Episode 16: Radical Candor - How to Give Effective Criticism

• Links to this episode: Spotify / Apple Podcasts

Unofficial, reviewed transcript. It may still contain mistakes; check the podcast when wording matters.

Speakers are labeled by first name where identified. Unidentified-speaker labels may refer to different people. Bracketed question marks indicate uncertain wording.

Transcript

[00:00:00]  Bruce: The Theory of Anything podcast could use your help. We have a small but loyal audience, and we'd like to get the word out about the podcast to others, so others can enjoy it as well. To the best of our knowledge, we're the only podcast that covers all four strands of David Deutsch's philosophy as well as other interesting subjects. If you're enjoying this podcast, please give us a five-star rating on Apple Podcasts. This can usually be done right inside your podcast player, or you can Google The Theory of Anything podcast Apple or something like that. Some players have their own rating system, and giving us a five-star rating on any rating system would be helpful. If you enjoy a particular episode, please consider tweeting about us or linking to us on Facebook or other social media to help get the word out. If you are interested in financially supporting the podcast, we have two ways to do that.

[00:00:45]  Bruce: The first is via our podcast host site, Anchor. Just go to anchor.fm slash four dash strands, F-O-U-R dash S-T-R-A-N-D-S. There's a support button available that allows you to do reoccurring donations. If you want to make a one-time donation, go to our blog, which is four strands dot org. There is a donation button there that uses PayPal. Thank you. All right, welcome back to The Theory of Anything podcast. We're continuing our discussion on Radical Candor and applying error correction and criticism in a work environment. So, got Cameo and Bart again here with me. Hey guys.

[00:01:39]  Unidentified speaker: Hello. Hello.

[00:01:42]  Bruce: All right, so last time, we were talking about Radical Candor, and we left off discussing Kim Scott's getting things done procedure. So this time, I wanted to start with this idea of, and this is my word, of course. I mean, Kim Scott doesn't use the word institutions, but setting up institutions to create criticism. Okay, so I looked up the word institution, like I know how to use it, but I wasn't sure exactly what the definition was. And it just said it's a way of doing things. It actually has multiple definitions. One of them might be like an actual organization, but it also may just be a way of doing things to accomplish certain things. So one of the things I really liked about Kim Scott's Radical Candor, is she spends significant time talking about how do you actually create an environment of criticism where it's non-offensive to give feedback.

[00:02:38]  Bruce: How do you go about doing that? And what I noticed, Popper calls these institutions, and what I noticed is that's what she's doing. She's actually setting up little institutions, and these are just suggestions. Everybody does their own different thing, but she's giving ideas for how you might go about this. So for those that can see the slide, I've listed here some of the things that she has suggested as ways to get a culture of criticism at work going. So for example, figuring out who on the team is the most comfortable criticizing you, and then having them do it in a public meeting so that you're actually creating a culture. Now remember, one of the things that she suggests is starting with criticism of yourself rather than criticism of others. So finding someone and saying, okay, look, I want you in this public meeting to criticize me on these points that you've made to me, so that people see it in public and they get used to the idea that I'm okay with receiving criticism.

[00:03:37]  Bruce: And that will, she says, develop a culture of criticism where people get used to it in this work environment. We're okay with that because the boss is okay with it. She gives other examples like the go-to question. This is a very simple little thing. But say, if you can't figure out what to say to encourage criticism, say, what could I do or stop doing that makes it easier for me to work with? Okay, so you have a kind of a standard question that you can use that is non-offensive, but really doesn't put people too much on the spot. They're always going to be on the spot to some degree if you're asking for criticism, but sets it up in a way that's kind of friendly. And then she talks about...

[00:04:17]  Cameo: Yes. Does she specifically use that particular phrase?

[00:04:22]  Bruce: Yes.

[00:04:23]  Cameo: Because it is an interesting phrase, especially the placement of “easier to work with me.” The words “easier to work with me” and the way that's phrased is designed to acknowledge, I'm hard as hell to work with. What can I do to change that? It's just a very interesting way to phrase that.

