Kim Scott
Co-Founder, Radical Candor. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
authorfounderexecutivehostacademic@kimballscott ↗LinkedIn ↗radicalcandor.com ↗
Kim Scott is best known for creating the Radical Candor management philosophy and authoring the bestselling business books Radical Candor and Radical Respect. Before founding her company, she led teams at Google, taught at Apple University, and coached CEOs at tech companies including Dropbox, Qualtrics, and Twitter.
2shows
2appearances
35statements
1resolved
0supported
0contradicted
0%fully supported
36said about them ↓ Everything Kim Scott said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Scott: Phone calls provide better feedback signal than video calls
“There's a lot of evidence coming out of University of Chicago and probably other places, but that's the article I've read it, that we, there's more noise than signal in facial expressions and body language, especially if somebody is just a little Square on a c…”
Scott: Isaacson's Musk biography pushes a false dichotomy about successful leadership
“There's this false dichotomy. In fact, the new biography of Elon Musk falls into this category. I like Walter Isaacson's work a lot, but he falls prey to this in his biography of Elon Musk, which is there's this notion that we have to choose between being a to…”
Scott: 85% of workplace relationship mistakes stem from ruinous empathy
“This is the most common mistake, this is, I would say, 85% of mistakes in relationships at work get made when you do care personally, and you do actually show you care personally, but because you're so worried about the other person's feelings or whatnot, you …”
Scott: Male managers consistently pull punches when giving female employees feedback
“One of them is that if you're a woman working for a male boss, it's highly likely that he's going to pull his punches when giving you feedback versus the men who work for him. Versus your male colleagues. And that's bad for you because feedback is good for you…”
Scott: Women offering candid feedback are unfairly perceived as obnoxiously aggressive
“And basically the problem is that when you are a woman being radically candid with others, they're more likely to interpret your radical candor as obnoxious aggression than the same radical candor coming from a man.”
Scott: Softening critical feedback hurts careers more than obnoxious aggression
“And if you back off your challenge when you're giving feedback, when you're expressing your opinion, You wind up either in ruinous empathy or in manipulative insincerity, and both of those quadrants are going to be worse for your career than being seen as obno…”
Scott: Trying to be liked at work leads to manipulative insincerity
“It's a disaster. Don't try to be more likable. There's a giant difference between caring personally and wanting to be liked. So it is really important to realize that a key aspect of radical candor is really focusing on the other person and their well-being an…”
Scott: Likability bias makes it harder for women to challenge directly
“The sort of likability competence bias that a lot of women face pushed me, especially early in my career, in the wrong direction on challenge directly, and it made it much harder for me to, because often I would say something, and I would say it even more gent…”
Scott: Immediate two-minute feedback is more important than being on time
“But if you don't, if it's not possible, and often it was not possible for me in my career to sort of schedule my time that way, I just decided that these moments of management were more important than being on time to my next meeting. And so I was just late so…”
Scott: Ray Dalio's 400-page 'Principles' has only five pages on caring
“In fact, I did an analysis of Dalio's book, Principles, and there, it's like a, I don't know, three or 400 page book, and there were, I think, four or five pages about caring about people. It's, there's very low care, personally.”
Kim Scott: Radical Candor Is Measured at the Listener's Ear
“Radical candor gets measured not at, you know, not at the speaker's mouth, but at the listener's ear, and I think that Steve had built a team around him of people who didn't mind rather what other people would consider obnoxious aggression, but I think in the …”
Scott: Becoming a leader makes you significantly more prone to bullying
“When you become a leader, you're much more prone to bullying, even if you don't think of yourself as a bully”
Scott: Stubborn colleagues require extreme language, sensitive ones need personal care
“Sometimes you're going to be working with somebody who's a little stubborn, maybe a little cocky, and you're going to have to use some extreme, extreme language to get through to them. And other times you're going to be working with somebody who's extremely se…”
Scott: Polish your resume and leave any boss who refuses upward feedback
“Occasionally, you'll have a boss who says, no, I don't want to hear about it. And then, of course, your job is to polish up your resume and find a better boss.”
Scott: Managers must enforce direct peer resolution before hearing employee complaints
“Basically the idea is to get very disciplined about, especially if you're a manager, not letting one employee Come and talk to you, complain about another, but rather say, have you talked to so-and-so directly? And if the answer is no, say, well, go talk to th…”
Scott: Listening to peer complaints is stirring politics, not showing empathy
“It's so easy when a colleague comes to you complaining about another to feel like you're being empathetic to listen and maybe even stir them up a little bit, but it's not empathy. You're just stirring the political pot.”
