How to Be a Better Human - Why Kim Scott thinks you need to ask for feedback

Episode Date: March 13, 2023

You know what they say about unsolicited advice (don’t give it!) but when it comes to SOLICITED feedback, author and executive coach Kim Scott says: bring it on. Kim believes that when it comes to improving your life at home, work, and anywhere in between, it helps to ask for – and provide – kind, but radical, candor. In this episode, Kim shares what she’s learned about embracing candidness and care in the workplace, gives tips on how to engage in constructive conversations, and opens up about the benefits of addressing bias in communication. Her latest book, "Just Work:How to Root Out Bias, Prejudice, and Bullying to Build a Kick-ass Culture of Inclusivity" is out now. For the full text transcript, visit go.ted.com/BHTranscripts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Apple Watch Series X is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X.

Available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. You're listening to How to Be a Better Human. I'm your host, Chris Duffy. Today's guest is Kim Scott. Over the course of her career, Kim has worked at all sorts of big companies that you've heard of

and had all these very fancy titles. But all those impressive accomplishments, while wonderful, none of those were actually Kim's goal. My whole business career was actually one giant ploy to subsidize my novel writing habit. So I had written three novels, none of which got published. The first novel is actually set in Russia, and it's called The Measurement Problem. And it's a lighthearted critique of capitalism. It's about a young woman who moves to Moscow and falls in love with two people. One is an American delivering humanitarian aid, and the other is a Russian entrepreneur. delivering humanitarian aid, and the other is a Russian entrepreneur. And I was talking actually to Andy Grove, who was the CEO of Intel, about sort of what I wanted to do with my life. And he said,

why don't you write about management? A lot of the drama that is in a novel is in management. And most people who are operating executives don't like to write. And most people who like to write have never been an operating executive. And you've done both. So do it. That was a big piece of feedback for Kim. That changed the course of her career. She ran with that idea so far that she became an expert in feedback herself and the best-selling author of the books Radical Candor and Just Work. When it comes to giving and receiving feedback, whether it's at work, in your personal life, or on creative projects, no one knows more than Kim. I really believe that.

And so today on our show, we're going to get very candid, some might even say radically candid, about feedback, work, and how to communicate honestly, but also kindly with Kim. We're going to do all of that right after this. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping.

And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X, available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. Okay, we are back. Today we're talking feedback with Kim Scott. Hi, I'm Kim Scott, and I am the author of Radical Candor and Just Work. Have you just always been the kind of person who is willing to give feedback?

No, I hate giving feedback. That's why I wrote the book. I would say, so in Radical Candor, I talk about ruinous empathy, and ruinous empathy is me. I really, I hate upsetting people. I hate saying something that might hurt their feelings in the short run, even if it's good for them in the long run. And I think the way that I got over that was by thinking about stories, telling myself stories, and then telling other people stories about times when I failed to tell someone something they would have been better off hearing in the long run. And remembering that the kinder thing to do in the fullness of time is to tell the person the thing.

All of us know, like, we don't want to be in a relationship with someone who is like secretly seething at us. We don't want to work for a boss who says like, good job, even though they're throwing out our work and having to redo it all. You want to have to trust that the other person is telling you something honestly. And yet there's paradoxically this real fear of honesty

and of hearing the hard truth. Yeah, there's a fear of honesty and of hearing the hard truth. Yeah, there's a fear of hearing it. I think there may be even a greater fear of sharing it. But the fear is on both sides of the equation. I'll tell you the story, what I call the Bob story. And I think everyone has a Bob story. So Bob was this guy I had hired, and I liked him a lot.