[00:04:43]  Bruce: Yes. You know, okay, so let's talk about that for a second. I noticed the same thing. She's picked her words very carefully here, right? She's put thought into, how do I ask this question so that I'm eliciting the answer that I want, right? And as you just mentioned, there's an implication of fallibilism. There's an implication of, look, I know I've got problems. We're all human. We've all got problems. There's a number of things like that. What could I stop doing? Okay, instead of what could I start doing to make it easier? That's probably harder to think of than what can I stop doing? What are things I'm doing wrong? What are errors I'm making, right? I mean, this is a hard to vary question that she's come up with. Right. And that's the thing I loved about it, is that she's really given thought to, how do I ask? And I think that there is a tendency with criticism, when you think about just criticism in any setting, normally, people just sort of start saying stuff, right?

[00:05:47]  Bruce: There's not a lot of thought that goes into how do I get criticism going well, right? And she's clearly, she's thought this through and there's some practice behind this. Any other comments on that?

[00:06:02]  Cameo: Well, you know, I've read the book and even generally try and ask the people who work for me, like, what can I do to be better at my job or how can I support you better? But this is a totally different question. I don't know if it's ever stood out to me quite this way before. You can go on. It was just interesting to me.

[00:06:19]  Bart: Maybe one thing here is it also, I remarked it as well, and it's clear that in other instances and for the majority of the instances, she talks about criticizing content. This leads a little bit into criticizing behavior and what can be improved in terms of how we behave when we give criticism. So it could get a little bit of a personal flavor, but then I think it's still okay because it's in the format of a question. It's an open question. You invite the other to come up with ideas with regards to that, to that behavior and how you perceive the behavior. So I think taken next to all the other things she says about criticizing content, I think this is a good, let's say, balance in the whole thing. So yeah, I remarked it as well that it tends to have a kind of personal flavor or person-centered flavor, but I think it's a good, it's a valid question after all.

[00:07:23]  Bart: It can lead to interesting ideas.

[00:07:26]  Bruce: Yes. And I see your point. She does use the word me, right? So it is a little bit personal, but then she kind of deflects that a little with what could I do or stop doing, right? So she's still trying to get it back to specific content, specific things that need to be done differently. So I guess I should mention this is all in context of what she says a manager's job is, which is to support other people doing their work, right? That you're not the boss who calls all the shots. So in context of what can I do to support you, like Cameo's version of this, this is maybe somewhat more similar to that in that context. Okay, so she talks about the next one, she talks about enduring the silence and embracing the discomfort. I need to probably explain that. So if you ask the question, what could I do or stop doing or some similar sort of question, then the natural tendency is for the person to say, no, I can't think of anything, right?

[00:08:33]  Bruce: Because we're all trained to some degree to deflect things like that, because we know that most people don't handle them well. And I think this is something that we have to keep in mind. Anytime we talk about criticism, you want to avoid the point of view of, oh, criticism is always good, because it's not. Criticism has long since been weaponized by the human race. And there are all sorts of bad forms of criticism, and people are aware of that, and that's part of life, right? So part of what she's trying to do is she's trying to figure out how to de-weaponize it. And so she knows that there's going to be a natural tendency to say, oh, I can't think of anything. So she's saying, well, there must be something, and then you just sit there in silence. And people have this natural tendency to want to talk. They don't like silence, right? So you embrace the discomfort of the situation.

[00:09:22]  Bruce: And by doing that, she's found that people will eventually come up with something. And then she says, the moment they come up with something, no matter what it is, you never argue. You accept it as the gift that it is. You have to accept criticism as a gift. And then you always publicly make sure you've done something to address it in some way so that people can see that criticism gets rewarded in this company. That's a couple down: “Reward criticism.” So there's different ways you might reward criticism. One of them obviously is you do something about it. But then she also gives funny little examples of having a little statue you give out, or a trophy that you give out or something along those lines so that people know that criticism is going to get rewarded.

[00:10:09]  Bart: I think this one is great. Endure the silence. But I think it's tougher for the manager asking the question than for the recipient of the question. Of course, it's a little bit annoying indeed to not be able to come up with an idea. That's a little bit annoying. But to be able to endure the silence as a manager is probably even harder because also managers are inclined to have the answers to most questions and give those answers. And enduring the silence is therefore twice as powerful if you do it as a manager.

[00:10:39]  Bruce: Yes.

[00:10:39]  Cameo: I was thinking the same thing about it because it's difficult for me to shut my mouth almost ever. Being silent and embracing the discomfort is a hard thing to do.

