#72: Kim Scott, Author of Radical Respect and Radical Candor — Building your team’s muscles to a...

Welcome back. This is From Startup to Grownup. My name is Alisa Cohn, and today is a big day because I have the one and only Kim Scott on the podcast. Kim is a former executive from Google and Apple, and she's the author of the runaway bestseller, Radical Candor. She now has a new book out, which is called Radical Respect. And today we talk about both of these books. We started out by reviewing Kim's Radical Candor framework. Which people love and they use all the time. We talked about what it is and what it's not and how it's sometimes weaponized. We also talked about how she came up with her iconic 2x2 framework that's a centerpiece of Radical Candor. I do love a good framework. I can imagine you agree. Then we get into the concepts of her new book, Radical Respect. Kim defines respect and what gets in the way of respect and specifically how you can improve your respect quotient, if you will, in your own workplace. Kim also shares super honestly about her own failings as a manager, as well as the way that she was treated really abominably when she was early in her career. Lots of personal stories here and definitely lessons learned. What I love about Kim's approach, it's practical, neutral, and super accessible. This discussion is filled with Kim's wit, some great stories, and very practical advice for you about how to make your own workplace better So please enjoy this amazing conversation with Kim Scott. Oh my God, Kim Scott, welcome to the show.

So happy to be here. Uh, always a pleasure to talk with you.

It's so good to see you and talk to you, and I'm so excited about your new book, and I'm so excited to have this conversation with you. Thank you for gracing my podcast. Um, you know, Kim, I have to be honest, you're kind of a big deal. You're very well known and you're known specifically for radical candor. So before we get into your new book and whatnot, let's just review why your framework is so powerful. Tell us about your Radical Candor framework, why it's so powerful, and why you think it took off so much.

Yeah. So Radical Candor is what happens when you care personally and challenge directly at the same time. And I think radical— it's best to understand what Radical Candor is not. So let's break it down into a 2x2 framework. On the vertical axis is care personally, on the horizontal axis is challenge directly. When you do both, you get Radical Candor. With candor. When you challenge directly, but you forget to show you care personally, that is obnoxious aggression, which is a big problem. It's a problem 'cause it hurts other people. It's a problem 'cause it's inefficient. If I'm a jerk to you, then you literally cannot hear what I'm saying. So I'm wasting my breath. But it's also a problem 'cause most of us really do not wanna be jerks. And so when we land in obnoxious aggression, which we are all bound to do probably at least once or twice a day, it's not our instinct to go the right way on challenge directly. Instead, it's our instinct to go the wrong way on challenge directly. And, uh, it doesn't matter. It's no big deal. But it does matter. And it is a big— that's why I said the thing. And then you wind up in the worst place of all, manipulative insincerity. That's what happens when you neither care nor challenge. And, uh, and that's where the really toxic behaviors come in. And we often wind there, wind up there because of good intentions. And You know, when you think about things going wrong at work or really in any relationship, we often talk about obnoxious aggression and manipulative insincerity because that's where the drama is. In fact, Silicon Valley, the HBO show, did a whole episode on radical candor, but it was really an episode on obnoxious aggression and ruinous empathy. It was not about radical candor. Oh my gosh. Because that's where the drama is. It's fun to talk about those things, but those are not the mistakes that most of us make most of the time. The vast majority of us make the vast majority of mistakes in this last quadrant where we do remember to show that we care personally because despite everything you read about human behavior in the media or on social media, most real people are actually pretty nice people. So we do remember to show that we care personally, but we're so worried about not hurting someone's feelings or not offending them that we failed to tell them something they'd be better off knowing in the long run. And that is what I call rude caring. Ruinous empathy. So why did it take off? I don't really know is the short answer, but I have a guess. I think part of the reason is that an awful lot of us have this sort of false choice that we feel like we have to make. We have to choose between being really nice but incompetent or a big jerk, but, you know, and successful. And you don't have to be a jerk to be successful. And I think that This is something I struggled with for a lot in my career. And, and I think for me at least, Radical Candor was the way out of that conundrum. And I think other people have found it to help them out of the, to help them find their way out of the conundrum as well.

Yeah, I love that. I love also the, the, the forced to, the, the choice, the false choice. And I love what you just said. You don't have to be a jerk to be successful.

You heard it here first.

Quotable Kim Scott. You don't have to be direct with me. I love that.

I love that.

I just spoke to, literally today, I spoke to somebody for a 360 feedback process. So I talked to him about the CEO, what's working, what's not working. And one of the things he told me that was like not working, what the so-called weaknesses were, was that the CEO didn't have a structured cadence for meetings.

Yeah.

And that, that made everyone feel confused. And that was one of the things we talked about. And all the things we talked about were like that. And at the end he said, Gosh, I'm so sorry I came across as so negative. You know, I really like him. Yeah. And I was like, huh, if you like— by the way, they love him. If you love him and want him to be successful and want the entire company to win, then actually he needs to have a structured cadence for executive team meetings. Like, that's it. And there's nothing mean about it.

It's not even negative.

It's just a fact. And people get confused, right?

Yes. Yeah, we all do. I mean, I certainly did in my career. Early on in my career, I'll never forget this. I've probably told I've told this story 1,000 times, but I had just hired this guy, we'll call him Bob. And I really liked Bob a lot. He was smart, he was charming, he was funny. He would do stuff like, we're in a manager offsite and we were playing one of those endless get-to-know-you games and everybody was really stressed out. And Bob was the guy who had the courage to raise his hand and to say, I can tell everybody's really stressed. I've got an idea. It'll help us get to know each other and it'll be really fast. Whatever his idea was, if it was fast, that's what we were gonna do. And Bob says, let's just go around the can— the table and confess what candy our parents used when potty training us. Really weird, but really fast. Weirder yet, everybody remembered, uh, 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, but yeah, everybody loved Bob. Brought a little levity to the office. One problem with Bob, he was doing terrible work, absolutely terrible work. I was so puzzled because he had this great resume, this history of incredible accomplishments. I realized, I learned much later that the problem was, the reason why his work was riddled with so many sloppy mistakes is that he was smoking pot in the bathroom 3 times a day, which maybe explained all that candy that he had at all times.

Munchies.

Yeah, but I didn't know any of that at the time. All I knew is he was handing stuff into me with shame in his eyes. And I would say something to him along the lines of, "Oh, Bob, you are so awesome. We all love working with you. You're so smart. This is a great start. Maybe you can make it just a little bit better," which of course he never did. So why did I say that to Bob? Part of it was truly ruinous sympathy. I really did like Bob and I really did not wanna hurt his feelings. But if I'm honest with myself, there was something more insidious going on as well, because Bob was popular and Bob was also very sensitive. 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, that he would get upset. He might even start to cry. And then everybody would think I was a big, you know what. And so the part of me that was worried about my reputation as a leader, as opposed to Bob's feelings, that was the manipulative insincerity part. The part of me that was worried about Bob's feelings. That was the ruinous empathy part. And often these things kind of go hand in hand. And this went on for 10 months and eventually the inevitable happened. And I realized if I didn't fire Bob, that half my team was gonna quit and the better half of the team was gonna quit. And, and now I realize that not only had I been unfair to Bob by not telling him, not giving him a heads up the way that the person you talked to should have, that I had been unfair to the whole team. So I wasn't giving Bob a chance to fix the problem, but I also was frustrating everyone because their deliverables were late when Bob's deliverables were late. They were unable to spend as much time as they needed to to get their work done. And they were having to work overtime because they were having to spend so much time redoing Bob's work. And they were frustrated. And the people who were best at their job were going to quit. They were going to go work someplace where they could do their best work. Unless I did my job, which was give Bob the feedback. So finally, 10 months after I should have sat down with him, I sat down with him. And when I finished explaining to him where things stood, he sort of pushed the chair back from the table. He looked me right in the eye and he said, "Why didn't you tell me?" Yes. So painful. As that question is going around in my head with no good answer, he looks at me again and he says, Why didn't anyone tell me? I thought you all cared about me. I know, so painful. And now I realized that by not telling Bob, thinking I was being so nice, I'm firing him as a result. Not so nice after all. But it was too late to save Bob. Even Bob at this point thought he should go because 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 I would never make that mistake again and that I would do everything in my power to help other people avoid making that mistake. 'Cause it was so painful. It was painful for me, way worse for Bob, bad for the whole team. They were all frustrated, bad for our investors 'cause we weren't getting the work done that we needed to get done.

