Kim Scott
Appearances
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Codie Sanchez on the Secret for How to Gain Financial Freedom EP 541
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Codie Sanchez on the Secret for How to Gain Financial Freedom EP 541
If we ignore these comments, then we reflect and reinforce them.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Dr. Josh Axe on How to Overcome False Narratives | EP 539
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Dr. Josh Axe on How to Overcome False Narratives | EP 539
If we ignore these comments, then we reflect and reinforce them.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 wanna 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 in my power to help other people avoid making that mistake. Because it was so painful. It was painful for me.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 etc etc
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 share your ideas with your peers, then there's nothing I can do to help you. So I can help you learn how to
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
I mean, what do you think was going on for him? Why do you think he was reluctant to share his ideas more broadly?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
It's a great deodorant, right?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 him out to lunch a long time ago.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
Yes, so different.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
Yeah. That's not going to work out so well for your man.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 what one of the things that i think can be really helpful is to become aware of when you're veering to
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
What'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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
But 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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, 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
Yes, love Dolly Chug.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
It's hard. It's hard for all of us leaders. And I think the special difficulty that leaders have is that they don't have to say 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 founder, I mean, I had a great business idea, great software idea.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 leader.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 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
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
So instead of DARBOing, what I recommend is, don't say this out loud because it sounds disrespectful, but say in your head, and what does ACK 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 ACT 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
Yes, it's good.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
One of my favorite stories about the use of an I-stander comes from a guy who went into a meeting with a colleague who's a woman. They were at a small company. They were 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
If we ignore these comments, then we reflect and reinforce them.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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...
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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. left spit on the back of my hand.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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. Like you want to change the dynamics. You can delegate.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
Okay.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
So one person can believe whatever they want, but they can't impose that belief on others. And its 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. And then I think I would pull that person aside and say more.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
And I was chit chatting with a guy before meeting. And he said to me, uh,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 and but i didn't think he meant it i actually didn't think it was prejudice i thought it was biased 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
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 statement using common sense.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 as it's important for us to learn how to work together better.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
Yeah. And I try to do that with radical respect as well.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
And the 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
And so I think it's important for leaders to learn how to teach their teams to disrupt bias in the moment, because 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
You don't want to give people high ratings if they bully others because 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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. 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
So that's your job as a leader.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 the leader to say, you can't talk that way on this team.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 real, 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
And I think it's really important to work with people.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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. Okay. Because if you say, do you have any feedback for me?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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. OK, that's fine. Ask it in a way that feels authentic to you. So that's number one is be authentic. Number two is remember that authenticity does not mean ignoring the impact you're having on others.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
Such an honor to chat. Really love the conversation. Thank you.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 and And 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 about what was happening to me in the workplace.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 that I want to think of myself as the culprit.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
So what are the things we can do to get the workplace back on track, to build a respectful culture?
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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, and we imagine that we challenge directly.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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 to challenge at the same time. And when we do both at the same time, that's radical candor.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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,
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
all of the things that erode trust in the workplace most quickly creep in and yet this 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
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
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.
Passion Struck with John R. Miles
Kim Scott on How to Foster Honest Feedback and Build Trust | EP 542
He was smart. He was charming. He was funny. His name was not really Bob, by the way, but, 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.