[00:10:51]  Bruce: Yeah. And it makes everybody uncomfortable, right? So you don't want to leave the silence. And I think that's why this is an institution, right? She's saying, okay, up front, you're going to decide to embrace the discomfort of silence as one of your tools, and you're going to accept that. So I mentioned the next couple already, don't criticize the criticism and reward the criticism. So you have to treat criticism like a gift. There's a natural tendency, if you're seeking criticism, someone makes a criticism, the first thing you want to do is you want to say, well, no, no, that's not right because, and if you do that, you've already signaled to the other person to not bother criticizing you in the future, right? So that was why she says, make sure you don't criticize; make sure you reward the criticism, specifically by taking some sort of action to address the concerns.

[00:11:40]  Bruce: She gives examples of embracing the discomfort and initially getting criticisms like, you know, I wish that there was more flavors of coffee, you know, or something stupid, right? The person knows is kind of silly. And then going out of your way to actually go take care of that so that they see that in the future, they should get more serious about criticism because it's going to get rewarded. Another one she talks about is the orange suggestions box. Now, there's probably problems with a suggestions box, but the idea of leaving something around so that you can anonymously make suggestions for how to affect things, that would create a culture where people know that there's an expectation that error corrections are going to come into play and criticisms and suggestions are going to come into play. Of course, you would have to then go on to make sure that visibly these things are getting taken care of and they don't just disappear into the dark.

[00:12:40]  Bruce: And Cameo, I don't have this on the slide, but it seems like she had some ideas on how to do that because obviously you might get lots of stuff into an orange suggestions box. I think she recommended something like pulling out the box in a public meeting and intentionally pulling out items from the box and reading them in a public meeting. Is this ringing a bell?

[00:13:00]  Cameo: Yeah, she does talk about the only way that a suggestion box… Again, you have to show that there's going to be changes. So, you know, pulling those out in a very public way and then making sure everyone sees very openly impact from that.

[00:13:21]  Bruce: And then related to that is the management fix it sprints, which I had never heard of this before reading the book. But the idea is the idea of sprints is an agile software thing that's starting to get into other parts of the business where you try to do work in a often two week period of time so that you're planning just two weeks out. One of the things she talks about is the tech debt sprints, where every so often we have these fix-it sprints in software where you go through and you try to catch up on your tech debt or fix things that there hasn't been time because you're always under the gun to get stuff done. She said management should have fix-it sprints. Obviously, we're not talking software anymore, but that there's a certain two week period of time where people take the suggestions, load up things they want management to take care of, and then management lays aside other things for a two week sprint and works on the prioritized list that's been given to them by their employees or something along those lines so that people know that they're going to actually be able to be part of the process of making suggestions and seeing things actually change for the better.

[00:14:34]  Bruce: Have you ever tried something like that, guys?

[00:14:36]  Cameo: I have not. I really love the idea of it, because then it makes management own the problems that are happening, which I think is really difficult in organizations. And it not only makes them own it, but it makes it very, you know, the point behind a sprint in my mind—this starts to get into my agile geekiness—is to commit to something and then get it done. You know, and so the idea of putting this into a fix-it sprint implies, in my mind, like actually getting some things fixed out the other side that could have real changes for people or real impact for people.

[00:15:14]  Bart: Yeah, I like it too, the fix-it sprint, but it triggered a complementary thought, which is linked to your title institutions, complementary in the sense that I would also like to have not only fix-it sprints, but like recurring overarching sprints, so that management is also taking ownership that this whole collection of ideas and tactics and approaches for doing criticism better, that this is also turning into a developmental learning effort, because all of these things on the slide are interesting, let's say, tips and tricks. But for it to become an institution, it has to be a learning experience. And you can get off of an average start or a bad start, but it's only in three, six, nine months that you'll be able to see whether this culture of criticism is really taking off, and if not, what is needed to guide it towards a better direction.

[00:16:22]  Bart: And I think only if you do that, like these overarching evaluations and steering by the management, by the people that, you know, endorse this whole momentum and this whole drive, it's only when you do that, I think that you can create, you know, the institution aspect of the whole thing. Right.

[00:16:44]  Bruce: Right. No, that makes sense. The last point that I've got on this slide was interesting. It's obviously just a behavioral thing. So don't let people talk about others behind their back. So you think about like two people are working together and they're having problems and they both come to you or one of them comes to you and complains. And, you know, talks, maybe they're just saying, oh, I just hate how blah, blah, blah. And the natural thing is to want to be empathetic. She kind of puts this in the ruinous empathy category, but it's very natural to want to hear the person out and be empathetic to what they're saying. So she says it's a hard thing, but you really need to create a practice, an institution, where it just isn't okay to talk behind other people's back, but that you're very focused on wanting to solve the problem instead. So if they're coming to you because there's a problem, then great, help them with the problem.

