad way.
But more importantly, even if the feedback was good, if it's given incorrectly, nobody hears it because you have an emotional response, your ego takes over and you just feel crushed. You block it out, the body language, everything goes south . And so I think really what. The little point that she made I thought was really neat is we all want to be mentors, not do mentors,
And I think the real path that we're about to go on is how we can build people up and be that mentor.
Yeah I totally agree. I think where Kim Scott is already taking us is making the case that anybody can do this. We hear the high performance teams of Google, of Apple, what we're hearing and gonna learn.
With regards to radical candor is the fact that you and I and everybody can go out and do this, and you are right. We've all probably been in that situation where an individual gives us a little bit of feedback and that fight or flight technique kicks in. Oh, I don't want to hear this. Or Now I'm gonna feel insecure.
And generally that probably comes from the way that feedback was. Delivered. Yeah. It makes you insecure, maybe it makes you frustrated. Or maybe it makes you loathe or dislike that individual who gave you the feedback, maybe even the company you are working for. And I think what we are gonna be able to learn from Kim is how to not give feedback in a bad way.
Instead, it's something that maybe we can learn from. Maybe it's not something that is influenced entirely by our experience. We have the ability to instead learn. A, an individual who has gone to these high performance teams that deliver work day in, day out, and instead we can understand, okay, maybe there is an opportunity that is positive when it comes to handing out feedback.
I think there is, and I think she has a very powerful quadrant tool that really sets out the landscape for feedback. And there are three paths that we definitely want, don't want to go down. She talks. Ruinous, empathy, manipulative insincerity, obnoxious aggression. Those are all the opposite approaches to radical candor.
So let's jump in and listen now to the key, to the whole book on how we give radical candor. This is from Kim Scott, author of Radical, Her Full Quadrants. So what
I encourage folks to do it really. Be more than just professional, not be unprofessional, but really create the kind of environments in your workplaces where You can bring real human relationships.
You can develop real human relationships at work. However, love is not all you need. You also need the other dimension of radical can. That this is what I think of as the challenge directly dimension or the willingness to piss people off. And this is hard because from the moment we learn how to speak, starting when we're 18 months old, not 18 years old, our parents come along and they say to us some version of, If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.
And I would argue that now that you are working, it's your. To say it. So this is hard. Radical candor is hard. It's hard because of this professional training since we got our first job since we were 18 years old, and it's hard because of this. If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all.
Training that's been pounded into our head since we learned to speak at 18 months old or however old we were. One of the things that I've done to try to make it a little bit easier is to give a name to what happens when we fail in one dimension or another, which we all do multiple times a day. So sometimes we remember to challenge ourselves directly, but we forget to show that we care personally, and this I call obnoxious aggression.
And an early draft of radical candor. I called this the asshole quadrant cuz it seemed, I don't know, more radically candid, but I stopped doing that for a very important reason. As soon as I did that people would use this framework to start writing names and boxes and I beg of you, don't use this framework that way.
Think about radical candor like a compass that is gonna help guide specific conversations that you're having with specific people. To a better place. Now, very often when we realize we've acted like a jerk and we've landed in the obnoxious aggression quad. Rather than moving up on the care personal dimension, it is our instinct to go the wrong way on challenges directly.
And the problem there is that then you wind up in the very worst place of all manipulative insincerity, and this is where passive aggressive behavior, political behavior, backstabbing behavior, creeps in the kind of stuff that. Work is intolerable, and it's fun to tell stories about obnoxious aggression and manipulative insincerity.
But the fact of the matter is cuz that's where the drama is. But the fact of the matter is 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, it turns out most people are actually pretty nice, but we're so concerned about not hurting someone's feelings.
That we failed to tell them something they'd be better off knowing. And this is what I call ruin.
Mike, I think what we are starting to learn from Kim is how we can classify or recognize certain behaviors that we put into the way that we communicate and talk to our colleagues. As well as if you are a people leader, talking down into your direct reports.
And for me, when I hear about those three quadrants, so ob, obnoxious aggression being that first one that Kim calls out, I think it's really. Bred from that insecure feeling that we all have. That probably comes from a bit of frustration when you encounter Yeah. An individual who hasn't necessarily perhaps delivered on a, on an item, or maybe they've replied to an email or maybe they've taken part in a meeting and they've said something perhaps slightly inappropriate or haven't done their research.
