You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day.
I'm your host, Elyse Hu.
There have been times in my life where I've been frustrated or angry and wanted to say something to a friend that I know will come off as maybe aggressive or even mean.
In this arXiv Talk CEO coach and author, Kim Scott, poses the question, how do we say what we mean without being mean?
She shares why she thinks we must all be radically candid, as she calls it, and action steps that we can take to make it easier to say what we're feeling in the moment and build better relationships.
Ready to order? Yes.
We're earning unlimited 3 % cash back on dining and entertainment with a Capitol One Saver Card, so let's just get one of everything.
Everything? Fire everything!
The Capitol One Saver Card is at Table 27, and they're earning unlimited 3 % cash back.
Yes Chef! This is so nice.
Had a feeling you'd want 3 % cash back on dessert.
Ooh, tiramisu! Earn unlimited 3 % cash back on dining and entertainment with the Capitol One Saver Card. Capitol One.
What's in your wallet?
Terms apply. See Capitol One dot com for details.
If you're anything like us, you love attention and my favorite way to get all eyes on me is with next level shiny glossy hair Which is why we're so excited to tell y 'all about the new Lamela gloss collection from the girlies at Tracime and gigglers We've got you too because Tracime partnered with us to bring you one 800 gloss a special bonus episode of giggly squad where Hannah and I give advice on all things hair and giving gloss check out the episode and grab the Lamela gloss collection today because I'm officially declaring this spring gloss season.
This episode is sponsored by SimpliSafe.
If you're thinking about upgrading your home security, I cannot recommend SimpliSafe enough.
I've been using it, and their new ActiveGuard outdoor protection is seriously next level.
AI powered cameras, plus real live agents keeping an eye on things outside before anything bad happens.
It's not just reacting after the fact.
if someone is lurking, SimpliSafe steps in.
Agents can talk to them, flip on spotlights, even call the police.
It's like having the extra set of eyes watching over your home.
For me it's become a nightly ritual, setting the system before bed and knowing everything's protected.
Total peace of mind.
You can get 50 % off your new SimpliSafe system with Professional Monitoring in your first month free at simplisafe .com That's SimpliSafe dot com slash TED Talks Daily.
There's no safe like SimpliSafe.
How can you all say what you mean without being mean?
I started thinking about this back in 1999.
I had started a software company.
And I came into the office one day, and about half the people in the company had sent me the same article about how everyone would rather have a boss who is really mean but competent, total jerk but competent, than one who is really nice but incompetent and I thought gosh are they sending me this because they think I'm a jerk or because they think I'm incompetent and surely those are not my only two choices.
Now I went to business school and there I learned exactly nothing about management but I did learn one really important thing all of life's hardest problems can be solved with a good two by two framework so that is how I started thinking about this problem I was unwilling to let go of my desire to show that I cared personally that is what, for me, gave work meaning, but also had to learn how to challenge directly.
And I had to learn how to do both at the same time.
And, over time, I came to think about caring and challenging at the same time as radical candor.
Now, the easiest way to understand what radical candor is is to think about what happens when we mess up on one dimension or another, as we are all bound to do from time to time.
Sometimes we remember to challenge directly, but we forget to show that we care personally.
And this I call obnoxious aggression.
Anybody ever seen any obnoxious aggression?
And this is a problem.
Obnoxious aggression is a problem because it hurts people.
Primarily it's a problem because it hurts people.
But it's also a problem because it's inefficient.
If I act like a total jerk to you, then you're likely to go into fight or flight mode in your brain and then you literally cannot hear what I'm saying.
So I'm just wasting my breath.
And then there's a third, more subtle problem with obnoxious aggression.
I don't know about you, but for me, when I realized I've acted like a jerk, it is not my instinct to go the right way on care personally.
Instead, it's my instinct to go the wrong way on challenge directly.
Oh, it's no big deal, it doesn't really matter.
and then I wind up in the worst place of all.
Manipulative insincerity.
If obnoxious aggression is front -stabbing, manipulative insincerity is back -stabbing.
It's passive -aggressive behavior.
This is where all the most toxic kinds of workplace behavior, or frankly behavior at home, in any relationship that you have in any part of your life creep in.
And it is fun to tell stories about obnoxious aggression and manipulative insincerity because this is where the drama is.
However, the vast majority of us make the vast majority of our mistakes in this last quadrant where we do remember to show that we care personally because you know what, most 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 someone that we fail to tell them something they'd be better off knowing in the long run.
and this is what I call ruinous empathy.
Empathy is a good thing, ruinous empathy is not.
In order to explain to you what I mean by this, I wanna tell you a story about possibly the most painful moment of my career.
I had just hired this person, Alex, we'll call this person Alex. And I liked Alex a lot.
Alex was smart, Alex was charming, Alex was funny.
Alex would do stuff like we're at a manager offsite like playing one of those endless get to know you games, and Alex was the person who had the courage to raise their hand and to say, I can tell that everyone is really stressed out, I've got an idea, it'll help us get to know each other better, and it'll be really fast. Whatever Alex's idea was, if it was fast, we were down with it.