[00:17:46]  Bruce: Say, okay, how about I set up a meeting and the three of us can talk about how to improve the situation or something along those lines. This one strikes me as tough, but I'd actually like to hear your guys' thoughts on this one before I say anything else.

[00:18:01]  Cameo: So I'm curious if, I mean, I've never loved people talking about other people behind their back because it really just seems more like grumbling than being something actionable. If the person who you're frustrated with isn't there, there's very little you can get out of complaining about them. That being said, like you say, I think it's very difficult as a manager. I think sometimes there is legitimate need to let someone complain about somebody else. I'm a little bit torn about this.

[00:18:37]  Bruce: Yeah, I thought you might be. Bart, what do you think on this one?

[00:18:41]  Bart: Yeah, I think as a manager, you need to be a little bit on the defensive side and try not to go into those types of discussions about others too much when you're in a one on one. So you can regulate that a little bit as a manager and even avoid specifically those kinds of conversations when you see that the other ones are trying to bring them up and not go too deeply into those types of discussions about other people that are not present at that moment in time in the room or in the particular meeting. So I think this is something to pay attention to. I think it's a valuable point.

[00:19:21]  Bruce: Okay. Let me give you my thought on this, Cameo, because I thought you would probably say what you did, Cameo. I can think of scenarios where it seems like it would make sense. Now, I'm not sure how common these scenarios are. But like you could imagine someone coming to you and saying, I'm having a hard time working with so-and-so. I would like to get advice on how I could deal with it better. Right? It wouldn't really make sense, I wouldn't think, to call a meeting and talk in front of that person at that point, because the person's not really complaining. They're seeking actual help on what they can do differently, or advice from someone who has more experience with that person, or something along those lines. I suspect Kim Scott would say, oh, that's not what I meant by talking. I don't know for sure what she would say, but perhaps she would say, that's not what I meant by talking behind other people's back, right?

[00:20:18]  Bruce: Because that's not the same thing. And yet, isn't it the same thing? I mean, there's a fine line here, right?

[00:20:24]  Cameo: Yeah, and I think that that's a little bit, that fine line is what I'm struggling with. Because I actually agree. Like somebody coming, you know, if I have two people who work directly for me, one person complaining about the other person is a lot like when I get after my kids for something, and they say, well, Logan hasn't cleaned his room either. Here's all the things he's doing bad, right? It's a deflection of responsibility to try and bring up another co-worker's shortcomings in your own one-on-one with your boss, right? That seems a little to me like, hey, look over here. So I totally get that. But I do think there is that sometimes gray area of needing to legitimately talk about things that are happening in other areas of the business. Yeah, I'm a little torn.

[00:21:23]  Bart: What you could do, I think, is to allow for capturing the content of what the person has to say about the other people, but not react to it, not give claims or judgments or implications of that. And then also say that you're going to try to capture the other side of the story from the other people. But I think capturing is still the step you can take. But then immediately reacting to it as a manager, I think there you have to draw the line because you're hearing only one side of the medal or one side of the story. But you could capture it and it may provide valuable information. But I would not react to it immediately with conclusions, decisions, implications.

[00:22:14]  Bruce: Yeah. Okay. All right. Let me move on to the next here. So how to actually give criticism. She spends like a chapter talking about how to go about giving criticism. And again, I really like what she had to say here. It got me thinking about a lot of different things, and particularly in a work environment, even outside of a work environment, some of these things seem very universal. So one of the things she talks about, Bart, I know you bring this one up all the time, is to avoid the fundamental attribution error. So fundamental attribution error is talking about the person instead of the content, right? It's you're sloppy, you know, or you're a screw up or something along those lines, right? And she says, okay, what's actually wrong with the fundamental attribution error? Now, from a standpoint of Karl Popper's theory of knowledge, I think we would say, well, you know, we're trying to kill ideas, not people, right?