Frustration can then come out as we try and give that individual a bit of advice, a bit
feedback. Yeah. Let's play it out a little bit. Let's go through each of the three quadrants that we shouldn't do and let's identify what they look like so we can really call it out. So whether we're giving or receiving feedback here, we know what to look for.
So you were on obnoxious aggression. I think that the. Biggest characteristic of the way someone gives feedback to another person is this almost shaming of them. So not only saying, Hey, we didn't hit the objective, or You did not hit the objective, but then going further in that doing. In front of a lot of people, almost bullying or judging them and doing it in a way that you are doing great, but they are not that sort of distinction.
That's very obnoxious. It's very aggressive, particularly when you do it in front of others. And the end result of it, Mark, is you get feedback like that, Ain't nothing changes. And in fact, because of the almost character attack style of that feedback, you actually become defensive. You become completely deaf to the feedback whether or not technically they were right to give you some feedback because of that aggressive delivery.
Ain't nothing changing is there?
No, that's right. And building upon that, the next quadrant that Kim Scott's identified is manipulative in sincerity. So if the obnoxious aggression is perhaps receiving feedback that makes you feel a bit ashamed, that perhaps there's a people leader, it feels like a character attack.
Instead, when it comes to manipulative insincerity, it's actually more behind closed doors. There's perhaps a force of humility. It comes across from the people's leader. It's maybe a little bit more political. You could call it perhaps passive aggressive. As you mentioned, it's this silence that comes through and.
This is born out of the inability, I think, for somebody to pass over and challenge directly. Instead, they're challenging indirectly behind their backs. And what this means for an individual or colleague, an employee is they feel mistrust. Within the business and towards their people leader. Yeah. And fundamentally any change that maybe they were working towards and the benefit of feedback being, I'm gonna go out and improve and make a change, instead, you don't get any change because it's all behind the scenes and a little bit more backstabbing,
isn't it?
Yeah. And so if you get the sense there's all of this political behavior going on around, behind your back, that creates a culture and an environment of mistrust. If the other one that we just talked about, the ob obnoxious aggression, that's just, you are getting defensive. This one's really different.
This one's ah, this doesn't feel good. There's stuff happening behind the scenes here. I really don't feel safe. There's a lot of mistrust. Now, the other thing, And this one is it's hard to know which of these three are worse. The other one is ruinous empathy. And that's when nobody says anything.
So something is really wrong. And the answer to that is silence. Cause you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings. And my experience. It is amazing how often people will be unaware of how off track they are, and if they don't know, they don't change. But the thing that always astounds me is when people don't give clear, constructive, radical, candid style feedback is, Deferring the giving of that feedback.
It never means it will sort itself out magically. It never means it mysteriously goes away. It only gets worse,
doesn't it? Yeah it's very similar, I think, to the fight or flight. Mechanic, isn't it? Do I want to tackle this potential problem head on? And the problem being providing feedback from colleagues?
? . Or do I want to leave it? Because that is the path of least resistance, isn't it? Just leaving everything as it is. I'm not sure how to raise it. I don't wanna hurt their feelings, so I'll just let it happen. And when you sit back and you allow it. An individual may make the same mistake more than once.
What happens for them is they feel, again, that sense of maybe insecurity and feeling of maybe failure because they haven't hit their targets, they haven't reached those objectives that they were setting instead. It's just this silence and there's nothing more concerning, I think, And I think we are all, we've all been there, haven't we?
We've either been in a team where we see an individual not quite thriving and we wish that there was a way for them to get better. And you want your boss or your manager to step in. But they're not quite sure how to do it. So it's avoided. And what happens is it affects the individual because they're not sure what's right and what's wrong.
It'll probably affect the team because they're ignorants.
They wouldn't have a clue that they're like, The house is on fire cuz nobody is saying anything. Yeah. And I love how she calls this ruinous empathy . Yes. You're so empathetic to hurting their feelings that you say nothing, but it's actually quite ruinous.
What is on the other side of this mark is. Radical candor. That's where you actually search out for feedback. You offer specific feedback. But here's, I think the thing that we saw also in Kim Blanchard's one Minute Manager, is what we saw on Patrick with the Five Dysfunctions of the Team.