He was smart. He was charming. He was smart. He was charming. He was funny. He would do stuff like we were at a manager offsite, and we were at a startup, and everybody was stressed, and somehow we wound up playing some of those endless get-to-know-you games, trust balls and all that kind of nonsense. And Bob was the guy who had the courage to raise his hand and to say, look, I can tell everyone is really stressed out and we'd all rather get back to work. So why don't we just, I've got an idea, it'll be really fast

and it'll help us get to know each other and then we can all go back to work. And so Bob says, let's just go around the table and confess what candy our parents used when potty training us. Really weird, but really fast. And then even weirder yet, we all remembered. And then for the next 10 months, every time there was a tense moment in a meeting, Bob would whip out just the right piece of candy for the right person at the right moment. So Bob brought a little levity to the office. He was funny. One problem with Bob, he was doing terrible work, absolutely terrible work. He would hand stuff into me and there was shame in his eyes. I was so puzzled because he had this incredible

resume, this great history of accomplishments. I learned much later the problem was that Bob was smoking pot in the bathroom three times a day, which maybe explained all that candy that he had at all times. But I didn't know any of that at the time. All I knew was that Bob was handing in terrible work. And I would say something to Bob along the lines of, oh, Bob, this is a great start. You are so awesome. Everyone loves working with you. Maybe you can make it just a little bit better, which of course he never did. And so let's pause for a moment and sort of double click on why I said something so banal to Bob. I think part of the problem was what I just mentioned, ruinous empathy. I really did

care about Bob. And so I really didn't want to tell him something that was going to upset him. But if I'm honest with myself, there was also something a little bit more nefarious going on. Because Bob was, as I mentioned, he was popular. Everybody loved working with him. And he also was 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 everyone would think I was a big you know what. So this goes on for 10 months. And eventually the inevitable happens. And I realized that I was going to lose all my top performers if I didn't fire Bob,

because they were frustrated. Their deliverables were late because Bob's deliverables were late. They were unable to do their very best work because they had to spend a bunch of time redoing Bob's work. And so I sat down to have a conversation with Bob that I should have started, frankly, 10 months previously. And when I finished explaining him where things stood, he sort of pushed the chair back from the table and he looked me right in the eye and he said, why didn't you tell me? And as that question is 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 that was the moment that I realized that by just being nice to him and not telling him,

I wound up having to fire him as a result. Not so nice after all. For me, one of the pieces that it really brings up is I think sometimes we hesitate to give feedback to our Bobs in our lives because we have this skewed idea about people's potential to grow and change. Like we think that they're fixed when in reality people aren't fixed. And like if Bob was always going to just be horrible, right, then it isn't very kind. But that's not how humans work, right? Bob can become better, but only if you let him become better. Yeah. In order for radical candor to work, you have to have a certain optimistic growth mindset. If you think that someone truly sucks and will never improve, then there's no point.

Then you're wasting your breath. But that, in my experience, is never the case. People don't only suck. They can always get better. I love the don't only. Sometimes they definitely do. Sometimes they do. Like sometimes I suck.

Sometimes we all do. We all make mistakes, which is also part of the reason why radical candor is so important. And so I know with radical candor, you have some real clear guidelines to help people because there's real common mistakes that people make when they do radical candor. One is radical candor isn't brutal honesty. And I think that seems like the most common. People all of a sudden go to the other side and they're like, Bob, you're a fool and you're an idiot. And here's everything you've ever done wrong. And like that doesn't work well either. So talk to me about that. So radical candor is about caring and challenging

at the same time. And sometimes we challenge, but we forget to show that we care. And that's what I call obnoxious aggression. When you neither care nor challenge, that's manipulative insincerity. And there's a well-worn path from obnoxious aggression to manipulative insincerity. And there's a well-worn path from obnoxious aggression to manipulative insincerity. So there's a bunch of problems with obnoxious aggression. The biggest one, obviously, is that it hurts other people. But the second problem is that it's inefficient. If you act like a jerk to someone, they go into fight or flight mode, and they literally cannot hear you. So you're wasting your breath. And the third, I think, kind of more subtle problem is that almost no one wants to

be a jerk. And so most of us, I don't know about you, but at least for me, when I realized I've acted like a jerk, it's not actually my instinct to go the right way on care personally, which is what I ought to do. Instead, it's my instinct to backpedal and go the wrong way on challenge directly. Oh, it's no big deal. It doesn't matter. Don't worry. But like, it is a big deal. It does matter. That's why I just said it. And then you wind up in that manipulative insincerity quadrant. So if obnoxious aggression is front-stabbing, manipulative insincerity is backstabbing. By the way, I got some feedback not to use such violent language, and I just failed to act on that feedback.