[00:23:12]  Bruce: It should be about the idea, not about the person. She actually, she agrees with that, but she goes one step further that I don't think I've ever heard before that really made sense to me. And it was, why do we make the fundamental attribution error? Why do we say, you know, oh, you know, you're not very clear, you know, or something along those lines? It's because it's easier, right? To be able to give specific feedback takes effort. It's hard to vary, right? It's difficult to come up with very specific criticism and feedback. It's much easier to give easy to vary criticism feedback. And using the fundamental attribution error, you're sloppy, is the easier version. So that's why people do it. They do it because that's what comes to their mind, and they're trying to get something out. I mean, there's kind of a good reason for why they're doing it, but the end result's not a good thing, right?

[00:24:09]  Bruce: And so she talks about the difference between saying, you're sloppy versus you've been working nights and weekends and it's starting to take a toll on your ability to catch mistakes in your logic, right? She says one of those is way more helpful than the other. One of those is not particularly helpful, and the person doesn't even know what to do if you tell them they're sloppy, right? Where do they even begin trying to address that? Because it's an easy to vary criticism. Whereas the other one that's very specific, that's way more helpful that they can start thinking about what to do about it and what it is they need to do, and it's also less offensive, right? It immediately helps de-weaponize it and make it so that it's something that's actionable, they can do something about it, and it doesn't make them just feel like they're hopeless, right?

[00:24:57]  Bruce: So along those lines, she says, since the goal is to be specific, she says, try doing the situation you saw, the behavior, and the impact. So she gives an example of using this outside of a work environment. She says, instead of, you know, calling names to the guy who just stole your parking spot and cussing at him, you say, I've been waiting for this parking spot for five minutes, and you zipped in front of me and took it. Now I'm late. So situation you saw, the behavior that they did, and what the impact on you was, okay? And then she says, if they ignore you at that point, then feel free to cuss them out. So, but I really like the, I think the key thing that really got me excited about this was the understanding of why we do make the fundamental attribution error, why it is so common to say you're wrong instead of that's wrong, or to try to say you are blah, blah, blah, you know, fill in the blank.

[00:25:54]  Bruce: Why do we do that? It's because that's easier. It's the first thing that comes to our mind. It takes effort to try to get into something that's specific. So thoughts.

[00:26:05]  Bart: Yeah, well, I fully agree with all of what is said here. It's definitely easier. But also often managers don't know how to be specific because they simply don't see all the situations. They don't see all the behaviors. They typically only see the impact. They see what they see in the reports.

[00:26:27]  Bruce: This is a good point.

[00:26:28]  Bart: And obviously, yeah, it takes effort, a priori, for the manager to understand the specific situation, the specific behaviors. And you can either do that by demanding as a manager that there's also transparency on how results are achieved. And then you already have a little bit more information. But more often than not, you just don't have that information. And then, yeah, the second best strategy even or the second worst, let's say, because the worst is indeed saying things that are not specific and person oriented. But the second worst is to at least ask what happened specifically and how people specifically acted. And then try to work with what you're being given. But oftentimes, at the moment that as a manager, you make a judgment, you don't dispose of those pieces of information. And therefore, you're dragged into the attribution error.

[00:27:32]  Bruce: Yes, that makes sense. And I think you're right that often as managers, you did not personally see the situation, which makes this a little tougher. Cameo, what do you think?

[00:27:42]  Cameo: I absolutely agree. It's kind of the first thing that comes to my mind is exactly what Bart said. It's difficult sometimes to see the holistic situation or even to understand a lot how it came about. You only see the outcomes and the results. And a lot of times, trying to move backwards and understand the situation holistically enough to be able to give criticism can feel like criticism to people. Asking questions about how did we get here, why were you doing that, or what was happening that caused can really seem critical to people. Especially if a situation has gone really poorly, they feel like evidence is being compiled against them rather than a manager looking for understanding. I'm speaking specifically of situations where there's already been a bad outcome. Not just, always with Kim, I think about the way she starts the book with Sheryl Sandberg telling her she shouldn't say um so much.

[00:28:53]  Cameo: But for most of us as managers, error correction generally isn't about something as mostly benign, seeming as, hey, you don't seem as professional when you use the word “um” a lot.

[00:29:06]  Unidentified speaker: Right.

[00:29:07]  Cameo: You know, and so it is interesting to try and figure out how to get to that's wrong, when sometimes it takes a fair amount of effort to understand what was wrong.