We should offer both praise and critique. Equally. We should ask for critique and we should do so without judgment. To fundamentally help the person and that will build trust and create change. This is perhaps, if you wanna look at the highest form of mindset, This takes me straight to Carol Dweck's growth mindset.
Yes. Where criticism makes you better, critique makes you better. You give critique in a way that helps, that builds people up and doesn't tear them down. This is an intersection with so many of the patents we've seen isn't.
Yeah, this growth mindset is a way of improving the abilities that you have, and it's something that we come across so much on the moonshot show, isn't it?
We are all out here, you and I, and our listeners to try and be maybe that little bit better at what we do, whether it's at work or personally. And when you can shift yourself into this growth mindset and this ability to. To your boss and say, Hey, look, I'm just looking for a bit of criticism feedback. How can I get better?
It actually becomes so empowering, doesn't it? Suddenly you are removing that flight mechanic, You don't wanna avoid it anymore. Instead, you're building trust directly between team members and ultimately you're gonna get better and you're going to achieve those objectives probably a little bit easier.
I think that mindset is no better expressed than being a member of the Moonshots podcast.
So Mark, I think it is classic moonshots moment where we bring out your enormous trumpet. We actually sing the song and play the tune for our Patreon members who were extremely grateful for. Mark, take it. Dot call out our radical members, including Bob, John, Terry, Ken Dmar, our members who have been with us for over 12 months.
These individuals might, they are the radical ones. They are the stayers. They are showing some, I would say David Goggins resilience. Nothing can stop them. No, but don't worry. We also acknowledge and celebrate and love our members who have joined us ever since then as well, including Marja and Connor Rgo.
Yasmin and Lizza. Sead, Mr. Bonura. Paulen, Burke, Cowman, David, Joe and Crystal. Ivo Christian, Hurricane Brain Samoa and Kelly, Barbara, Andre, Matthew, and Eric. Abby Hoy. Joshua, and. Deborah, Lassie, Steve and Craig, Lauren, Javier, Daniel, and Andrew, Ravi, eVet, Karen and Raul, and our brand new members, PJ Nuwar. Hola, and Ingram.
Thank you so much for joining us on our moonshots journey. Yes. And
please remember that if you do become a member, you get access to the Moonshot Master Series. We post that exclusively for our subscribers and members. And addition to that it has been scientifically proven that you receive lunar powered good Karma from the Moonshot Podcast.
So that should seal the deal. So if you're sitting there listening right now, jump into your phone, just go to moonshot.ao, hit the big members button. Join us, become a member. You'll get the Moonshot Master Series. You'll be able to send us all sorts of questions and contributions. A big thank you to Ingram, our newest member, Ingram sent us a lovely note full of praise, but also with some radical candor.
And he said he really wanted to see us. Getting to those key insights as quick as possible on the show. So we're on a rip roaring episode today. , we are embracing ingram's feedback. We are embracing the radical candor, the growth mindset, and with that, we launch ourselves into the next step into Radical Candor by Kim Scott.
We're now going to get to the real moment. This is where the rubber hits the road. This is, Kim's got explaining. How to encourage radical candor in your team.
One of the things that I wanna do in the next couple of seconds is just offer you an order of operations. How can you begin to put these ideas into practice?
Start by soliciting radical candor, especially soliciting criticism. Don't dish it out until you prove that you can. So you wanna solicit first. Now you're in a better place to start giving radical candor. And remember, radical candor is just as much about praise, even more about praise. Than it is about criticism.
You wanna focus on the good stuff, but you don't want to ignore problems either. So that's giving radical candor. Now, in order to make sure that these conversations are good, the next thing you need to do is to gauge it. If there were an objective measure of radical candor, I could just post on a blog post somewhere, what the right words are.
But there aren't necessarily right. What you need to do is understand how what you are saying lands for the other person. So radical candra gets measure. Not the speaker's mouth, but at the listener's ear. So if the person is upset, if they're angry, if they're sad, that's your cue to attend to the care personally, dimension of radical candor, to understand the human need behind the upset.