But hopefully it makes it clear. Yeah. Another piece that you talk about with radical candor is making sure that you can take it before you dish it. Don't dish it out before you prove you can take it. And it's not just about dishing it out and taking it. Another reason why you want to start with soliciting feedback is you want to understand what you might be doing that is contributing to a situation. Very often people talk about the fundamental attribution error.

Assume that all the problem is because of this other person's personality as opposed to the context and what one may be doing that contributes to the context. So I think it's really important to start by soliciting feedback. It's very easy for me to get feedback and to give feedback in some realms. So professionally, when I am working with another comedian and we're writing a script, it's so natural and it feels helpful and it feels kind to give them feedback. And then in my personal life, I have that exact thing that you were describing of, I so want people to like me and to not be upset. And I want to please people. And so, I mean, literally in my marriage, like in order for me to say the small things, we've had to like create a set time every week where we do an actual check-in. We have to say, here's one thing that went really well this

week. And here's one thing that maybe we could do better. And at first, when we started doing that, I was like, this is so deeply cringeworthy. This is like, I cannot believe we're doing like a weekly check-in in our marriage. But for me, what it did really stop was it was this pressure valve. Because before it used to be that like for months, I would just be like, everything's good. Everything's good. And then I'd be like, you never set the timer on the microwave back. And so it's always at 0.02 seconds instead of the time. And I want it to be

the time. And I'm so angry. And she's like, why didn't you just tell me? And I'm like, this has been boiling for months. It's not just you. It's all of us, I think. And one of the nice things about work is you know that that's what you're supposed to do. to do. Whereas I think with friends or with family, with children, with spouses, with cousins, parents, the idea is that it's supposed to be fun and peaceful and you're supposed to get along. But part of getting along is having disagreements. I think we fear for some reason that a disagreement poses a challenge, a risk to our relationships. But it's not disagreement that is risky for relationships. What's really risky for relationships is that unspoken disagreement. Because I do the same thing you do. I hold on to it, and I hold on to it, and I hold on to it, I hold on to it and I hold on to it and I don't say anything and I think I'm being nice.

And then I get so angry about it that I explode in some kind of weird way that makes me look ridiculous. And the other person's like, you've been holding on to that for all this time? Like, what is going on? Well, I wonder if you're the manager, as you were, right? If you're in a position of power and you get good at radical candor, all of a sudden you have such clear benefits for all the people under you because they're getting such clear feedback from you.

But what about if it's the other way and you are an employee and you want more clear feedback, you want to be better at this, but the people who are giving you feedback aren't really good. What can you do in that situation where it's kind of like you can change yourself, but it's hard to get it from the other end? Yeah, soliciting feedback, I think,

is really important no matter what role you play, but especially if you're the manager. Because if you're the manager, you've got to lay that power down. And one of the best ways to lay your power down is to solicit feedback. So here are four steps for soliciting feedback. The first step is to think about the words you're going to use to ask for feedback. Because if you say, do you have any feedback for me?

You're wasting your breath. I can already tell you the answer. Oh, no, everything's fine. So you want to think about how you're going to ask. The way 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 ask my question, because if you sound like Kim Scott and not like yourself, the other person is not going to believe that you really want the answer. So you got to figure out how you're going to ask in your own words. Another tip on the go-to question, by the way, is to make sure it can't be answered with a yes or a no. You want to say, what could I do? Not, is there anything I

could do? So step number one, good question. Step number two, embrace the discomfort. No matter how good your question is, the other person is still going to feel uncomfortable. And the only way out of that discomfort is through. Best thing I know to do, close your mouth, count to six. I only made it to three just there. And I can tell you're getting edged. It's so long. It's so painful every time. Oh, my God.