[00:29:21]  Bruce: Yes. And she also points out that sometimes the situation is personal, right? We talk about trying to depersonalize it and talk about what's wrong, but she gives the example of a woman who smelled bad, right? This, I mean, what's wrong is very personal. And so sometimes you have to still, you do have to address personal things as part of giving people feedback. So she goes on to talk about how to go about this, okay? And she talks about state the intention to help, okay? Make criticism an intention to help. So now getting back to what Cameo and Bart, what you guys were saying, you may not actually have seen everything. So she gives the example of a preamble. I'm going to describe a problem I see. I may be wrong. And if I am, I hope you'll tell me. If I'm not, I hope my bringing it up will help you fix it, okay? So this is another example of having kind of a prethought out statement that you're going to say that helps de-escalate the situation, helps the person out.

[00:30:28]  Bruce: And there's a humility in it, this idea of saying things like I think, trying to make sure they understand that you're not saying you know something for sure.

[00:30:40]  Cameo: Right, I may be wrong.

[00:30:43]  Bruce: Yeah. And especially for the circumstance that you guys were giving, something's wrong in some report somewhere, and you get statistics that show there's a problem. You don't really know what the problem’s specific proximate causes are. So this might be a helpful way to go about doing that is you, really this is just a case of fallibilism, right? This is from Karl Popper's philosophy. You're admitting your fallibilism. You're admitting that, look, I'm just starting this conversation. I don't really know for sure exactly what's wrong. Maybe there's something we need to fix here. Maybe you need to explain something to me. So that does seem like that might be in some circumstances a helpful way to try to go about that. Any other ideas here on how one might go about either, you know, stating intentions to help or trying to initiate this conversation in a circumstance where you didn't actually see the specific problem?

[00:31:47]  Bart: Yeah, I think everything that makes a person at ease, that makes him or her prepared for these kinds of conversations is good. So if it has any recurrency, if it's not like on the spot completely unprepared and in a kind of turbulent atmosphere, then this won't work. [The wording is ambiguous here; the next sentence advocates regular, prepared conversations.] So the person whom you're going to give some criticism to needs to be prepared, know that it's a regular activity with some recurrency. And so everything that helps to make this like a business as usual kind of activity, I think will help with regards to the impact and the effect that the criticism can have.

[00:32:34]  Bruce: Okay, excellent. Now, Cameo, we talked last time about the one-minute manager, and this next bullet point actually matches the one-minute manager pretty well. So she suggested that you don't, it depends on the circumstance, of course, but that you don't usually call a meeting to give criticism, that you give feedback immediately two to three minutes while walking between meetings or something along those lines. Obviously, these were the pre-COVID days. But if you're in a meeting and you're walking to your next meeting, you pull the person aside on the way while you're walking there, and within two to three minutes, you give them the feedback that needs to be done. She suggested that this was good. First of all, this matches very well with the one-minute manager, the idea that criticisms should be given quickly. There's no reason to dwell on them.

[00:33:28]  Bruce: You're trying to just give them the minimum feedback so that they know there's an error and they need to do something about it. But it makes it so that it's in person. It holds it down. They don't have to have this anticipation of, why do I have this meeting on my calendar with my boss? What are they going to say to me? You just give it to them right then. And then you don't save it up. You don't have, oh, that's right, I need to call a meeting to talk to Joe about what he did wrong. You just take care of it right then, and then it's done. And again, the one-minute manager idea. And then they're moving on to the next meeting, and they're not dwelling on it. They've got something else that's on their mind. They now receive the feedback. They've got a chance to correct the error if there's an error. So this one, I actually think, fits very well with probably the things that you've liked about the one-minute manager, I would guess, Cameo?

[00:34:20]  Cameo: Yeah, I mean, absolutely criticism being held up and stored for a formal, I'm giving you feedback thing, I think is a really not a good pattern. And the one-minute manager, I'm sure doesn't focus on it for the same beneficial reasons, but very much being able to give criticism quickly. And there's a part of it that's about immediacy and not about the length of criticism. When you're seeing behavior, you need to correct the behavior quickly rather than waiting for it. And for me, that's probably the biggest point of the one-minute manager is see something, say something kind of thing. Don't see something, put it on the log, save it for your quarterly meeting where you tell them all the ways that they're a disappointment to you.