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

I think that is so important. You know, I thought you cared about me. That is like so poignant, right? Right there.

Yeah. Yeah. And I did get, I mean, the truth is I did care about him, but I wasn't showing it. Doing it. And, and I thought it feels nicer not to say the thing, but it is not often nicer not to say the thing.

It is 100%.

Your silence will not protect you, and it will not protect others, to paraphrase Audre Lorde.

Yeah, it's so true. I guess I'm just curious, you know, you had these experiences at your various different environments, right? As a manager, as a director, being managed What was the moment that you thought, I'm going to make a framework out of this?

I think I had been— well, probably I started thinking about this when I was in business school, where I learned exactly nothing about managing people.

Shocking.

But I did learn that a good 2x2 framework will solve all the world's problems. True. And so I started thinking about this. I took— actually, there was a great When I worked at Google, we took this wonderful leadership class, Manage Your Energy, and, uh, and he had a great— are you familiar with this? Yeah, The Energy Project.

Totally. Is that Tony Schwartz?

Yes, Tony Schwartz. Yes, I love Tony Schwartz.

He's amazing.

And, and, uh, I— he had a great 2x2, but it was, it was more around energy than like feedback. But I thought a lot about his, that was kind of, that was maybe the beginning of my thinking about it. And then when I worked at Apple, I worked with a great team there to design this course called Managing at Apple. And I built a 2x2 for that, but it wasn't quite right. That 2x2 framework that I built there, it was smiley face to frowny face, unclear to clear was the original. And that was good, but it still wasn't right. But you know, when you're working at a company with a big team of people and you roll something out, it's very hard to change it. And I kept trying to tweak it, but everybody was like, ah, we gotta, you know, we've launched. Now we have to go with this.

The materials are set. They're all printed.

Yeah. So then I left Apple and I decided to start writing the book. And I spent 3 full months doing nothing but tweaking this 2x2 framework. My husband, who's an engineer, thought I had lost it. 'cause I thought I'd lost my mind. He said, "Kim, I can build you a random word generator," 'cause that's what it looked like I was doing to him. But I had to just keep playing with it until I got it right. So—

I love it.

Yes. I was very lucky.

That's so great.

It was a great luxury to be able to spend that much time on such a seemingly small thing. But I think it was a big part of what has helped people get this right.

Totally. I mean, I think it is. I think probably your care actually really matters now that you mention it in terms of why it struck a nerve, 'cause people could really see themselves in that.

Yes.

They can really see themselves. And that's the, that's the most important thing.

Well, and the interesting thing about the 2x2 Framework is that I got a lot of, I walked the talk. I got a lot of feedback on it. And for a long time I was calling, instead of ruinous empathy, I was calling it cruel empathy because that is sort of how it felt to me. But my husband, who, as I mentioned, is an engineer, he kept telling me, no, it's not quite right. You know, 'cause cruel seems like there's intent behind it and often ruinous empathy, you have good intentions. And, but I was ignoring my husband's feedback. I regret to say I was not paying as much attention as I should. And then I gave a draft of the book to Jack Dorsey and Jack immediately launched on cruel empathy and he refused to read the book until I changed it. Wow. And so I, but somewhere between my husband and Jack Dorsey, I listened to the feedback feedback. And I think Gretchen Rubin really helped me call it ruinous. I think that is, I feel like that's Gretchen Rubin's word. And radical candor, for a long time I was calling it tough love. But I was on, I gave a talk about radical candor before I was calling it that. And Dan Pink was also at that conference. And he and I were on the elevator together after I spoke. And he said, you know, I really like your talk, Tough, you know, tough love is not quite right. And somewhere between the first and the 14th floor, we came up with Radical Candor. So, oh my gosh, I got a lot of feedback and a lot of help on it.

Wow. What a walk through all the thought leaders of the, of our time too.

Very, very lucky. Yeah.

Yeah. That's amazing. Before we move on to your new book, Radical Respect, which is on the topic of radical candor, if anybody's listening to this right now and they're like, I know I need to improve with radical candor. What is one suggestion you have for people to help them improve their game on Radical Candor?

Solicit feedback. Don't dish it out before you prove you can take it. So, so you want to make sure that you— there's 4 steps in soliciting feedback. First of all, think about the question you're going to ask, because if you say, do you have any feedback for me? I can already tell you what the answer is. Oh no, everybody's, you know, you're fine, you're great.

You're too pretty. You're too nice.

Exactly. Such a great boss. Right. So, so you wanna make sure that you think about how you're gonna ask that demonstrates you really want the answer. A question that I like to ask is, what could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me? But don't write down that question, cuz if you sound like Kim Scott and not like yourself, then people won't believe you want the answer. I was working with Krista Quarles when she was the CEO of OpenTable, and she said to me, ah, I could never imagine "Your words coming out of my mouth, Kim." She said, "The way I like to ask is, tell me why I'm wrong." Okay, that's fine too. But there's a few important things about your go-to question. First of all, make sure that it's your words, not somebody else's. Second of all, make sure it can't be answered with a yes or a no. Make sure you're kind of insisting on an answer to the question. And third of all, you wanna adjust for the other person. You wanna make sure that there were some people on Krista's team who found that question too, aggressive. And so she needed to dial it back for those people. So it needs to sound authentic to you. But remember, being authentic does not mean ignoring the impact that your words have on others. So adjust for the other person. So that's your question. So spend a little time on your question. Bad news about your question is no matter how good it is, the other person is still gonna feel uncomfortable. So the only way out is through embrace the discomfort. Really simple tactic here. What do I mean by that? Close your mouth and count to 6. Perfect. We only made it to 3, right? Almost nobody can endure 6 full seconds. It's so long. I couldn't. I know.

I know.

So the other person will probably say something.

Right.