It's so hard. So almost no one can endure six full seconds of silence. So they'll probably tell you something, which brings you to step number three. You want to make sure that you're listening with the intent to understand, not to respond. Simplest way to do that is to ask some follow-up questions. And then the fourth thing you've got to do is you've got to do is you got to reward the candor. And that's pretty easy if you agree with the feedback. You fix the problem and you ask the person, you know, did I overcorrect? Did I undercorrect? And by the way, a good tip

that one of my managers once gave me is she said, if you get some feedback, for example, the feedback to me was that I was moving too fast. She said, you will not have fixed this problem until people start telling you that you're moving too slow. So you actually need to kind of aim to overcorrect, and then maybe you'll get it right. But there's going to be another thing that'll happen, and that is that you will disagree with the feedback that you just solicited, and now you feel wedged. I think the thing to do when you disagree with feedback that you solicited, or when you disagree with unsolicited feedback, is first to demonstrate that you're not shut down to feedback. So look for the 5% or 10% of what the other person said

that you can agree with, and give voice to that. Because you rarely disagree with 100% of what someone said. And that kind of makes your listening tangible. It shows you're paying attention. And then say, as for the rest of it, let me think about it and then get back to you. And then get back to them and have a respectful disagreement. I mean, you can't argue endlessly. At some point, you've got to listen, challenge, commit.

But having that respectful disagreement is what's going to save your relationship. I'm curious, what are some of the most meaningful pieces of feedback that you have received? All right, here's my favorite feedback story. So this happened shortly after I joined Google. And I had to give a presentation to the founders and the CEO about how the AdSense business was doing. So probably just like you in such a situation, I felt a little bit nervous. Luckily for me, the AdSense business was on fire. And when I said how many new customers we had added, the CEO almost fell off his chair. What did you say?

This is incredible. Do you need more marketing dollars? Do you need more engineering resources? So I'm feeling like the meeting's going all right. In fact, I now believe that I am a genius. And I walked out of the room, I walked past my boss, and I'm expecting a high five, a pat on the back. And instead, she says to me, why don't you walk back to my office with me? And I thought, oh, well, I messed something up in there. And I'm sure I'm about to hear about it. And she began not by telling me what I had done wrong, but what had gone well in the

meeting. But of course, all I wanted to hear about was what I had done wrong. And eventually, she said to me, you said um a lot in there. Were you aware of it? I kind of breathed a huge sigh of relief, and I made this brush off gesture with my hand. I said, yeah, no, it's a verbal tick. It's no big deal, really.

And then she said, I know this great speech coach. I bet Google would pay for it. Would you like an introduction? And once again, I made this brush off gesture with my hand. And I said, no, I am busy. Didn't you hear about all those new customers? I don't have time for a speech coach. And then she stopped. She looked me right in the eye. And she said, I can tell when you do that thing with your hand, I'm going to have to be a lot more direct with you. When you say every third word, it makes you sound stupid. Now she's got my full attention. And some people will say it was mean of her to say that I sounded stupid.

And it's important to note that she never would have used those words with other people on her team. But she knew me well enough to know that if she didn't use just those words, she wasn't going to get through to me. And in fact, if she hadn't used those words, I never would have gone to visit the speech coach. And I wouldn't have learned that she was not exaggerating. I literally said every third word. And this was news to me because I had been giving presentations my whole career. I had raised money for three different startups giving presentations. I thought I was pretty good at it.

And that was what really got me to thinking, you know, first of all, why had no one told me? It was almost like I had been marching through my whole career with a giant hunk of spinach in between my teeth and nobody had had the common courtesy to tell me it was there. But what was it about her and her management style that made it so seemingly easy for her to tell me? And that was kind of where I came up with care personally and challenge directly. So that was a big feedback moment for me. We're going to take a quick break, and then we will be right back. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.

It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest-charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series X. Available for the first time in glossy jet-black aluminum. Compared to previous generations,

iPhone XS or later required, charge time and actual results will vary. We're talking about feedback with Kim Scott. There's a clear thread between Kim's first book, Radical Candor, and her second book, Just Work. It's how do you get people to feel like it is safe enough for them to share their full selves? How do you get actual, honest feedback from them? And Kim's answer has been that you need to create a space that roots out bias and prejudice. Here's a clip from a TED Talk that Kim gave with her colleague, Trier Bryant.