[00:35:17]  Bruce: These next couple of points, she says you have to be flexible with, but she says it's always preferable to do criticism in person, but it's not always possible, especially in the increasingly globalized environment. She says, you know, on the phone is better than via text or via email or something like that. There's kind of an order in which you should do this to make it as good as possible. And in person is the ideal. She also talks about praise in public, criticize in private. She says, I think that's generally a good rule of thumb. This is the one she made up. This is a very common one, obviously. But then she gives examples of where it may not make sense. There are some people who it's literally painful to be praised in public. And all of us are to some degree kind of programmed to not want to be held up in public even as a good example.

[00:36:13]  Bruce: And so she talks about, like, if you are going to praise in public, make it clear that you're not trying to hold up the person. You're trying to give examples of the types of behavior so that it's a learning experience. And that might also make it easier on the person. You're still praising them, but you're not making it so personal. Strange as this may sound, just as you try to make criticism not personal, you should make praise not personal, right? It should be about what behaviors that you liked and that you would like to see repeated. And as a learning experience for others and things like that, it doesn't have to be a matter of trying to build the person's ego up, which might bother some people. So I thought those two were interesting, very common things that I think we all know, but she went more into why they're true and when they're not true, and how to handle that.

[00:37:10]  Bruce: The other one that I thought was interesting was she says, you really need to acknowledge the hurt. When you're giving criticism and feedback, people are going to feel hurt, and they're human, and you should acknowledge that. She says, saying something like, don't take it personally, is less than helpful. It's worse than just not saying it at all. Again, this is one of the things I really loved about this book, is she makes it all so human. She makes it all, acknowledging the reality of the types of feelings that we all have, rather than trying to teach us to suppress those feelings. She makes it about, how do we utilize those feelings in the most useful way? How do we deal with the feelings when they're maybe counterproductive, by still acknowledging that they're there, still acknowledging that this is a person. So I really loved a lot of the things she did around that.

[00:38:06]  Bruce: Any thoughts on those?

[00:38:08]  Bart: Yeah, I agree. I like every single point on the list here, and also this human touch and the fallible aspect of it. There's one thing I'm missing here, is like the two directions of the whole story. This is all written in terms of you as a manager, giving criticism in the best possible way to your direct reports. But there has to be a direction from the report to you as well. And that should not be like 50-50 in terms of time. But you quickly recognize that if a manager does all of this, but it's 100% criticism about the work that the direct report is doing, then you feel that this will not work optimally. And at some moment in time, asking the question, what improvements do you see in the way I'm managing the work around here, or the work that I'm giving to you, could give a little bit of a balance and could make the story a little bit working in two directions.

[00:39:17]  Bart: Because I think if it's only one directional, even if you give it in the best possible way, human, fallible and all those things, then I guess you're going to miss something sooner or later. You have to be open to also open up the other direction and ask the question. I think she touches upon that in other places, but that was the one that I was missing a little bit here.

[00:39:45]  Bruce: Okay, no, that makes sense. [Cameo?] Thoughts?

[00:39:49]  Cameo: Yeah, you know, the don't nitpick to me is, I think it's hard, you know, coming back to that, why it's important to give feedback right away is because I think if you start storing up, it almost gets to the point of storing up hurts, you know, where you're compiling these things. And I like when she talks about leaving three unimportant things unsaid each day, I would kind of add to that. Don't ever criticize somebody if it's not an important thing. You know, that's the very heart of nitpicking. If you're a manager or if you're somebody trying to give criticism to your manager, we should really only be focusing on the things that are important, or why are we bringing them up as a criticism?

[00:40:38]  Bruce: Bart has an excellent way of determining what's important and what's unimportant.

[00:40:44]  Unidentified speaker: Exactly.

[00:40:45]  Bart: Yeah. So in my view, good criticism is for sure, as we all agree, not based on persons, but is based on content. But then more specifically, whether that content is containing an explanation for why the criticism has a positive impact on us as a team or on the organization as a whole. So if I put forward a piece of criticism and I do not provide an explanation for why this better claim makes us as a team or the organization as a whole better off, then that's bad criticism, because that's just my personal feeling at that moment in time that I'm conveying. But without the logic for why, if you follow my criticism, that we as a team or us as an organization will be better off. And that's a way of distinguishing, I guess, good from bad criticism, even if both of them are based on content and not on persons.

[00:41:50]  Bruce: Interesting. I don't think I've ever heard that before, Bart, saying it. It was probably on your podcast. Was it on your podcast that you said this, Bart?

[00:41:57]  Bart: No, I think we talked about it here because I gave this, I called it myself a silly example because I think it's still silly, but I gave the example of your slides being written in green.