But if the person just isn't hearing you, which actually, even though you fear the strong emotions, what usually happens is you work up your courage to say something and then the person doesn't even hear you. When they don't hear you, that's your cue to move out on the challenge directly dimension, a radical candor.
And last but not least, encourage it. All too often, one person who we know comes and starts talking to us badly about another person who's not in the room, and it's tempting to listen. It's tempting to think that you're being an empathetic colleague, an empathetic friend to listen. This is the one time when listening is not your friend.
All you're doing is stirring the political pot. When that happens, the thing to do is to encourage that person to go talk to the person with whom they're having. The problem, the conflict, so encourage radical cand.
So four big steps there, Mike. So alongside the four quadrants that we are hearing earlier, we're now hearing from Kim four key, let's say processes or let's say steps that take you from where we are now into creating the environment that then celebrates radical candor and that's being able to take.
First of all, demonstrate to your team that you can indeed not only solicit, but also receive feedback. So you are demonstrating through action. You can then start to give it, and it should be praise orientated with an element of criticism, of course, when you can gauge it the third step and see how the individual has land, how it's landed with them.
Have they heard you, has their behavior changed, has their judgment and ability to. Criticism as well as praise changed, and then finally you encourage it. So going through the process and then beginning again by saying, Okay, this is, this has worked. Let's see how the individual has reacted. Now let's go and do it again.
It's again, a form I think of testing and learning that then evolves over time and makes us, as James Clear, would say 1% better every day, Wouldn't you?
Yeah, I do. And I think if you wanted to simplify what we just heard from Kim Scott, the thing that grabbed me, Mark, is and I think this is totally growth mindset kind of behavior, is you shouldn't offer any critique of anybody else until you've invited it onto yourself.
Like she said, don't dish it out until you've proven you can take it. I really like that because we, I think we all have the habit of being quick to judge others. So how about we like, stop, listen, and invite feedback to ourselves and really attempt to process it in a very open, unemotional way, and ask yourself how might I make myself better with this
feedback?
Yeah, and it reminds me of the the bottom layer or I suppose the biggest moment the biggest section of Patrick Lencioni's pyramid within the five dysfunctions of a team. You might remember that the bottom layer is the absence of trust and how teamwork begins with the people leader or the boss being vulnerable enough to share challenges and limitations that they are facing.
I think this land, think.
Think about it like this. Mark though, if you don't show to others that when someone gives you feedback and you're like, That was, that's great. That really helps me. Thank you. When people see you taking and receiving criticism like that, This means that when you give it to them, they feel much safer because they they know that you process it.
You demonstrated how to process this feedback, how to receive this feedback, how to perceive it without judgment. And then for when you give it, there'll be more willing to truly hear it for what it is as well. But if you were to have received. And really being defensive. How do you think they're gonna respond when you give it to them,
right?
Yeah, exactly. You've got to demonstrate and you gotta model the
behavior, right? Yeah,
Exactly. If you don't follow it yourself, how is anybody going to be inspired or. Or desiring to follow the same route. Again, it goes back to this dement or mentor. If the mentor is doing the same behavior and they're living by the, let's say, rules that they are trying to put into practice with regards to giving and receiving criticism, unless that people leader is doing the same thing, you're not.
Not really gonna trust them, are you? You're not going to exactly go out and desire to change. Instead, you're gonna think you know what? They are not changing, so I'm gonna stay the same too.
Now giving this giving feedback seems like it's, we're in like the real. The real hard work of improvement, and I think, Mark, we wanna put an invitation out to our users.
We wanna improve the show, we wanna get feedback on the show. And there's some simple ways they can throw us a or a rating or a comment or a review mark. How do they do that?
It's very simple actually, Mike again, listeners and members. Just to build on that, we really do encourage everybody, much like Ingram, to get in touch with us and leave us your feedback as well as criticisms, because that helps us improve the show along the way.
And one of the ways that you can do that is either popping along to www.moonshots.io and filling out a contact form. Or you can email us directly@helloatmoonshot.io. Or Mike, you can even pop into your podcast app of choice. Leave us a rating or a review that really not only helps the moonshots team improve our product day in, day out, but it also helps spread the word of learning out loud together.