We all have our biases. The set of assumptions that we make and the things we don't notice about people's race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, appearance, and other traits. They come from the part of our mind that jumps to conclusions that we might not even be aware that we have. I really can't tell you the number of times people assumed I was the receptionist when I was an executive at the company. That kind of bias gets in the way of good collaboration,

performance, and decision-making. It creates an invisible tax of resentment and frustration. The more frustrated we are, the more silent we are likely to be. And the more silent we are, the less we may be able to do our best work. The good news, though, is bias is not inevitable. Okay, so Kim, what is it that we can do to make feedback inclusive? bits of feedback I got after Radical Candor came out came when I was doing 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 and is a person who I like and respect enormously and one of too few black women CEOs in tech or, frankly, in any other sector. And when I finished giving the presentation, she pulled me aside and she said, Kim, I'm excited to roll out Radical Candor. I think it's going to really help me build the culture that I want.

But I got to tell you that 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 anyone even the most gentle, compassionate criticism, she would get slimed with the angry black woman stereotype. And I knew this was true. And as soon as she said it to me, I thought, you know, what is going on for her? Is it bias? Is it prejudice? Or is it bullying? And how often do bias, prejudice, and bullying masquerade as feedback, like all the damn time? And I hadn't even covered that really in Radical Candor. And that kind of prompted me to have a bunch of different realizations at the same time. The first was that I had not been the kind of colleague who I imagined myself to be. I had failed even to notice the extent to which my colleague had to show up unfailingly cheerful

and pleasant at every meeting we had ever been in together, even though she had what to be ticked off about, as we all do at work. And I just, I had failed to notice the toll that that must take on her. So I kind of failed to be an upstander. So that was number one. Number two was that I had been in denial about the kinds of things that were happening to me as a white woman in the workplace. Not only had I been in denial about what was happening to her, but also what was happening to me. And I think I had been in denial in no small part because I had never want to think of myself as a victim. But even less than wanting to think of myself as a victim, did I ever want to think of myself

as a culprit. And my third realization was that I was most deeply in denial about the ways that I had caused harm to other people, never intending to, but the ways in which I myself had been biased, prejudiced, or had bullied others. And then the last thing I realized was that as a leader, you know, I thought of myself as this person who created these great BS-free zones in which everybody could do the best work of their lives and build these wonderful relationships. And I realized I had failed to address bias, prejudice, and bullying the way that a leader should address them. So that was really set me down the path of writing just work. When I think about this aspect of feedback, right, of the feedback around

things that can be very charged, right, so bias, bullying, prejudice, I think that I want this feedback. I don't want to be biased. I don't want to be prejudiced. But I also feel a real sense of risk in soliciting this kind of feedback because there's this fear of like, oh, but what if I ask for this? Are they going to realize that it's actually way worse and I'm going to get in like all sorts of trouble and I should just like keep my mouth shut and not think about these things? And I think obviously, you know, when you do that, you just preserve the status quo. You don't make anything better. But and there's a real privilege to being able to do that and to say, like, I'm not going to do it. But

it's scary to ask for feedback around these things and just think like, oh, is this going to lead to like me getting in trouble or like all of a sudden people realizing that I am, you know, quote unquote bad, which obviously I think is an unrealistic fear. That's not that's not what happens in good feedback anyway. I think even before you get to that sort of conscious questioning, there's an amygdala response. I don't know about you, but when I get feedback that I've said or done something that's biased, I feel ashamed. And I can tell you where I feel it in my body. The backs of my knees start to tingle. It's the same sensation I get when my children walk

too close to the edge of a precipice. I mean, it's a real fear. It's a real primal fear. And we rarely respond at our best or are open to the feedback when we're in shame brain. And so figuring out how to move through that shame so that one can be open to the feedback. How do you modulate when you're giving types of feedback? And I feel like shame may be one of the main pieces to think about here, between whether it's better to give it privately versus publicly, and when you decide between in the moment and afterwards. I think if you're going to offer someone criticism, it's almost always better to do it in private. But there's

a difference between kind of an in-the-moment correction and criticism. So in-the-moment correction is somebody's given a presentation and there's a typo on page six. I think that's fair game to say in public. Whereas you always make typos and your work is sloppy, like A, that's a bad way to give it. But B, if you had that criticism, you'd need to have that conversation in private. So that I think is important. And also as a general rule, I think you want to give feedback when you're giving it as close to the incident as possible, almost immediately, as soon as you can get a private moment with the person.