So your next step, your third step is to listen with the intent to understand, not to respond. Because even though you just solicited feedback, when you get it, especially if it's critical feedback, you're probably gonna feel a little bit defensive. And that's okay. Doesn't mean you shut down the feedback. It doesn't mean you're a lesser mortal. It just means you're human and your humanity is all part of Radical Candor. So what you wanna do is instead of responding, try to ask follow-up questions to make sure that you're understanding. And because often we misinterpret. My daughter, a few, a while ago when she was younger, at breakfast gave me some feedback. She said, Mom, I wish you weren't the radical candor lady. And immediately this wave of parental guilt washed over me. And I thought, I'm spending too much time at work. She wants more time with me. And then I thought, and I felt defensive. I was like, but I have to work, you know? And then I thought, well, I should, maybe I don't understand what she meant. So I'll take my own advice and I'll ask a follow-up question. So I said, well, who do you wish I were? And she said, I wish you were the lady who minded her own business. So I was like, I had totally, you know, I could go work a little more as far as she was concerned. So you want to make sure that you're listening with the intent to understand. Ask follow-up questions in a nonjudgmental way. Don't leap to conclusions. The fourth thing you need to do when you solicit feedback is you want to reward the candor. You want to make sure that if you agree with the feedback, you're fixing the problem and then asking, did I overcorrect? Did I undercorrect? But sometimes you're going to disagree with the feedback, and that's OK. That doesn't, again, you don't have to pretend. This is about Radical Candor. Don't pretend to agree if you disagree. But do look for the 5% or 10% of whatever the other person said that you can agree with, just to make your listening tangible, show you're not automatically shut down the feedback. And then you want to have a respectful conversation about why you disagree. And you can't argue endlessly. You wanna listen, challenge, commit. But again, the more you can actually commit, especially if you're the boss, if you're the leader in the situation, the more you can commit to doing things the other person's way. Like, if all you have are opinions, go with the other person's, uh, but, but don't hide your opinions, uh, explain. And they may decide you're right, you may decide they're right, you may just both decide you don't know, but you, you want to commit to taking some sort of action. So those are some thoughts on soliciting feedback.

I love that.

Yeah, once you go ahead, once you've solicited the feedback, you're in a much better place to give it, both praise and criticism.

Totally true. And also, first of all, leadership— leader goes first. So role modeling that here's a place where we give each other feedback. And second of all, making it safe and also making it objective. The whole point around like, well, for example, like you're, uh, making this up, like you're not structured enough in meetings. Like, okay, I hear, I get that you think that and maybe I'll change and maybe I won't change, but actually it's really helpful to know that at least one person thinks that.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

Yeah.

And I, I think it's really important. You raise a really important point because you don't have to be right for your feedback to be valuable. Even so, so maybe you say you're not structured in meetings. Maybe I'm plenty structured in meetings. Maybe that's just your opinion. But by you telling me that, and by the way, I am not structured enough in meetings, but—

As it happens.

Yeah. As it happens. But I'm not structured enough in anything. But, but by you telling me that you're giving me a gift in one of two ways, either you're giving me a gift because you're letting me know it's a problem and I need to change something. You're right. Or by you telling me that you're wrong, but you're, but by telling me what you think, you're giving me the opportunity to explain to you, well, here's why I'm not structured in meetings. Here's why this works for me. Uh, if I, you know, if I'm, if I'm making life harder for everybody else, then let's figure out what to do about it. But here's the, so maybe I, convince you, oh, your lack of structure is a, is a, you know, is a feature, not a bug of the way you conduct your life.

Right, totally. Or like, well, the reason I'm not structured in these meetings is because I'm using them as a context for us to get to know each other and not just to walk through an agenda. And it's clear I didn't make that clear. Yes. So now it gives you an opportunity to clarify, to explain, to clarify, and just to advance the conversation, which is is what I think about with the feedback.

Yeah. Yeah. It's actually a really good point. I used to do that. I used to explicitly have an agenda list one-on-one with my direct reports every so often. You know, we're going to go to lunch. I don't have an agenda. You don't have an agenda. We're just going to go have lunch. And that was really helpful.

Yeah. Yeah. Another management tip to everybody. So, okay. You write Radical Candor, you live your life, la la la. And then you birth a new book. I mean, there's a lot of things that happened. Fill us in.

Right.

But you birthed a new book. Here we go. Radical Respect: How to Work Together Better. Tell us, Kim, what happened that made you write this book?

Well, if you write a book about feedback, as I did, you're gonna get a lot of it. And indeed I did. And I was grateful for it. And hands down, the most helpful feedback is what prompted me to write Radical Respect. So here's what happened. I went to give a talk, a Radical Candor talk, at a tech company in San Francisco. And 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 she's one of too few Black women CEOs in tech, or frankly, in any sector. And when I finished giving the talk, she pulled me aside and she said, I'm excited to roll out Radical Candor, Kim. It's going to help me build the kind of innovative team that I want. But I I gotta 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 someone even the most gentle, compassionate criticism, they would call her an angry Black woman. And as soon as she said it to me, it was like, it was so painful 'cause I knew it was true. And I had, I also realized that I had noticed this happen and I hadn't done anything. So this prompted for real, and also, I mean, so unfair. She's, one of the most cheerful, easy to get along with people I've ever worked with. Angry is— that was clearly racial bias. So what did I realize? 4 different things. The first thing I realized was that I had not been the kind of colleague that I imagined myself to be, that I want to be. I had failed to intervene. I had never even taken into account the toll it must take on her to have to be unfailingly cheerful and pleasant in meeting we were ever in together, even though she had what to be pissed off about, as we all do from time to time at work. And we have to allow each other that. So I had failed to be an upstander. I had not intervened. In fact, I'd just been in denial about what was happening to her. The second thing I realized was not only had I been in denial about what was happening to her in the workplace, I was also in denial about the kind of things that happened to me in the workplace. Kind of hard for the author of a book called Radical Candor to admit it, but I had pretended that a whole host of disrespectful things had not happened that had in fact happened. So that was number 2. And I think I, I think I did that probably because I never wanted to think of myself as a victim. But even less than wanting to think of myself as a victim did I want to think of myself as a culprit. So the 3rd thing that I realized was that I had been most deeply in denial about the times when I was the one whose disrespectful attitude or behavior made it harder for the people around me to get their work done than it needed to be. And that's, to me at least, that was the most difficult part about writing Radical Respect is kind of coming to grips with the fact that often I was the one who was being disrespectful to others. The fourth thing that I realized was that as a leader, I imagined that I was creating these BS-free zones where everybody could do the best work of their lives and build the best relationships of their careers. But by pretending that these disrespectful attitudes and behaviors were not happening on my team just because I was leading it, I was not able to prevent them from getting in the way of people's ability to collaborate. So that was a big drink of water, but it was also really helpful. And it was helpful because it gave me a way to structure, like, what is radical respect? What gets in the way? How can we as upstanders, as leaders, as people harmed, and as people who cause harm, get it back out of the way?

Hmm.

Wow.

Well, I, that must have been, that was a process to think that through, obviously. And probably through the writing of the book.

Yes.

Yes. So one thing you talk about in the book is there are two meanings of respect. What do you mean by that?

Yeah. So one definition of respect is you've gotta earn respect for some kind of skill The other definition of respect, and that's what I'm really— that's the second one that I'm really talking about, is the unconditional regard that we owe each other for our feelings, our background, our approach. And it's that kind of unconditional respect that is really so necessary for collaboration. We can disagree with each other.

We—

you can hold me accountable for making a mistake. And still respect me at the same time.

Got it. I think that's really helpful to sort of think about, and that's really where your focus is in this book.

Yes.

And I guess I would love you to kind of talk about some of the concepts in your book. For example, one thing you talk about is the difference between bias, prejudice, and bullying.

