The Exchanges

Q So, I'm really excited to have you on chat about all the things that you teach and your book. For people that have heard the term radical candor, have maybe skimmed the book, maybe even read the book a while ago, but don't, like, truly remember or understand the concept, could you just spend, like, just a few minutes giving a high-level overview of the, the concept of radical candor?

A Absolutely. Radical candor is just what happens when you care personally and challenge directly at the same time. And I think it's probably best understood by what it's not because we all fail on one of those two dimensions or both of them multiple times a day. So if you, you can think about it as a two by two framework on the, on the, on the vertical axis is care personally, the horizontal axis is challenge directly. What happens when we remember to challenge directly, but we forget to show that we care personally. That is what I call obnoxious aggression. And it's really important to distinguish between radical candor and obnoxious aggression. I think one of the mistakes that people often make about, and I've gotten a lot of, you write a book about feedback, you're going to get a lot of, and I've heard a lot of feedback that, that sometimes teams will be rolling out the idea of radical candor and someone will charge into the room and say, in the spirit of radical candor, and then they act like a A garden variety jerk. And that is not the spirit of radical gainer. That's the spirit of obnoxious aggression. And obnoxious aggression is a big problem. It's a problem because it hurts other people. It's also a problem because it's inefficient. If I'm a jerk to you, Lenny, then, then I'm going to send you into fight or flight mode. And then you literally cannot hear what I'm saying.…

AI assessment note: “Radical candor is just what happens when you care personally and challenge directly”

Q I think it was something along the lines of like, what's one thing I could be doing better? Or what's one way I could be helping you be more successful?

A That's a really good one. What's one way I can help you be more successful? Or, or Jason Rosoff, my co-founder at Radical Candor, likes to ask, You know, what, what did I, what could I have done this week? So he time, he, he time bounds it. What, what could I have done this week to, to better support you in your work? Um, in fact, with J, Jason told me after we had worked together for about a month, he was like, Kim, you know, I really hate your go-to question. Uh, he said, it's too open-ended for me. If you can tell me what you're working on and ask me at the end of a meeting specifically what I noticed, then that is much

AI assessment note: “That's a really good one. What's one way I can help you be more successful?”

Q What are two or three books you've recommended most to other people? You've already mentioned a few, but what do you want to share?

A Yes, I've mentioned a couple. Uh, Please Do by Radical Respect. Uh, I, I believe that the more novels people read, the, the better, that's the, if people often ask me, like, what can I do to move up on the care personally dimension of radical candor? And read more novels. This is the best way I know of to build compassion for other people, to understand the emotional signals. That might be coming at you. I mean, some of my favorite novels are Middlemarch. I try to read that, reread that, uh, uh, all the time. Anything that Toni Morrison wrote, The Bluest Eye is one of my favorite, but also Song of Solomon. Uh, it, it, it just such a brilliant, brilliant writer, and will help you, like, enter, enter into the lives of, of, of people that you haven't entered into. I think that Orlando by Virginia Wolf is another one of my, ah, another one of my favorites. And Robertson Davies, ah, the Deptford Trilogy is an incredible set of novels to read. I'm, I'm cheating now and giving you three.

AI assessment note: “some of my favorite novels are Middlemarch... Anything that Toni Morrison wrote”

Q At some point in your life. Can you please explain this part of your life?

A Yes. So I studied Russian literature in college, very practical major. And then I moved to what was in the Soviet Union and in 1990, right. When I graduated from college and I wound up, uh, taking A job with, uh, first of all, we were, I was with an investment company and, uh, and then they pulled out of Russia and put the money in China. And so I wanted to stay in Russia and through a friend of a friend, I, I got a job working for this diamond company called Lazara Kaplan, New York based diamond company. And they were trying to figure out what they should do in Russia. And I found out there was an opportunity to start this diamond cutting factory. And it was actually my first management job because I had to hire these diamond cutters and I had to hire them away from these Russian diamond cutting factories. And, you know, I knew nothing about management or business or anything. I'd studied Russian literature. I knew a lot about Dostoevsky. So I thought it was going to be easy though. I was like, well, the ruble is collapsing. I'm going to pay them in dollars. Of course they'll come work for me, but they didn't take the job right away to my surprise. They wanted to have a picnic. And at the picnic, they, we brought a bottle of vodka and there's a rule in Russia. You gotta, if you open a bottle, you gotta finish the bottle. So by the end of the bottle of vodka, uh, I realized tha…

AI assessment note: “I studied Russian literature in college... And then I moved to what was in the Soviet Union”

Q is from a coach of yours that works, I think for you or somehow with the program. She asked this question of many top leaders have very low self-awareness. They believe obnoxious aggression is the only way to give feedback or they just ignore the problem and fire people with no feedback. Is there something you've learned about how to change their mind about this is the way to operate?

A Yeah, I think the most important thing with leaders like that, that you can do is to explain to them the impact that they're having and, and to also show them that there is another way that is, that is going to help them succeed. Uh, very often the, the, the leaders who are low on the care personally dimension, they do care about their results and they do care about their own careers. And so when you sort of explain this to them in terms of enlightened self-interest, they, they tend to get better at it. And also, I mean, there are, I can think of maybe one or two people I've worked with who are truly low on care, who truly don't care. Very often people are bad at showing they care, but they do actually care. And, uh, and also sometimes there are leaders who think they're not supposed to care. And so unleashing that capacity that they innately have to care and telling them this is actually part of the job can make them a much, a much better, more effective leader. But, you know, look, if someone is a psychopath and they truly don't care, I, I don't have, you know, that we need, they shouldn't be a manager. That's the solution.

AI assessment note: “explain to them the impact that they're having and, and to also show them”

Q do this well is many people are, you can maybe call them people pleasers. I'm a recovering people pleaser. I'll say it's just like hard to give people hard feedback. You want people to like you. It's not a natural state for a lot of people. What do you find helps people get over this kind of need to be liked as a leader and helps them be more candid?

A I think that 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, and to get out of my own head and to become others focused is what helped me kind of let go of the, the need to be liked. Uh, I think that also As, as a, as a woman, I think there was an extra, there was something extra as my teenage children would say. There was something extra for me because The, 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 gently than my colleagues who are men, but people would say, ah, you know, Kim is a real whatever, and they, they weren't saying Kim is a knockout. I was being unjustly accused of obnoxious aggression, and it wasn't You know, obnoxious. They were accusing me of being bossy or bitchy or abrasive or whatever. And it's really hard. I would also say when it comes to soliciting feedback, it's really important to be open to it. And it's really important to separate the wheat from the chaff and the feedback you're getting.

AI assessment note: “realizing that my job was not to be liked. My job was to care about other people”