To give really good feedback, you want context, observation, result, next step. And if you do it right after the meeting, you can just say in the meeting and you don't have to remember all the other context. Let's talk about, and I guess this is a form of feedback as well, but how do you disrupt bias? Yeah. So I think the first thing to do is to be clear in your mind, what's the difference between bias, prejudice, and bullying so that you know what it is that you're disrupting.

So if bias is not meaning it, it's like a mental hiccup. Prejudice is meaning it. It's like a mental hiccup. Prejudice is meaning it. It's a consciously held belief. And bullying, there's no belief, conscious or unconscious at all. It's just being mean. So if you think what's happening is bias, and you don't have to be right, but you're guessing it's bias, a simple way to sort of disrupt it is an I statement. I don't think you meant that the way it sounded. And that you can, if you're, whether you're the upstander or whether that bias was targeted at you, that can be helpful. But that almost never happens. I mean, I'll tell you a story about bias disrupted. A friend of mine, Aileen Lee, was going into a meeting with two colleagues who were men,

and they sat down at a conference table, waited for the other side to come in, the people they were negotiating with. First guy came in and sat across from the guy to Aileen's left. Next person came in and sat across from the guy to his left. Then everybody else filed on down the table, leaving Aileen dangling by herself. And Aileen was the person, it turned out, that had the expertise that was going to win her team the deal. So she started talking. And when the other side had questions, they directed them at her two colleagues who were men, not at her, as though she weren't speaking, as though she weren't even in the room. And it happened once, it happened twice, it happened a third time. And

finally, her colleague stood up and said, I think Aileen and I should switch seats. So that's an I statement. And that was all he had to do to totally disrupt the bias in the room. Everybody else realized what was going on. And they changed it. They didn't intend to do it. They were just sort of instinctively doing it. And he did that because he cared about Aileen and didn't like Singer get ignored. He also did that because he just wanted to win the deal. He knew if he couldn't get them listening. That's an example of an I statement. That kind of thing very rarely happens. I had to kind of talk to a lot of people to get that story for the book. What can you do as a leader to make that happen more often? There's a process, a bias disruptor process that I recommend. Three steps. The first step is to come up with a shared vocabulary. What's the word or

phrase that your team will use to disrupt bias in the moment? I like purple flag. It's on the floor, so I'm not going to reach down and grab it. We can imagine you're waving a purple flag right now. Yes, I'm waving a purple flag. So a purple flag is, you know, it's a friendly flag. It's not a red flag. It's not a yellow flag. It sort of invites someone in. And it's like an I statement. It invites someone in to notice that that bias has just made itself known. Bias or Prince has entered the building. Something has entered the building. Something has entered the building. The other teams that I've worked with

have used things like, ouch, or one team would throw up a peace sign. So whatever it is that your team, what's the way that your team agrees to flag bias when it happens? So that's a shared vocabulary. Next is step number two, which is really to help everyone come up with a shared norm for responding when it's you whose bias

has been disrupted. Because as we were just talking about, you feel ashamed in this moment. And this has to happen publicly. Bias disruption, if you ignore it and whisper in the person's ear after the meeting, then the bias gets reinforced. So you've got it disrupted. It's like a correction. It's like, think of it like a typo. But people need to learn how to not get defensive when their bias has been disrupted. So it should always start with, the shared norm should always start with, thank you for pointing it out. And then one of two things, either I get it, I'll try not to do it again. Or the second thing you can say is I don't get it.