Yeah. Yeah. So what gets in the way of respect? A million things, but I'm gonna boil it down to those three: bias, prejudice, and bullying. And I think that one of the problems here is that we often conflate those three things as though they're the same thing. And then the problem can feel monolithic and really almost impossible to solve. And, you know, but I'm sitting here in Silicon Valley, land of solving hard problems. And what do you do when you're confronted with a hard problem? I mean, not just Silicon Valley, everybody everywhere is solving hard problems. But we think—

That sounded like a little biased.

Yes, yes. I was recognizing a little Silicon Valley bias. We're all biased, but we brag about it more than others. I think that's probably objectively true. That's true. Yeah. And so what do you do when you're faced with a hard problem? You break it down into its component parts. So I'd like to offer some super simple, maybe even overly simple definitions. Bias is not meaning it. It's unconscious. I mean, the kind of bias I'm talking about. Whereas prejudice is a very— it's meaning it. It's a very consciously held belief, usually incorporating some kind of unfair and inaccurate inaccurate stereotype. And bullying is just being mean. It's not about any kind of belief, conscious or unconscious whatsoever. So bias, not meaning it. Prejudice, meaning it. Bullying, being mean. And there's tons more to say about those problems. But for me, at least, it's really helpful in the moment when something happens to have some simple definitions to fall back on so I can try to begin to analyze What just happened and what can I do about it?

Yeah, I think the simple definitions are very helpful. And also the whole point is giving people tools to help them in the moment. So what are some tools that you offer? What I love about one of your phrases is like, what is it? How can you disrupt the bias without disrupting the meeting?

Yes. You and I came up with that one together, actually.

We did?

Yes. Yes, absolutely.

Me, Gretchen Rubin, all contributing to your books.

Yes, yes. Yeah, I know. We were at a conference together.

Oh, that's when we were at TED?

Yes, yes, exactly, exactly.

Oh, that makes me so happy.

Okay, good.

We'll talk about it.

Yeah, so how can you disrupt bias without disrupting the meeting? I think this is one of the things that leaders can do. Sit down with your team and say, you know, we as human beings, we're pattern makers. And sometimes we make good patterns and sometimes we make bad patterns. And our goal together is to make more good patterns and fewer bad patterns. And that means we need to disrupt bias when we notice it in a meeting. And so you want to make sure that you're not just remaining silent. So you want to do 3 things together with your team. One, you want to come up with a shared vocabulary. What's the word or phrase that we're all going to use when we notice bias? So I like to wave a purple flag. It's a friendly purple flag. It's not a yellow flag. It's not a red flag. But it sort of invites people in to notice the bias that just happened. But it could be a, you know, you could say, I don't think you meant that the way it sounded. There was a team I worked with that liked to make a peace sign. There's another team I worked with that had kind of a cat theme going on and they would meow at each other, whatever it is. I mean, there's some wrong words you could use to disrupt bias, but the important thing here is for the leader to sit down with their team and let the team decide. Don't try to dictate the words. That never really works. The second thing you need to do as a leader with your team is to help people learn how to respond when their bias has been flagged. It is hard. I mean, I don't know about you, but when someone tells me I've said or done something that's biased, I feel ashamed. I can tell you where I feel it in my body. There's like a tingling in the backs of my knees. It's the same physical sensation that I get if my children walk too close to the edge of a precipice. And—

Wow.

And so it's like a real fear, almost a panic response. And we rarely respond at our best when we're panicked. And so you wanna teach people to learn how to move through that. And I think all too often we put the onus on the person who's pointing out the bias to prevent the other person's panic response, but that's not possible. Like we've gotta manage our own panic responses. So if I'm the one who said or did the bias thing, I try to first say, "Thank you for pointing it out." Just like take a breath and say that. And then, and then I've gotta think what I say next. Either I say, "I get it and I'm working on it, but please tell me if I do it again," which I probably will, by the way, 'cause these are deeply ingrained habits of thought and speech. Or the second thing is, "Thank you for pointing it out, but I don't get it. I don't know what I did wrong. Can you talk to me after the meeting?" And the reason to talk to me after the meeting is that If we're doing this right, this is happening in every single meeting and we don't want to spend every meeting talking about all the biases. So educate me after the meeting or I'll educate myself after the meeting. It's not your job necessarily to educate me, but I'll look into it. I'll try to understand after the meeting and I'm open to you telling me. And that second thing is much harder to say because because now I'm ashamed not only because I've hurt someone else, I'm also ashamed because I'm ignorant. I don't even know what I did wrong. And reminding people that we're all gonna be in that situation probably multiple times a day. And we're learning together. It's okay. It doesn't mean that I'm some sort of terrible human being because I made a mistake that I don't know what I did wrong. We're helping each other. And then the third thing as a leader that you need to do is you need to come up with kind of a shared commitment on your team. We're really gonna do this. It's one thing to talk about doing it. It's awkward. It's gonna be awkward. I'm not saying this is a little thing to do. This is actually, it's fast, it's free, and really, really difficult to do. But yeah, really worth, really worth doing. Because if you don't do it, then there are these sort of elephants in the room all the time. And it's, you know, if we go back to the person that you were talking to said, oh, I feel negative. Like very often, you know, I'll give myself an excuse for not pointing out someone's bias. You know, oh, he's a good guy. Oh, she didn't mean any harm. But if I don't tell them, I'm not doing that. Like if I really think he's a good guy or she didn't mean any harm or, you know, they didn't realize and I care about those people, then I tell them what they did wrong. I, I don't, I don't ignore it.

Totally. There's a lot here. There's so much here. So first of all, I'm just processing how skilled a manager needs to be to really walk through this with the team.

It just feels like it's a lot of Yeah, it is a lot of skill, but if you have developed the kind of relationship with your team where they will tell you when you're off base, then you, this is by doing this, you build more skill, right? Like if we don't do this, then we're never gonna build our skill. It's like, it also, in order to run a race, you need to be in good shape. And the way you get in good shape is you start running. Money, right? Yeah. If we do nothing, we're never going to build the skills that we need. And so that's why I think it's so important to sit down with your team and do it with your team. Like, this is— if you're setting yourself up as the leader and you don't have people, by the way, flagging your bias, like, you as the leader have biases too. So make yourself the— only One way to start, if you're worried, for example, that people might weaponize this on the team, say, "Every time I say something biased, I want you all to wave the purple flag at me." You know, make yourself the guinea pig on your team. Now that I'm saying that, I'm like, oh my gosh, there's some bias probably inherent. And metaphors are really risky, I have found.

The bias is in the purple flag?

Or what is it? No, make yourself the guinea pig.

Oh, make yourself the guinea pig.

Yes. Yes. I'm sure I can think of 10 problems with that. But anyway, do it. Have people do it to you first.

Experiment with you.

Experiment with yourself. Don't experiment on other people.

Right, right, right. And again, show your kind of your own openness to all this. Yeah.

Make yourself vulnerable. I think that is really part of all of this. And you've gotta prove to your team and you gotta do this just beyond— regardless, you've got to do this. You've got to prove, you've got to create a psychologically safe environment. And by asking people to challenge you on your biases, you're showing vulnerability and you're proving that they're not going to get punished if they tell you. And that's really important. Right.

By the way, I just want to say from my perspective, like bias is a subset of hard things, uncomfortable things, awkward things we would usefully be able to say to each other. And the more freedom and flexibility you have about that. So it's like more muscle, more muscle building on saying what's there, right? Saying what's there and having the ability to say it and then be received.