And Mike, it really makes a huge change when our members and listeners do give. A rating or a review because we really do reach the four corners of the globe, and what that'll enable us to do is receive feedback as well as criticism from everybody around the world. And only then will the product continue to grow and get better.
That's right, and we are really grateful for your feedback, your ratings and reviews. That's why we have listeners in Senegal, Nepal, Uganda, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Ghana, and beyond. It is incredible to be sharing our journey in learning out loud together to be. The very best version of ourselves here on the Moonshot Podcast.
So we thank you for your feedback. We thank you for all of your contributions, and we thank you for just tuning in and sharing with us. So now we take a bit of a turn in the radical candor. Adventure. We're now gonna get into how this plays out, how radical candor and really good feedback amongst peers, colleagues, and teammates, how that starts to look as a cycle.
So we're gonna have a listen now to Flex Academy and they're doing a breakdown of the, this productivity cycle that is outlined in Kim Scott's Radical. The
other part is really much more focused on the tactics of how to give, and get feedback from your team. And it's this whole framework is right with your team, the people who work for you.
But it's also great idea to try to implement this with the people you work for. So give them good feedback, care about them, get feedback from them. So she talks a lot about how to give feedback, how to take feedback, and how to manage the team by creating the cycle of productivity, which let me see if I can get this right.
You have to listen, you have to clarify, you have to debate. Then you make a dis. Decision, then you persuade everybody on that decision. Then you execute and then you learn I'm not gonna go into explaining all of this. Obviously you have to write the book, but the concept here is very interesting.
She's telling you that you have to debate idea, you have to listen to everybody. The boss doesn't always have the best answer. And it had the boss's role is to actually create a process where the people who do know the best, get into. Most interaction with the problem itself. They should be able to get the position to make the decisions and the boss only have to create the process to make the best decisions.
Come to execution. And then you have to sell the whole team about why this is the decision that we're going to execute. Because if everybody's not sold on this, then probably not everybody's going to execute on
this. If you don't have everybody singing from the same hym sheet and aligned with the process, with the cycle, with the frameworks, it's likely that everybody will go out in either a, repeat the same mistakes or go out in different directions.
Mike, what's interesting for me as I learn about Kim Scott's productivity cycle is actually how close it is to the lean model of build, measure, learn, isn.
It really is. And another place it intersects is this idea in her productivity cycle of radical candor, which is the debate. I believe.
Like really objective debate amongst a team about what are our options? What are the pros and cons? What are our first principles? I think real debate about a topic or a key decision means that even if you disagree with the final decision, you are happy to participate in the execution because. A way of describing is you felt like there was due process, right?
, and over time, sometimes you agree with the decision. Sometimes you maybe sometimes you really do disagree, but because there is due process, You're like, Okay, fair enough. Hey, my, I don't agree with the outcome, but I'm truly happy to execute because I feel like there was due process.
The reason why the debate and the clarification for me is so important is so many times I have seen people in companies nod their. In relation to a decision made by the leadership of the team. And not only do they disagree with it, they haven't supported the execution of it in the day-to-day business.
And I think if we're all really honest, there have been times where we. Have not only disagreed because the crazy, silly, stupid manager made the totally wrong decision or didn't take my input or doesn't understand the problem, that we not only don't really get on board for the direction that leadership set, we sometimes actually work in a different.
Direction. And that is super unhealthy, isn't it, Mark?
As we were learning from John Deere, Christina Woodkey, Michael D. Watkins, when you've got that misalignment, you are only going to end up in a different place to one another, aren't you? Unless you have those clear objectives. And well as the key results on how to get there.
Unless you're on the same page, talk about a misalignment of reaching those objectives. You're never gonna get there.
Yeah, but how unhealthy is it? And Mark, have you ever had the feeling of going in a certain direction and you're like, I don't think management's made the right decision here. And you are you're sitting in this very uncomfortable reality where you're like not really digging this.
That's not a healthy experience when you don't believe, not only in the decision, but you don't believe in the process, right?
You don't believe in the process. And maybe what happens is you then don't believe in the team around you or your boss, of course. And suddenly something. Should have been, maybe a 10, 15 minute conversation that was productive.
You're both leaving, feeling aligned, and you are happy, you know where you're gonna go. Instead, that misalignment can then breed a more of a long term dissatisfaction, discomfort, maybe anxiety towards the role and the job that you've got at hand. Suddenly you're starting to realize through the work of Kim Scott, how powerful and productive feedback can be if utilized correctly.