Can you explain it to me after the meeting? The I don't get it part is really hard because now I'm doubly ashamed. I'm ashamed because I've harmed someone else. And I'm ashamed because I'm ignorant. I don't know what I did wrong even. And in that case, people need to understand that that's gonna happen, that that is gonna happen to all of us and that we're educating each other,

that it's okay for you not to know. Why do I suggest talking after the meeting? The reason is I think bias disruption should happen in every single meeting you have. So that's the third thing, a shared commitment. But if you're gonna disrupt happen in every single meeting you have. So that's the third thing, a shared commitment. But if you're going to disrupt bias in every single meeting, you want to disrupt bias, not the meeting. So you want to talk about it after the meeting.

What are some ways that I could make the end of this podcast better than the first for you as an interview? I would love to talk about bullying. And I would love to talk about a specific form of bullying. I would call it bloviating bullshit. Let's get to bloviating bullshit right now. Talk to me about bloviating bullshit. All right.

So have you ever been in a meeting where one person who is, shall we say, usually overrepresented and overconfident takes up all the airtime, even though they really don't know anything about the topic that the meeting is addressing. Ever happened to you? I've many times been that person. Yes, me too. Because it works. That's the problem with bloviating bullshit, is that it actually works quite well.

In fact, I learned this when I was in high school doing Model United Nations. And usually I'm like super prepped for the model UN, but this year I was, I forgot what happened, but I didn't prep at all. And I went in, I was terrified. And then I just kind of watched what was going on. And I realized people were just hurling insults at each other. And so I was like, well, I can do that. And I jumped in. And by the end of the day, I felt kind of disgusted with myself. I had been kind of a bully. And I had made a bunch of stuff up. I didn't really know what I was talking about. And I kind of went home. I thought, oh, gosh, somebody's going to punish me. And my mother

burst into my room and said, they're calling you. You won the best delegate award. Oh, wow. they're calling you, you won the best delegate award. Oh, wow. Yes, it was really a lesson. And it took me a lot more years to realize that that was not the person I wanted to be, that that kind of postulatory boldness was not really productive. And that it was that I was able to get away with it, probably in no small part because of privilege. And so one of the things that I really encourage leaders to do is to create consequences for bullying, sort of conversational consequences. You got to shut it down in the moment. You also want to create compensation consequences.

Don't give high ratings and bonuses to people who indulge in any kind of bullying. And you want to create career consequences. You don't want to ratings and bonuses to people who indulge in any kind of bullying. And you want to create career consequences, you don't want to promote your bullies. And if they can't stop bullying, you may even want to fire them. And I would really encourage leaders to focus in on this bloviating BS because I think one of the reasons why teams are not as successful as they could be is when one person dominates, when one person does too much of the talking. And I think it's much easier for people who are overrepresented to get away with that kind of BSing. And so what do I mean by underrepresented? As a white person in California, I'm part of an overrepresented

minority. So I think it's useful to think about things not in terms of minority majority, but just in terms of underrepresentation. If there's underrepresentation, there's usually some bias, prejudice and bullying going on. Well, Kim, it has been such a pleasure. Thank you so much for making the time to do this show. And I'm so excited to hear all the feedback from all of the people listening on how much this has helped them and all the ways that they put it into practice in their own lives. Thanks for being here. Thank you so much. Love the conversation.

That is it for today's episode of How to Be a Better Human. Thank you so much to today's guest, Kim Scott. She is so fantastic. And her books are called Just Work and Radical Candor. I really, really recommend them both. I am your host, Chris Duffy, and you can find more from me, including my weekly newsletter and information about my live comedy shows at chrisduffycomedy.com. How to Be a Better Human is brought to you on the TED side by Anna Phelan, Whitney Pennington-Rogers, and Jimmy Gutierrez, who, in addition to Purple Flags, are all currently designing personalized

flags of their own, which they'll be using to claim snacks around the office. Every episode of our show is professionally fact-checked. This episode was fact-checked by Julia Dickerson and Erica Yoon, who are always radically candid, but also fair and just. On the PRX side, our show is put together by a team that has, both figuratively and literally, no bobs. Morgan Flannery, Rosalind Tortosilias, Patrick Grant, and Jocelyn Gonzalez. And of course, thanks to you for listening to our show and making this all possible. We will be back next week with even more episodes of How to Be a Better Human.

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