Scott: Software nudges fail to drive radically candid workplace conversations
“When I started the company, I felt that it was really just a matter of building a great software system that was going to give people the right reminder, the right nudge at the right moment, and it turns out that doesn't work in terms of getting people to have…”
Scott: 90% of leaders make 90% of their mistakes in ruinous empathy
“I would say 90% of us make 90% of our mistakes in that ruinous empathy bucket. It's by far and away the most common problem”
Scott: Relationships don't scale across organizations, but workplace culture does
“No matter how talented you are, relationships don't scale. But she did do those things for her direct reports and the people who she worked most closely with, all, all of us. And when a leader treats their team, the people who they interact with on a day to da…”
Kim Scott: Praise is more important than criticism in Radical Candor
“However, praise is even more important than criticism in terms of radical candor. Radical candor is not all about The boss giving the employee criticism. It should always start with soliciting feedback and it should include more praise and criticism.”
Scott: I fired a coaching client for giving feedback over Slack
“I once coached someone who kept giving feedback over Slack and I finally just quit coaching him. I was like, I, if you keep making this mistake, I'm not, I can't be your coach.”
Scott: Withholding critical feedback from underperformers causes top performers to quit
“If I didn't fire Bob, I was gonna lose all my best performers, because not only had it been unfair to Bob not to tell him, I also had been unfair to everyone on the team and they were frustrated. Their deliverables were late because his deliverables were late.…”
Scott: Focusing on caring for others helps leaders overcome people-pleasing
“One of the things that was helpful for me anyway, so you can tell me if it's helpful for you, what was realizing that my job was not to be liked. My job was to care about other people and to get out of my own head and to become others focused is what helped me…”
Scott: Managers must challenge directly and highlight mistake patterns against defensiveness
“Sometimes it's useful to show someone a pattern. All of the careless mistakes to, especially if someone is, is defense, is defensive, or if you think they're likely to be defensive. If you think they're likely to do to you what I did to my boss, I don't know. …”
The other half of the tape: Kim Scott's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 35 times in 13 episodes across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Lenny Rachitsky 9Ryan Smith 4Melissa Tan 4Ada Chen Rekhi 4Will Porteous 3Jason Brown 3Kenneth Berger 2Jack Altman 2
Statements about Kim Scott, by other people (1)
Tan: Kim Scott workshopped Radical Candor at Dropbox before publishing
“Interestingly enough, Kim Scott was at Dropbox for a short period of time. So when I joined Dropbox, she was actually on my interview panel and we overlapped for three months. And she actually workshopped that book with our team before, or before she published…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
Lenny's Podcast 20
20VC 15
2026 4 mentions in 1 episode
2025 1 mention in 1 episode
2024 2 mentions in 1 episode
2023 13 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
- Building Anchor, selling to Spotify, and lessons learned | Maya Prohovnik (Head of Podcast Product)
- Building high-performing teams | Melissa Tan (Webflow, Dropbox, Canva)
- How to make better decisions and build a joyful career | Ada Chen Rekhi (Notejoy, LinkedIn)
- The 10 traits of great PMs, AI, and Slack’s approach to product | Noah Weiss (Slack, Google)
- every mention in 2023, scene by scene →
2021 2 mentions in 1 episode
2017 11 mentions in 4 episodes 3 per episode
- 20VC: What Metrics LPs Really Use To Measure Manager Success, Why 10 Year Fund Structures Really Do Not Work & Why Venture Is So Similar To The Movie Business with Will Porteous, General Partner @ RRE Ventures
- 20VC: Evernote CEO on Why You Play For The Front of Your Jersey Not The Back, Why Success Is A Team Sport & Why Leadership Should Accept The Negative Consequences In All Situations
- 20VC: Why Move Fast and Break Things Is Not Right, How To Instil Radical Candor In Your Organisation & What Founders Must Ask For From Their Investors with Jason Brown, Founder & CEO @ Tally
- 20VC: What Is Core To The Best Investor - Founder Relationships, The Biggest Risk For Founders In The Early Days & Why EQ Is The Most Important Trait For Managers with Jack Altman, Founder & CEO @ Lattice
- every mention in 2017, scene by scene →
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Kim's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| LENNY'S PODCASTLEDGER | Co-Founder, Radical Candor | 1 | 21 | — | full record on Lenny's Podcast → |
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder, Radical Candor | 1 | 14 | 0% 0/1 | full record on 20VC → |