Like you said, the debate aspect is so healthy because ideas can improve strategies or creative can be refined. Maybe the. Opinion that I have is born out of my own experience research, as well as personal point of view without having the ability to listen to the feedback from other individuals. I'm always gonna be stuck in my own area and I'm probably not going to therefore improve.
I'll possibly make, maybe it's mistakes or maybe it's just. Different points of view. I'll repeat the same things again and again because I don't have that healthy debate taking place within my process or cycle of delivery. And that's pretty uncomfortable, isn't it? Yeah.
Yeah. So you start to see if you get some radical can going that you can get out.
Debate, decide, get on board, execute, then review, and then go again and get into that kind of, that lean process of build, measure, learn and get in that continuous cycle. I think that's how great teams are built in the office, on the sports field. But I think you can also see in the absence, Of this sort of debate, this sort of radical candor, you can see how easy it is to get off
track, right?
Oh, can you imagine that the off track nature that happens when you are not all on the same plate? I'm reminded of Michael Jordan. He turns up, works really hard, and he's demonstrating the fact that he is there working hard day in, day out to his team. And that inspires the rest of the team to do likewise without having.
That fixed objective or that fixed behavior maybe in place. What happens is, what, worst case, the whole team, they're playing out a position. They're, going backwards. They're tripping each other up. Whatever it is, it's born out of that lack of conversation review. , maybe it's test i e practice.
Unless you have those moments in place and you are going all in different directions, you're never gonna go and reach that goal, are you?
You're not. And to bring it all home, Let's have a listen now to Kim Scott as she takes us to the moment. The moment where we give a peer, a colleague, a.
Feedback when
you are an entrepreneur and every decision you make, every piece of work that everybody working with you does could be a source of success or failure of the whole company. Feedback is more important than it ever is at some giant company. The market likes to call this feedback. I prefer to think of it as guidance because feedback is screechy and feels like some kind of system imposed on you from hr.
Think of it as guidance. There's some good stuff people are doing and you want them to do more of it. That's praise. And there's some bad stuff people are doing and you want them to do less of it, and that's criticism. It doesn't have to take a long time. In fact, the seeds of trust are sewn in these little radical candor moments.
There's a reason why I use the. Not truth. If you tell somebody, I'm gonna tell you the truth, it implies that you know the truth and they don't. Candor is a gift. So when you give guidance, you wanna give it with the spirit of being humble. You also want to be helpful. You wanna make sure that you are offering to help the person fix a problem.
You're not trying to kick them in the shins or prove that you're the boss or whatever. You're just trying. Them fix the problem. You wanna give it immediately. As I said, you wanna give it in person. Remember, feedback gets measured, not at your mouth, but at the other person's ear, and you won't know how the other person is reacting unless you can see them reacting.
You also wanna give praise in public. You wanna give criticism in private. And most importantly, you wanna give both praise and criticism about somebody's behavior or somebody's work. You don't wanna make it about personality because the whole idea of guidance is to change something, and it's really pretty darn hard to change your personality.
So what I encourage you to do as an entrepreneur is to give everybody who works for you a little bit of criticism and a lot of praise every single week, and you wanna. At your praise is specific and sincere, and that your criticism is kind and clear.
Mike, this is Kim bringing us home with some very practical tips as well as guidance, again, around how to give and receive radical candor.
And I love the reference that Kim put into that final clip, which is how candor can be a gift. If done correctly.
Yeah. And it's funny how we all dread it, don't we?
And this is it, as we reflect on diving into radical candle, I think previously it really did feel to me as though criticism, guidance, feedback, it's something to be scared of.
Oh no, I'm going to hear dread. Bread, I don't want to know how I've been doing. Yes. If I can think of it as a growth opportunity, then suddenly it becomes far more digestible and actually welcome. And I think that's where this power of radical candle really comes in. Because if you can create a cycle, Of giving and receiving that light feedback, or as Kim says, light guidance we can week out maybe even more regularly than that.
Then suddenly you feel again, it's just so aligned as a team, don't you?
