In this episode of Transform Your Workplace, host Brandon Laws sits down with Kim Scott, CEO coach and author of Radical Respect and Radical Candor. The two discuss how to build a culture of transparency, humanity, and collaboration. Tune in and learn some practical tips for fostering individuality and promoting collaboration, all with the respect and candor that the modern workplace demands.
00:37 Introducing Kim Scott and Radical Respect
02:44 The Genesis of Radical Respect
12:16 The Framework for Success with Radical Respect
14:07 Understanding and Addressing Bias, Prejudice, and Bullying
19:47 Navigating Prejudice and Bullying: Strategies and Insights
22:10 Empowering the Quiet Ones: Enhancing Collaboration in Teams
26:17 Designing Fair Management Systems: Checks, Balances, and Bias Busting
34:45 Personal Reflections and the Power of Radical Respect
36:31 Closing Thoughts: Encouraging Action and Intervention
GUEST AT A GLANCE
Kim Scott, author of Radical Respect: How to Work Together Better and Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, is the Co-Founder of the company Radical Candor. She has extensive experience in leadership roles, having been a CEO coach at prominent tech companies like Dropbox and Twitter and a faculty member at Apple University. She also co-hosts the podcasts “Radical Candor” and “Radical Respect.”
A QUICK GLIMPSE INTO OUR PODCAST
🔊 Podcast: Transform Your Workplace, Sponsored by Xenium HR
🎙️ Host: Brandon Laws
📋 In his own words: “The Transform Your Workplace podcast is your go-to source for the latest workplace trends, big ideas, and time-tested methods straight from the mouths of industry experts and respected thought-leaders.”
BEHIND THE NEW BOOK
During our discussion, Kim Scott recounted a particularly profound moment during a talk at a tech company in San Francisco. A conversation with a former colleague, a black female CEO, illuminated the unique challenges she had faced while implementing the principles of Radical Candor within her organization. The CEO’s experience of being labeled an “angry black woman” after providing even gentle criticism highlighted some areas that Scott had regretfully overlooked in her previous book. Not only did Scott feel that she had neglected her role as “an upstander” for her friend, but she also felt she failed to address the intersectionality of race and leadership in the workplace.
This realization led to deep self-reflection on Scott’s part, where she recognized her own denial about the biases and disrespect she had faced and sometimes perpetuated in her career. She admitted, “I’d gone through my whole career pretending that a whole bunch of stuff was not happening.” This epiphany was transformative, and it prompted Scott to reconsider how leaders can foster environments that truly respect and acknowledge the diverse challenges team members face.
Scott’s journey from understanding to action, one which encourages leaders to evolve from passive bystanders to active upstanders, culminated in her recently released book, Radical Respect.
PODCAST EPISODE HIGHLIGHTS
Defining Terms
“It turns out there are two very different definitions of respect. One definition of respect is [about] admiring skills that somebody has built, so that has to be earned, and the other definition of respect is something that we owe to everyone, regardless of who they are. […] We owe it to people to have a certain amount of regard for who they are, for their emotions, for their backgrounds. And so it’s that sort of birthright respect, that core respect that everybody deserves. […] What I’m talking about when I’m talking about ‘Radical Respect’ is a kind of culture that optimizes for collaboration rather than coercion […] and also one that honors everyone’s individuality rather than demanding conformity.”
What People Want
“I’ve worked with all kinds of different leaders, and I’ve never worked with a single leader who said, ‘Yeah, my goal is to create a coercive work environment’ And I certainly have never met anyone who says, ‘I would love to work in a coercive work environment.’ We know that. We get that our sort of superpower is humanity, is collaboration. And so when we optimize for collaboration, we get more innovation. We get better work. We get people who like their work more and enjoy working together more.”
Caring and Connection
“The strength of the individual is the team and the strength of the team is the individual. You don’t have to choose between teamwork and yourself on a great team. You get to be your best self. Right? And I started thinking about, in many ways, ‘Radical Respect’ is sort of the prequel to ‘Radical Candor’ because ‘Radical Candor’ is about caring personally and challenging directly at the same time. And if you don’t respect someone, you’re not going to care much about them, and you’re not going to bother challenging them directly or indirectly.”
Roadblocks to Respect
“Bias, prejudice, and bullying — those are sort of the root causes that take us in the wrong direction on those two dimensions of ‘Radical Respect.’ And one of the reasons they get in the way to the extent that they do, I think, is that we often conflate bias, prejudice, and bullying as though they’re the same thing, and then the problem seems monolithic and almost insoluble and depressing. And if we don’t think we can solve the problem, we don’t spend much time looking at it. So one of the things I tried to do in the book is to break these three things apart so that we could figure out what to do about each of them.”
Committing to Change
“Given I’m writing about bias, I better make sure I’m not using biased language, and so I hired Breeze Harper. If you are struggling, if you want a bias buster, nobody’s better than Breeze. She was amazing. And I asked her to read the book and point out problematic language that I was using. […] One of the things that Breeze pointed out is that I would say ‘see’ when what I meant was ‘notice.’ I was using sort of sloppy ‘sight’ metaphors, ableist language. […] I understood what she meant. I agreed with her and I really cared about this at a personal level because one of the people who was helping me to edit the book is blind. And so the last thing I wanted to do was use language that was not respectful of him because I do respect him.”
“And so I thought I had fixed it. And then right before I turned the book in, I did a quick search, and in a 300-page book, there were 99 sloppy ‘sight’ metaphors — after I had gotten the feedback and after I thought I had corrected it. So we need to be persistent and patient. It wasn’t going to do me any good to go beat myself up for having done that, but I did need to be aware of it, and I did need to do it if I wanted to change. So I think we need to be patient with ourselves and extend ourselves grace but also [be] persistent in fixing the problem.”
Speaking Up
“I want to encourage people to end the default to silence. Everybody who’s listening can probably think of a meeting they were in in the last two days where somebody said or did something and you’re like, ‘Oh no,’ and you feel kind of gobsmacked. You don’t know what to say. And so I want to encourage people, especially if they’re the observer, to try to intervene in some way. And even if you can’t intervene directly, or you feel like it’s not the right thing to do or not safe, you can check in with the person who was the target of that disrespectful behavior later and ask, ‘Are you okay?’ That is really an act of kindness. You can also document what happened. You can delegate to someone else to intervene in some way, or you can also just create a distraction. […] There are so many different ways for us to intervene, and I think it’s important that leaders take action, but in order to solve these problems, everybody has a role to play.”
LEARN MORE
Interested in embracing Radical Respect in your organization? Pick up your copy of Kim Scott’s latest book on Amazon or wherever books are sold.