Yes. I mean, you can start with spinach in your teeth. That's much easier because we all know that if I have spinach in my teeth, it's kind for you to tell me.

Right.

By the same token, if I'm using a word or phrase that is biased, the kind thing for you to do is to tell me so I don't keep making that mistake and possibly hurting other people.

Right. 100%.

The nice thing about spinach in my teeth is I only hurt myself with that.

That's right. That's right. Well, I actually wanna get into nuance in a minute because the nice thing about spinach in your teeth is it's very clear you have spinach in your teeth. There it is. It's green. It's sitting right there. I guess I think, and you tell me if I'm wrong about this, I wonder if bias is ever— it's like open to interpretation. Like, and I wouldn't suggest, I'm not suggesting that a tactic is, you know, purple flag, you were biased. No, I wasn't. Yeah, you were. That is not what I'm talking about. But how do you handle the notion of it maybe is nuanced or open to interpretation??

I think there's a couple of things about bias. One is, like all communication, it gets measured not at the speaker's mouth, but at the listener's ear. And so, for example, I don't like it when people refer to me as a girl. Like, to me, that's just the wrong answer on an SAT. Like, girl is to woman as boy is to man. And I am way older than 18. I prefer to be called a woman, not a girl. Not all women feel that way. But if you're talking to me, that's how you need to refer to me. And so somebody says, and this has happened to me, someone's like, you know, "Oh, the girls." And I was like, "Ah, women." And this person who I was speaking with said, "Well, other girls, like, they don't like being called." And I'm like, "Well, you're not talking to the other women, you're talking to me." And so I think it's important to remember that communication gets measured not at the speaker's mouth, but at the listener's ear. I was talking— here's another example about this. I was talking to a leader who had written an article that referred to an old HBR piece called The Monkey on Your Back. And someone pointed out to them that this was not as inclusive language as it could be because Black readers found that just referring to people as monkeys as problematic given the history of animalization. And this leader's response was, "Well, that's not how I meant it." And I'm sure it wasn't. I mean, I don't think this person was a racist, but that was not the point.

The point is that was how people heard it.

And how hard is it to change the language that you're using or to acknowledge the problem with the language of the original article? And it's not hard to acknowledge that, I don't think. And I don't know why you wouldn't do that. So I think when you— very often what happens when we're talking about bias is somebody will say, oh, I didn't mean to. And there's a wonderful article that I read that said, just pretend you're stepping on someone's toe. Like if I'm stepping on your toe and you say, Kim, you're stepping on my toe, I'm not gonna continue to step on it saying I didn't mean to. Like, that's ridiculous. And I think very often that is how we approach these bias things, which is I didn't mean to offend you, but the fact of the matter is The word choice you use, I find offensive. I don't care about your intentions. I find it offensive.

Right. And so it can also not be a big deal, as in just stop using it. Just get off my toe.

Yeah. Just get off my toe. Just don't refer to me as a girl. And if you're speaking to a group of women, refer to them as women. Women. Now, sometimes people say, well, I can't win 'cause some of the women don't like the word women. And, and that's a fair point. And, and so something that's worth talking about. But I would say there are very few adult women who mind being called, who insist, who prefer really, who get offended if you call them women instead of girls. But maybe I'm wrong.

Well, that's, I mean, I wrote a book called "From Start-Up to Grown-Up" and you'd be surprised how many people are offended by being called a grownup.

So that's alarming.

Really?

Yes.

Yes. Now, are they kind of fake offended? They're not really offended, right?

But why are they offended by being called a grown-up?

They say, oh, I don't want to grow up, or don't call me a grown-up because it has a connotation, just like everything. And what I actually did a little LinkedIn video on this, the connotation of grown-up is joyless, no fun, no spontaneity, you know, the grind of life.

It's so much more fun to be 50 than 20. Like, he just told you.

I know, better to be a grown-up. But it's not also about— it's not women or girls, it's not grown-up or young, whatever, not grown-up kid, I don't know. It is about, I think, trying to read the room and frankly doing your best. And I want to ask you though, well, first I want to ask you, because the second part was, how do you help your team deal deal with the shame, the uncomfortableness of being the one who is being, you know, I don't want to say called out, the one who's being noted or identified as having a bias or there's something wrong with what I'm doing. How do you help people? Because you just said honestly, a state of panic sets in, but people are not showing panic. They are showing defensiveness. They are showing, oh, you're being too serious. This or whatever they're showing.

Yeah. You're being too sensitive.

Being too sensitive. That is normal. How do you help people handle the sort of being, um, the spotlight being on them for this difficult thing?

I think the first thing is what we already talked about. Like, make yourself the— ask people to wave the purple flag at you publicly and you respond well. I think that is, if you think you can, respond well. There was a CEO who I was working with who had a habit of standing up in front of his team and saying, "Hey guys." And I said to him, "Look, I'm not a guy. And so it's not like, I'm not, I don't wanna make a federal case of this, but I feel slightly excluded when you say, you know, why don't you stand up and say, 'Hey team' or 'Hey.'" I mean, I'm Southern, so it's easy for me to say, "Hey y'all." It wasn't falling so trippingly off his tongue. Uh, but, but he, and he agreed with me, but this is, this is what I mean. Like it's a deeply ingrained bad habit. And at first he didn't want to share with everybody that he was trying to work on it. He, he thought he could fix it without sharing that he was fixing it and he couldn't. He kept making the mistake, uh, you know, and so he had to actually tell people, I'm, this is a pattern of speech I'm trying. To fix. And it's kind of embarrassing that I keep making the same mistake over and over. So, but one thing you can do to help me is, and he bought these, you know, those Styrofoam rockets on a rubber band, is you can shoot the rocket at me if I say you guys. And so just making light of these things, like, I think right now we're at this stage where we're so heavy and there are heavy things. I mean, there's a reason why we're being so heavy. But I'm trying, I'm trying, I'm making a mistake. I know I'm gonna make this mistake and please help me, help me fix it. You know, just make your, make the efforts that you're taking tangible. This is also why I think it's so important to have Purple Flag to, because people, once we're doing this often in a meeting, it's happening all the time. A lot, we, We sort of take the shame out of the game because what we'll notice, what you'll notice very quickly on your team is that everybody has biases and everybody notices different biases and we're helping each other get past them. And on a team of, you know, 5 or 10 people, you're gonna have, you're gonna, different people will notice different things. You're probably not gonna address all the biases in the world and that's okay. Like another part of this is, because one of the problems I think with unconscious bias training is it, it's, it's almost like boiling the ocean. There are so many biases out there, it can be daunting. It can feel impossible. But if we, as this team of 5 or 10 people, are just gonna address the biases that are present in the room, that's great. Like, that's a, that's, that's what really matters for us to work well as a team. Yeah.

And you kind of catch them in the moment. I am curious, you know, you were talking about the heavy things in the world. It can be hard to talk about these topics. It just can be. And that people can be especially— well, I want to say, I was going to say a certain generation. That's my bias, I guess. But, but that may or may not be true. But let's just say that there are no question people who come to it with some charge around this on either side. You're too sensitive. I don't have to change. Based on you, or the other side being, let's, what I sort of say, called easily and aggressively offended.

Yeah.

How do you talk about that in a workplace which can feel kind of, I don't know, polarized in a way on this topic?