I think if we talk about praise a little bit, I think one of the things that I have to work on is. Sometimes when someone, I think I often, when people do something good I'm like, Oh, okay. I can see that was good work. Like I have reaction, Oh, this is good, the thing is I need to build more of an automatic response of, and now I should tell them, right?
And I think we get in the habit of just expecting good. And so therefore we don't comment on it. And then when it's not right, we're like, Oh my gosh, and we have this huge crisis and it's we make a big deal of when it's not right. . But when someone does something right, we're like, Oh yeah of course,
should be.
Yes. It is the crossover between, and I think we've all been guilty of that and it's really important to celebrate those moments of success or praise as much as you can because, similar to what we were learning from Albert Einstein you are, Oh, in fact, actually, sorry. It was the dial lama Mike, It was within our happiness series, in fact.
Yeah. Which is if you create a mindset that is orientated around, The positives. And therefore, with regards to radical candle, seeing the positives in praise in feedback, you are restructuring how you appreciate and receive different comments. If you put it into place and you do it, let's say week in, week out, suddenly those moments become quite joyous and you almost look forward to doing almost a retrospective after you've.
An item, an event, a task delivered, a project. Maybe you can look back and say, Okay, great. What was successful? Okay that's fantastic. Let's go. Make sure to go out and celebrate it and acknowledge it, but also, okay what didn't work? That's okay. It's fine that it didn't work because it means I can do it that little bit better next time and that cycle.
Of reviewing the work that you've done, both from an internal perspective, but more importantly from an external perspective who have different points of view to you and see you and your work from a different angle. Suddenly it can be much more productive concept because you are improving day in, day out, your habits, your behavior, as well as your delivery.
Yeah, and I think I want to wake myself up a little bit and, take this advice from Kim Scott. Give a little criticism and a lot of praise. I thought that was really good because really your criticism will land much better when it's in context. One thing, out of 10 things, you've given feedback, nine of which were like, I liked that this was.
Loved that. Oh, by the way, that's, that's something we can do better. Let me show you how. That's gonna be heard. So much better than if it's like a sea of nothing and then That's wrong.
Yes. .
Exactly. Cause you're like, Oh geez. Thanks, .
Exactly and it can be beneficial for both sides, can't it?
Yeah. Not only on the receiving. Point. Okay. I've come to expect this little bit of criticism and that's okay because it helps me give it out every time. But going back to the ruinous empathy square quadrant of Kim Scott, when you don't wanna upset somebody and you therefore avoid giving that, that criticism, that little bit of criticism and a lot of praise instead, it builds over time.
And as a leader, you're probably thinking, Okay, I want to give it, but I dunno how, if you start. Little by little day in, day out, week in, week out, suddenly it becomes much more easy. And it's probably something that becomes more enjoyable as a leader because then you start to see the value, our view, handing it out.
You're caring personally for your team, and when you can then see the benefit of your comments, of your praise, as well as that little bit of criticism. Impacting the objectives and the goals of your team suddenly becomes something to be celebrated, doesn't
it? Totally does. So it sounds to me, would I, can I make this jump mark that we are both a little bit captured by, excited by this idea of a little bit of criticism
and a lot of praise?
I think so. I think it really spells out the benefit. And the messages that we learn on the Moonshot Show, particularly around growth mindset, doesn't it? The idea of maybe embracing that moment of discomfort and instead going at the challenge at hand, really embracing it head on, trying to become that better version of you as a people leader.
Or as a colleague?
Absolutely. Mark, I wanna say thank you to you and I wanna say thank you to you, our listeners and our members Today on show 204 of the Moonshot Podcast, we have dived head first into a world of radical candor, as by author Kim Scott. And it's started by taking inspiration from the likes of both Google and Apple.
And we used a model A four quadrants that can lead to trust and fundamental change. Radical caner. This is how we do it. And remember, when you wanna start on this journey, don't dish it out until you are ready to take it yourself. This is how you encourage team radical candor. Then you'll build this cycle of productivity, this habit loop of positive, constructive feedback with a little bit of criticism.
And if we take that to heart, we'll not only make ourselves better, we'll make the people around us better. We will learn out loud together like we do here on. Podcast and then we've given ourselves that fighting chance of being the very best version of ourselves. All right. That's a wrap.