Radical Candor: From theory to practice with author Kim Scott

**Kim Scott** (0:00)
If you say, do you have any feedback for me, you're wasting your breath. The other person is going to say, oh no, everything's fine. The question that I like to ask is, what could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me? Do not write down my question, because if you sound like Kim Scott and not like yourself, then other people are not going to believe you want the answer. It needs to sound authentic to you. And if everybody can write down their question, who they're going to ask it up and then pop it into their calendar right now, this will be one of the most productive podcasts in all of podcast land.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (0:33)
Today my guest is Kim Scott. Kim is the author of Radical Candor, which is the single most referenced book on this podcast. The book has sold over 1 million copies, has been translated into 23 languages. It was such an honor to have Kim on the podcast. Prior to this book, Kim was a CO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter and many other tech companies. She was a member of the faculty at Apple University. Before that she led AdSense, YouTube and DoubleClick teams at Google. Prior to that, Kim managed a pediatric clinic in Kosovo and started a diamond cutting factory in Moscow. She's also working on a new book that you can pre-order now called Radical Respect. In our conversation, we get very practical and very tactical about practicing Radical Candor. Kim briefly describes the core idea, shares language and phrases and words you can use to get better at practicing Radical Candor. She shares tips for people pleasers, like myself. Also a lot of very concrete advice for how to get feedback. Also what to do if your culture is on the ruinous empathy side of the spectrum, or even worse, obnoxious aggression. And so much more, I guarantee listening to this episode will make you a better leader and a better employee. With that, I bring you Kim Scott after a short word from our one featured sponsor for this episode.
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Kim, thank you so much for being here and welcome to the podcast.

**Kim Scott** (3:17)
Thank you for having me. I'm excited for our conversation.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:20)
Your book, Radical Candor, is the single most recommended book on this podcast. I don't know if you know this podcast well, but at the end of the podcast, I ask every guest, what are two or three books you recommend most to other people?
Your book has come up the most of any book mentioned on the podcast.

**Kim Scott** (3:37)
Amazing. Well, tell your listeners, I love them and I'm grateful to them.

**Lenny Rachitsky** (3:43)
They will hear this. I'm really excited to have you on chat about all the things that you teach and your book.
For people that have heard the term Radical Candor, have maybe skimmed the book, maybe read the book a while ago, but don't truly remember or understand the concept, could you spend just a few minutes giving a high level overview of the concept of Radical Candor?

**Kim Scott** (4:04)
Absolutely. Radical Candor is just what happens when you care personally and challenge directly at the same time. I think it's probably best understood by what it's not, because we all fail on one of those two dimensions or both of them multiple times a day. So if you can think about it as a two by two framework, on the vertical axis is care personally, the horizontal axis is challenged directly.