Yeah. I mean, again, as Audre Lorde said, your silence will not protect you. If nobody says anything, these silent resentments bubble So, so let's, let's go back to, to the "Hey guys." Again, not a bit, not the end of the world, but this is, this was an organization that was, that, that didn't have a great gender balance. They were trying to fix it. And then the, the lead, the CEO keeps saying, "Hey guys, hey guys, hey guys." people get annoyed, but he has no idea he's making the mistake. And so it doesn't get solved. And so by addressing it in kind of a lightweight way, we have a lot, you know, it might mean you have a lot of smaller things to work through, a lot of smaller arguments, but it's a little bit like, what's the, the sandpile theory, where you're dropping a grain of sand on a pile one at a time. And if you wet the sand, it piles up and then there's an avalanche. So what you want is a lot of— you don't wanna wet the sand. The silence is like wetting the sand. You wanna have a lot of smaller— that's how you get to stability. A stable sandpile is not wetting the sand. And then there's a lot of little avalanches, which are kind of the metaphor, is a lot of little awkward conversations, but there are a lot of little ones. So, so for example, I on Twitter wrote once, I'm no longer, I refuse to even acknowledge X, it has been ruined. But when Twitter was great, yeah, I was on Twitter and I wrote a, I wrote something that, that was suggesting how to solicit feedback. Back different go-to questions. And one of the ones I wrote is, tell me why I'm crazy. And somebody wrote on Twitter that they waved the purple flag. They said, you know, this is the way you're using language is gonna exclude people who are struggling with mental health. And so what you really mean is tell me why I'm wrong, which was exactly what I really meant. And so I appreciate appreciated that. But then a bunch of people jumped in and said, oh, everybody's too sensitive. And they thought they were actually defending me, but they were making the situation worse. And luckily, before I could get back to Twitter and notice this whole kerfuffle starting, Russ Laraway jumped in and he said, hey, for the I'm too sensitive crowd, let's think about the ROI of speaking up. The return is that you create a more inclusive environment, and the investment is you change one word. Why wouldn't you do that? And I thought that was a great way of putting it. So I think that you're going to begin to have these conversations. Are they going to be comfortable? No. Much of what I'm writing about is moving through discomfort. Discomfort. Uh, and I don't have any way to make it comfortable. I do not have emotional Novocaine. If I did, I think it would be dangerous cuz then we would do what you do when you go to the dentist and you bite the hell outta your cheek. Uh, so, so the, the, these feelings are useful, uh, if we, if we use them to, to end the default to silence and to move through the discomfort.

I love that. Is there one tip or suggestion you have to motivate people to approach discomfort? Because as a coach, which, listen, discomfort is my business, right? Like making people step out of their comfort zone. It is really challenging. What tools or suggestions do you have to have people make, motivate them and make that investment?

I think that one of the things that can be most helpful is to get people to tell you a story about a time when they were silent and their silence was very harmful to them. And so that's why I liked what Russ said about the ROI on speaking up. So one of the things you can do is you can think about a time, and I did this as I wrote Radical Respect. It was like, it took me 4, really 5 years to write the book. And it was like a 5-year intensive therapy session. It was very helpful. But I thought about all the times when I had remained silent and the cost that it had, the risks of speaking up are, we immediately feel them. So we sort of instinctively feel them. But when I slowed down and thought about the costs of not speaking up and the risks of not speaking up, they were enormous. I was losing a sense of agency over time. Problems festered and then they blew up in a much bigger, messier way than they would have if I had just said the thing in the first place. And that was really helpful. So get people to tell you the those stories. When was the time that something similar had happened and you didn't, you didn't point it out and then it got much worse? Uh, that I think is one of the, it sounds so simple, like storytelling, but it actually is really powerful. Uh, the, the, there's, they do these fMRI studies that, you know, where they put these nodes on your brain and it turns out our brains literally get on the same wavelength when we tell stories.

Oh, well, that's good to know. I mean, stories are very compelling. As you were saying that, I was just remembering, reflecting early in my career, I was working at a professional services firm. And we were in, you know, the room together. And it was me and all men. And the manager was a man. And it was these kind of— I don't want to stereotype, but I will say kind of like what I sort of called the tough guys from BC, like the bros. We didn't say bros in those days, but the bros, the beer drinking Bro's from BC.

And Tim from the manager—

what's BC? Oh, sorry, Boston College.

Okay, okay.

Obviously Boston College. The manager Tim, I'm sorry, but he was singling me out in some way. I don't remember how, but I remember he was singling me out. Yeah, I was the only woman. Yeah, and I was super young. And at some point I was the one, you know, I, I can be shy, but I do have my words, right? I was always a personality. You had some words and I sort of said, hey, I feel like you're treating me different. And I'll never forget Brian, one of these BC guys said, Tim, you do seem to be treating her differently.

Yeah. He was a good upstater. Just like that.

And I felt so supported. I felt, and I was not best friends with these guys at all. Far from it. Yeah. But I felt so supported. And by the way, Anyway, decades later, I'm still thinking about that.

You're still grateful.

And I'm still thinking about Brian. I'm so grateful to Brian. Brian with a Y.

Thank you, Brian with a Y.

Thank you, Brian with a Y. And I remember his last name, but like that, I should track him down and appreciate him.

Track him down and tell him. Yeah.

I will do that. But I'm reflecting that the other side of the story is, did anybody ever stand up for you? Or did anybody ever help you? In these kinds of moments. And if someone helped you, you knew how helpful it really was.

Yes. And this is one of the, one of the reasons that I wrote Radical Respect is, is an homage to the upstanders throughout my career who made a huge difference. There was at one point in my career, I was, I was working. This was my first job outta college. I was working at a company in Moscow and I was being underpaid. Like I was paid 25%, not 25% less, 25%, 70, you know, of what the guys were getting paid. And the company had this big house where all the employees lived 'cause it was illegal to rent an apartment in Moscow at this time. And the guys all lived there, but I wasn't allowed to live there. I was forced to go get an illegal sublet in what was then the Soviet Union. So this was like, I was not being treated well. And there was one partner at the firm who said to me, "It's unfair. You're not being paid enough." And he didn't change anything. The CEO still kicked me out of the house. And underpaid me. But he, just his acknowledgement, because you feel so gaslit if people don't say something. And so one of the things I did was I talked about different ways to be an upstander. You can challenge directly, and he did. He went to the CEO. But even if he hadn't done that, if he had just coming up to me and acknowledging that it wasn't fair was a huge relief. It was a gaslight dispelling thing. What else can you do to be a good upstander? Uh, you, you can check in, you know, with the person later. You could, you can also delegate. You can, there's a lot that's been written about the problem. Sometimes when there's a lot of upstanders, everybody is a silent bystander. So find someone else who may be in a better position than you are to do something about the, uh, about the event. Sometimes just creating a distraction is really helpful. There was one time I was working at a, on a trading desk, so it was, you know, And vast majority of people on the desk were men. And I made a mistake. And this one guy bellows across, "Jesus Christ, girl!" I was like— And another guy on the team, he didn't— He just threw a ball at the guy's head. He created a distraction. And that was what I needed. 'Cause I was like on the verge of tears. And it just, that was what I needed him to do. We can, you know, we're all carrying around these phones. You can also document what happened, but just remember that the person harmed owns the documentation, not you. So there's a lot of different ways to be an upstander. You don't have to stand up to the person who did the thing that was disrespectful. You can— there's a lot of different ways to support.