Alex says, let's just go around the table and confess what candy our parents used when potty training us.
Really weird, but really fast. Weirder yet, we all remembered, Hershey Kisses right here.
And then for the next 10 months, every time there was a tense moment in a meeting, Alex would whip out just the right piece of candy for the right person at the right moment.
So Alex brought a little levity to the office.
Everybody loved working with Alex. one problem with Alex. Alex was doing terrible work, absolutely terrible.
Sort of creative and unusual but tons of sloppy mistakes.
I was so puzzled, I couldn't understand what was going on because Alex had this incredible resume, this great history of accomplishments, I learned much later that Alex was smoking pot in the bathroom three times a day which maybe explained all that candy that he had.
Okay. But I didn't know any of that at the time.
All I knew is Alex would hand stuff into me with shame in his eyes.
He knew his work wasn't nearly good enough and I would say something to him along the lines of, Oh, Alex you're so smart, you're so awesome, everybody loves working with you, this is a great start.
Maybe you can make it just a little bit better.
Which of course he never did.
Okay, so let's pause for a moment.
What was going on there?
Part of it was truly ruinous empathy.
I really did like Alex and I really did not want to hurt his feelings.
But if I'm honest with myself, there was something more insidious going on as well because Alex was popular, and Alex was sensitive.
And there was part of me that was afraid that if I told Alex in no uncertain terms that his work wasn't nearly good enough, he would get upset, he might even start to cry.
And then everyone would think I was a big you know what.
And so the part of me that was worried about my reputation as a leader, that was the manipulative insincerity part.
The part of me that was worried about Alex's feelings, that was the ruin of sympathy part.
So this kind of toxic mixture goes on for about 10 months and eventually, the inevitable happens.
And I realized that if I don't fire Alex, I'm gonna lose all my best performers.
Because not only have I been unfair to Alex, not to tell him so that he could fix things, I've been unfair to the whole team.
Their deliverables were late because his deliverables were late.
They couldn't spend as much time on their work as they needed to because they were constantly having to redo his work.
And the people who were the best performers on my team, they were just gonna quit.
They wanted to be able to work in a place where they could do their best work.
And so I sat down to have a conversation with Alex that I should have started frankly ten months previously.
And when I finished explaining to him where things stood, he kind of pushed his chair back from the table.
He looked me right in the eye, and he said, why didn't you tell me?
And as that question was going around in my head with no good answer, he looked at me again and he said, why didn't anyone tell me?
I thought you all cared about me.
And now I realize that by not telling Alex, thinking I was being so nice, bearing his feelings, Because he's now getting fired as a result of it, not so nice after all.
It was a terrible moment in my career but it was too late to save Alex. Even Alex at this point agreed he should go because his reputation on the team was just shot.
All I could do in that moment was make myself a very solemn promise that I would never make that mistake again and that I would do everything in my power to help other people avoid making that mistake and that is why I'm here talking to you all today.
Now I want to talk to you not only about how this works, how ruinous empathy works in one on one relationships, it also works on team culture, or doesn't work.
Often I'll work with a team and they start out radically candid.
Small group of people, they know each other really well, it's kind of easy for them to show they care and challenge.
And then because of that they find some success and they grow and then they succumb to the gravitational pull of ruinous empathy.
And then things start going wrong, but nobody wants to be mean, nobody wants to talk to anybody else, everybody's getting really agitated, and then finally somebody bursts out and says the thing.
Anybody ever see that happen?
Maybe not in the best way, but it works.
And because it works, they do it again, but maybe they do it a little more.
And because everybody else is so determined to be nice, they say things like, oh, she didn't mean any harm, or, oh, he's a good guy.
And then the next thing you know, this person is promoted.
Now. Anybody ever see this happen?
There comes a moment on every team's history when the jerks begin to win, and that is when the culture begins to lose.
Because what happens next?
Everybody moves down to manipulative insincerity, They're talking badly about this person behind this person's back, but they are not talking to the person.
It does not have to be this way folks.
If you notice this happening, your team sort of drifting over to ruinous empathy, it's possible to move over to radical candor.
That's not gonna solve all problems. People will still make a mistake, but you can tell them about that mistake in a way that allows them to make things better.
Now, it's not only the culture on teams where this happens.
Sometimes it happens in a whole society.
Sometimes it turns out that a whole society is polarized.
Anybody ever know such a society?
We're polarized and we're not talking to each other, we're talking about each other.
And we're sticking with the people who agree with us.
And I am no better than the rest of us on this.
I recently was invited to give a talk at a company whose policies I disagreed with pretty vehemently and I was tempted not to go and then I thought that does not seem like it's in the spirit of radical candor.
In fact, I believe very deeply that unchallenged beliefs become prejudices.
So I needed to go to this place and talk to these people.
Not because I was going in prepared to change my mind.
If I'm honest, I was not, but I also wasn't going in trying to change their mind.