Yeah, to be supportive. Right. That's very helpful. You know, you talked about this being like a, you know, a therapy session for you. And then you shared some examples of your Moscow. I have to say, when I read the book, I was really struck by and frankly moved by some of the stories you told about your early career.

Yeah.

You know, as you reflect on that, and I don't know what you'd like to feel comfortable sharing here. But I'd love to hear what you make of all that, considering where you are now.

Yeah. I mean, I would like to think that I'm so old, that times have changed so much, that that kind of stuff that happened to me would never happen. Unfortunately, that is not true.

So, just to fill in some of the blanks, you know, Kim was really bullied quite a bit. And I would just say, you know, sexually, You were sexually assaulted, actually.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So here's what happened in that first job out of college. First of all, I found out I was dramatically underpaid. Second of all, I was kicked out of this house. Third of all, I went to the chief of staff of the CEO to complain about this happening. Since the other guy, the upstander, was not able to change it, I was still working on getting my, getting my salary improved. And the chief chief of staff wound up grabbing my boob, you know, like, not, not helpful. Uh, the, the other thing that happened— yes, quite unhelpful. The other thing that I have that happened was, was that I was dating one of the guys who, who was at the company in Moscow, and then I, I quit dating him, broke up with him, and he just was a complete jerk to me. So, you know, again Like, should I have been dating him? No, that was a mistake. But, but the— his boss noticed him being a complete jerk. I think I was reading the paper and he walked by and he grabbed it and he was like, I get the paper before you. I mean, it's just petty. And his boss noticed that. And I was upset about it. And so I went— I was going to the elevator to go up to my room. We're all sitting in the lobby after. Of a hotel after a day of meetings. And his boss followed me to the elevator. And when the door shut, he frotted me. I did not know this was a word. Frot. You can look it up, but it was a— it's a form of sexual assault.

Oh dear God.

Yes. He grabbed me. He reached out his arms like, you know, for a hug. And because I was like teary, I was embarrassed. I was teary. I hugged I hugged him mostly to hide my face, and then he frauded me. And so I, you know, the elevator door opened and I ran away. But so all of this stuff was happening in my, it was my very first job out of college. And one of the things I did in the book is I wrote a letter to my younger self. And I also wrote a letter to my younger boss, you know, the younger version of the CEO. Like, what could we all have done differently? Differently to create a better, a better work environment. Because obviously all this stuff was upsetting for me, but it was also bad for that company. In my next job where I was not underpaid and sexually assaulted, I did much better work. In fact, I started this factory that generated over $100 million in revenue for— I did not do that at the first company. Like I couldn't do my best work when I was being treated that way. So I think that I have a lot of advice for my younger self and for the younger versions of the CEO of that company. But the thing I want to say is that I hope those things wouldn't happen, but I know they do still. I mean, one of the worst things that happened to me in my career happened relatively recently where a woman got raped at a company event. Yeah. So this, It's not like we have solved the problem of sexual assault. We absolutely— I'm tempted to curse, but we absolutely have not solved that problem. This is a problem and it still happens in the workplace all the time. And there's a million things we do wrong. I have suggestions for things we can do to make it better. An important one is creating a culture of consent. All that means is if I want to touch you, it's my responsibility to know whether or not you want to be touched in that way. And if I don't know, don't touch. And if you don't want to be touched, it's like not that complicated. And yet we act like it's this super complicated thing. I think also we need checks and balances at every stage of the employee life cycle. That, that's a big part of my, of the letter to the CEO of that company, the younger, when he, his younger self is that there were no— he did not know, I'm sure, that I got sexually assaulted at his company. But he— I also— there were good reasons why I didn't tell HR. I thought I would be punished, and I think I was right. Not him. He had not created a situation where I could let him know, and he needed to know. I'm sure he didn't want to know, but he needed to know that that was happening at his firm.

What are your thoughts about sort of this, maybe the climate in Silicon Valley on this topic?

You know, so it's not good. There's a lot of people who are being treated very badly in Silicon Valley. I don't know that it's hard. It's a little bit hard for me because I worked— Silicon Valley was the best place I ever worked. It was way better than finance. Finance. So I think the problems, I think we're maybe more vocal about the problems in Silicon Valley than other industries are. I don't know if it's objectively worse. Certainly if you look at, I mean, there are some aspects of Silicon Valley where if you run the numbers, you can find that it is worse. Like the number The number of women, the number of people who get funded from venture capital firms who are women, I think it's like 3% of founders. Like, that's bad. I think it's 2%.

Is it 2%?

Okay. Yeah. It's even worse than I thought.

And has been holding steady for like over a decade.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's, that I think is worse than just about anywhere. Probably oil and gas has, you know, there are some other, but there are also industries like when my kids were in preschool, there was one of the teachers was a man and he wore a t-shirt that said, "Expect male involvement." Like clearly he was in the minority and he felt like he was not respected. So it goes, I don't think the problem is men. I think the problem is power. And when things get too imbalanced, then we tend to get less and less and less less diverse over time unless we consciously manage it. But I will say, like, when I— so throughout my career, I had worked in finance. I had done a startup in New York where, you know, I thought when I'm in charge, everything will be great. And it wasn't. You know, there was still bias, prejudice, and bullying. A woman got sexually harassed at my— I don't know why I thought I thought it wouldn't happen because I was the CEO, but it did. And that was a big drink of water. And then I got to Google, and I am not saying that Google was great for everyone. A lot of people were mistreated at Google. But for me, when I got to Google, my boss was a woman. My boss was Sheryl Sandberg. The head of the AdSense product that I was working on, so like one of the technical leaders was Susan Wojcicki, who is woman. The head of direct sales was Joan Braddye, who's a woman. So there wasn't just like one woman, there were a lot of women above me, and that made a huge difference to me. Shona Brown led business operations at Google and became a mentor and consciously designed the management systems at Google to strip away away unilateral decision-making power from managers. And that created a much better environment. It was— if one person treated you badly, it was easy to find 3 others who would help make the situation right for you. And again, did not solve all the problems there. You know, I'm sure that pay— that there were pay differences. Although I will say, when I first joined Google, they had made a real concerted effort to make sure that the pay was fair. And when— and I just assumed I was going to get underpaid again. And then I compared my offer letter with that of a guy I knew who was getting hired at the same time, and in a technical role. And I was— I would— I was not underpaid. You could have knocked me over with a feather. I Oh, they pay, you know, and the amount, Ruchi Sanghvi talks about this. She was the first female engineer at Facebook. Again, I'm sure Facebook got this wrong as Google did over time. But she went to Mark Zuckerberg and she said, all I wanna do is build great products. That's all I wanna think about. And that's all you want me to think about. But when I learn that I'm being underpaid, paid, then I'm thinking about that instead of making great products. And Mark thought about it and said, oh, OK, well, let's fix that, and increased her pay. So I think there— yes, there are problems in tech. I don't want to be in denial. And there are also opportunities in tech.

Very well said and very nuanced. I think that's so helpful, Kim. Kim, just a few more questions. Have you ever suffered from imposter syndrome?

Of course. I mean, I don't know who hasn't suffered from imposter syndrome. I mean, kind of at every stage of my career. I will tell you, before Radical Candor was published, I was so afraid. I was so deeply afraid that people would point out, ah, you know, Kim never got promoted to VP when she was at Google, and why would we listen to what has to say, some middle manager. So yes, in fact, I almost didn't try to get Radical Candor published for that reason because I was worried that I would be called out for not really knowing what I was talking about. So of course I've—

How did you get over that?

I, a friend of mine came to visit, Kim Keating, uh, uh, and she just insisted, cuz I had written the book, but I hadn't sent it out to be published. I had written it to kind of share with people who wanted me to coach them and I didn't have time. I also wrote it as I was, I was coaching, I was coaching Dick Costolo, the CEO of Twitter, and I was coaching, uh, Drew Houston at Dropbox, and I was coaching Ryan Smith at Qualtrics. And part of the reason why I wrote it was to help me coach them better, you know? And so, stuff would happen, I would write down afterwards what I think and send it to them. So, I'd put this book together and Kim was like, you've got to send this to this friend of mine who's a literary agent, Howard Yoon. And I did send it and he said, "Oh, I can definitely sell this book." And so I thought, well, I'm, you know, okay, let's go, you know, let's see what happens. But I was nervous about it coming out. I was really nervous.

What advice do you have for people in sort of handling feelings of imposter syndrome or severe self-doubt?

I think that the, one of the things that I have found helpful is to just make sure that you do the work, that you enjoy the work you're doing for its own sake. And then you, then you can be less worried about the— focus on the intrinsic pleasure of the work. And, and then it's easier to worry a little bit less about the extrinsic rewards or punishments that you, that you— if you, if you're proud of your work, that is its own reward. And I think the most important reward, uh, and, and then it— that is what has always helped. I mean, I wrote the book because I wanted to write the book, not because I wanted to become a famous writer. I wrote the book because I like to write the book. When I was managing people, when I was managing a team at Google, I had a coach who said, try to make sure that when you're managing your team, you're trying to be your best self. And this is an opportunity for you to express Express your values as a human being, like hook into that intrinsic motivation. That is what will help you enjoy your work and help you be patient with the parts of your job that you don't enjoy. And I thought that was really good advice. And he likened it to being on an— he said, one time I was on a flight with— he had 4 sons and they were all young, 4 sons under the age of 6 or 8 or something like 4 very young children. And for whatever reason, his wife wasn't with him on this. So he had these 4 kids, 4 young kids, and the, and there, there was turbulence or there was a, I think a rainstorm was, he was on the tarmac with these 4 kids for like 5 hours, like, like a hellish situation. And he said at hour after 1 hour had gone by, he was like so frantic. And then he took a deep breath and he said, like, being present doesn't mean that you're in the place you want to be. It means you are where you are and you're gonna try to express your best self. And so he is like, I'm a father, I'm with my sons, I love my sons and I'm with them and I'm just gonna make the most of this. And that can be really helpful, I think, taking that kind of approach to your work rather than allowing someone else's judgment to validate or invalidate your work. Uh, you, you wanna hook into that intrinsic intrinsic pleasure of the work.

I love that. That's so helpful. So nourishing. Kim, what do you wish you had known earlier on your journey?

Earlier on my journey, I wish that I had not— I felt, I felt for too much of my career, I felt like my job was 100% external validation and my writing was 100% internal validation. And I think I kept the two too separate for too long. I felt like I was having to do my, you know, my job was basically a way to subsidize my novel writing habit. And I felt like I was not able to express it. In fact, that's why that advice from my coach was so meaningful. He said, "What are you trying to express in your writing? And try to express that in your job, in your life." as well. And so if there is something that you really wanna do that you're not able to do because you can't afford to do it, and I think we all have these things, try to think about ways to express that in what you are doing. I wish that I had had that advice from my coach much earlier.

That's great. And Kim, last question.

Excuse me.

Last question. What advice do you have for founders as they grow as on their journeys, as they grow into leaders? Leaders.

Here was the worst thing for me about being a founder, is that— or the biggest kind of mistake I made about being a founder. I kind of mentioned in passing that I thought if I was the founder and I was the CEO, that everything would be sweetness and light, that, that I would— that, that bias, prejudice, and bullying would not happen on my team, that nobody on a team that I led would get sexually harassed. And none of that was true. And what I learned once I got to Google was that as a leader— excuse me— as a leader, it is your job to design management systems to be fair. Because if you don't design those management systems to be fair, are, then you're going to get systemic injustice. You're going to get bias that gets in the way of you hiring the right people. You're going to have people on your team who have more power than others who abuse that power in ways that are horrifying to you. That will happen. It doesn't matter what your intentions are. It doesn't matter what a good person you are. That will happen unless you design— and even if you do design systems, other bad things are going to happen. And you've got to— so you need to create an environment of institutional courage where when bad things happen, you find out about them really soon rather than burying them. One of— Jim Morgan, who is the CEO of Applied Materials, said, good news is no news. Bad news is good news and no news is bad news. So you wanna make sure that you're always aware of that. If you're getting good news, it means like a dangerous fog is coming at you and you're about to hit a rock. If you're getting no news at all, that's bad news. 'Cause you're, you know, it's the, when you get the bad news, when somebody tells you what's going wrong, That's the good news because it means you've created this kind of culture where you've created a— that's the sign you've created a culture of psychological safety, in fact. One of my favorite examples of that happened when I was at Google. We were redesigning the AdWords front end. And the AdWords is like 99%, was at that time, all the revenue. So it was really important to get it right. And the team had a plan. And Sergey, one of the founders, had a different idea. And the team was explaining to him why they were doing it their way. And Sergey was persuaded, partially persuaded, but not 100% persuaded. And so then Sergey said, well, what if you just take 5 or 10 people and try an experiment, try doing this my way, and we'll see which works better. And the team said, The team didn't wanna do that either for reasons that are complicated. But anyway, Sergey banged his fist on the table, but he had this big smile and he said, "If this were an ordinary company, you'd all be doing it my way, but you're not. And that's why I love this company." 'Cause he was glad they were pushing back. He knew that this was a sign he had created the kind of culture where he was gonna get the best ideas out of people. And a similar story with Larry at Google. Google. There was early on in my time at Google, I got into an argument with him about an AdSense policy. And Matt Cutts, who, who led sort of search quality, agreed with me and disagreed with Larry. And Matt and I went to meet with him. And Matt was get— Matt had been there a lot longer than I had. I was relatively new to the company. And Matt was getting very, uh, very strong. He was stating his position with great vigor. And he even maybe, Matt's an even-keeled guy, but maybe at one point he started yelling. At least it seemed to me he was yelling at Larry. And I remember feeling this sense of panic, like, oh my gosh, this new friend I've made is about to get fired. And then I looked at Larry's face and he was grinning. He was encouraging Matt. Matt to push back and to push back hard. He loved it. And I realized that that was part, that was a big part of why Google was so successful. So encourage your people to push back on you and design your systems to strip away power, including your own power, at every stage of the employee life cycle. Don't hire people without a hiring committee. Don't hire anyone without a high, Because if you are the unilateral decider, then you're gonna make more bad decisions than if you pull together a team.

A masterclass in what to do as a founder. Kim Scott, what a joy. What a joy. Your new book is called Radical Respect. Everyone should go out and get it immediately.

Yes. And read this book.

Read this book and how to, how to work better together. How to work together better. Kim, thank you for joining me today. What a great, what a great time.

Thank you so much. Really enjoyed the conversation.

Thanks for listening to From Startup to Grownup. If you like what you heard, give it a review on Apple Podcasts so other people can find it. And if you know of a founder or someone else who is meant to be on this podcast, drop me a line through my website, alisacohn.com.