I was going in thinking if I understand their point of view, it will help me deepen my thinking, and maybe I can find some common ground with these people.
You're gonna hear more about common ground.
Maybe I can learn to like these people.
And as I gave the talk, I got to the Q &A, and it was going really well.
We were having a great conversation, and there was this voice inside my head like screaming at me, saying, Kim, these people are not your enemies.
These are your fellow Americans.
And it really made me take a deep breath.
I was like, why would I not have come to speak with these people?
After the conference was over, somebody came up to me and said, Kim, do you believe this, do you believe that?
I said, yes I did. And they kinda cocked their head and they said, Huh, you don't seem like an evil person.
And I would have thought that person was ridiculous except that I had just had pretty much the same thought myself five minutes previously.
So how does this work?
Some of the best relationships of my career have happened with people who I disagree with and because I care about these people it's easier for me to challenge them and because I challenge them it's easier to care.
It's a virtuous cycle radical candor.
And the reason why it works is that, we both of us believe that the floor on the care personally dimension of radical candor is respect.
Respect is something we owe to everyone.
And when we can show respect in common human decency, we actually wind up loving the people who we work with.
Not in the HR disaster sense of the word that we read so much about today.
But in the true sense of collegiality.
So to understand how to do this, I want to explain to you the radical candor order of operations going back to this Alex story.
I failed pretty much on all dimensions with Alex. I failed to solicit feedback.
Radical candor, no matter who you are, should always start with soliciting feedback.
Don't dish it out before you prove you can take it.
But I didn't do that with Alex, so let's give me a report card. I failed to solicit praise and I failed to ask Alex what I could do or stop doing that might make it easier for him to work with me.
Maybe, just maybe, I was doing something that was frustrating Alex so much. He was forced to toke up in the bathroom three times a day.
I don't know, because I never asked him, right?
So solicit feedback.
You also need to give praise.
The kind of praise I gave to Alex was really just a head fake, and you need to tell people when their work isn't nearly good enough.
But because I failed to do that, I couldn't possibly gauge how my feedback was landing, so I'm gonna give myself an incomplete there.
So what do I mean by gauge the feedback?
This is where you can use this framework.
Remember, radical candor gets measured not in the speaker's mouth, but at the listener's ear.
But how do you know what's going on inside someone else's ear?
You can use this framework.
If the other person seems sad, that is your cue to move up the care personally dimension.
If the other person seems mad, that is also your cue to move up on the care personally dimension, but it's pretty hard to care personally about someone who's yelling at you.
So what can you do?
In these moments, you're probably mad back.
When you're furious, get curious.
Or get curious, not furious if you're batting above average.
Try to move up on curious.
Why is this person so mad?
Last but not least, there are times when you'll say the thing.
You'll work up your courage to say the thing and then the person will just brush you off.
This is your cue to move out further than you're comfortable going on the challenge directly dimension.
So, if you can all go forth and be radically candid, you will have better relationships, one -on -one relationships.
You can help build a better culture at work And you can help build confluence in society.
Thank you all so much. was produced and edited by our team, Martha Estefanos, Oliver Friedman, Brian Greene, Lucy Little, Alejandra Salazar, and Tansika Sanmarnivong.
It was mixed by Christopher Fazze Boggan.
Additional support from Emma Taubner and Daniella Balarezzo.
I'm Elisse Hu. I'll be back tomorrow with a fresh idea for your feed.
Thanks for listening.
Ready to order? Yes.
We're earning unlimited 3 % cash back on dining and entertainment with a Capital One Saver Card. So, let's just get one of everything.
Everything? Fire everything!
The Capital One Saver Card is at table 27, and they're earning unlimited 3 % cash back.
Yes, Chef! This is so nice.
I had a feeling you'd want 3 % cash back on dessert.
Oh Tara Masu earn unlimited cashback on dining and entertainment with the Capital One saver card Capital One.
What's in your wallet terms apply.
See Capital One .com for details.
Hi friends. Nikkeila from side hustle Pro here, whether you're running a non -profit a school or a small business Walmart business is here to support your mission.
They make it easy to order what you need from tech and cleaning supplies to everyday essentials all at low prices and with helpful tools like spend tracking and tax -exempt purchasing for eligible organizations.
Because when your operations are smooth, your impact can be bigger.
Visit business .walmart .com to get started.
Here's a wake -up call.
Right now, your liver is filtering everything from fast food to fancy drinks.
But there's a game changer that 3 .5 million people are talking about.
It's called LiverMD.
80 % of LiverMD users saw significant improvements in their liver test results plus better energy, digestion, and less bloating.
Backed by clinical research and trusted by health professionals, physician formulated LiverMD takes liver care to the next level with seven clinically studied ingredients at their clinically effective dosages for real, powerful results.
From happy hours to heavy meals and everyday environmental toxins, Your liver's keeping score.
Time to flip the script with LiverMD.
Feel the difference in 90 days or it's free.
Visit 1md .org and use code TEDTOGS to save 15 % on your first order.