[00:42:08]  Bruce: Oh, that's right. That's in the last episode. That's right.

[00:42:11]  Bart: And so, yeah. So if I were to criticize you and say you have to write them in blue, because then I would have to give you an explanation for why these slides in blue resulted in a better outcome, better discussion, more insights, and everything among the three of us, which obviously is not contained in my criticism. So that's why that's a bad piece of criticism.

[00:42:36]  Bruce: That's right. You know, I was thinking about turning my slides all blue just to see if you noticed.

[00:42:44]  Bart: Great.

[00:42:45]  Bruce: Okay. So one last thing she brings up that I think is relevant here is the idea of adapting to culture. So she gives this example of working with a Japanese team where politeness is part of the culture. And so she initially tries to get the Japanese team, I'm going to not remember the story exactly, but she tries to get the Japanese team to go to Microsoft or whoever it is they're trying to get something done at some global or vendor level. And they're not getting things done that they need. And she says, well, you need to go to them and you need to give them criticism on, you know, what they need to do differently. And it was too much of a change against the culture of politeness. Now, this is something that's kind of interesting. She's making the point that culture affects this. But then she says, okay, you need to do it in a way that makes sense in your culture.

[00:43:43]  Bruce: What if you're simply persistent? So you're not being critical, but you just persist. You continually follow up until they take care of your need. Well, they had no problem with that. So they did that instead, and the end result was exactly the same. Whoever it was at the global or vendor level that they were working with started to get them what they needed so that they could be successful. So she makes the point that we do need to take a lot of these ideas that we're talking about, and we do need to adapt them to the culture of that country, of that company, of whatever the people that you are specifically trying to work with.

[00:44:27]  Bart: Yeah, I've had experience where I was briefed on beforehand in meetings with a multitude of people, but from different cultures. That, for example, that was an extreme case that you aren't allowed to ask questions to the CEO. Even if you're invited in the meeting and you're presenting stuff in the meeting, you're not allowed to directly ask a question. Of course, that's the extreme case of adapting to the culture, and that doesn't lead to a lot of cooperation or progress, but yeah, it plays a role.

[00:45:10]  Bruce: Interesting. So, just a thought there. Kim Scott is kind of taking the stance that you can find a way to make things work for the culture that you're in. You're kind of raising a different point, which is sometimes the culture is actually bad, right? I mean, it's hard to imagine how you would get the necessary feedback to be successful if you're not allowed to ask questions of the CEO. So I could see that unless you can think of some, I can’t, off the top of my head anyhow, think of some way to adapt to that. That actually seems like it's an actual hindrance.

[00:45:47]  Bart: Yeah, you're right. Yeah, that's a culture of non-criticism or non-tolerance to criticism. Or to error correction or improvement or anything.

[00:45:59]  Bruce: So in that case, yeah, what do you do in a case like that? I have no idea.

[00:46:04]  Bart: No, that's the extreme example. That's where you are stuck. But I can imagine that there are examples where you can still pass on the idea and the way of giving criticism by tweaking and adapting a little bit to the culture and not being confronted with an obligation, for example, not to be able to ask questions or have any impact or connection. Yeah.

[00:46:33]  Unidentified speaker: All right.

[00:46:34]  Bruce: One last thing here. Final slide. Getting guidance on your guidance, which is a really interesting idea. So the idea here is that after you give either praise or criticism, that you're going to receive a critique of the guidance and feedback that you gave, whether it's praise or criticism. And the way she goes about doing this was really interesting. She says that she gives people stickers of both praise and criticism stickers, and then they go to her radical candor framework, the quadrant that we did in the first episode, if you've seen the slides, of ruinous empathy, compassionate candor, obnoxious aggression, and what is the fourth one? Suddenly can't remember it. Manipulative, insincere manipulation. And they'll take each time she gives feedback, they get a sticker, and then they get to go put on, when she's not around, I guess, put in the quadrant which quadrant her feedback was in.

[00:47:44]  Bruce: So if she gives feedback and it's obnoxious, they would put the feedback sticker into the obnoxious aggression. And then what that does is this creates this immediate feedback loop, where she knows people are perceiving her as too aggressive or obnoxious, or they're perceiving her as, you know, being ruinously empathetic or insincere and manipulative. And by putting, and even the case of praise, it may be insincere praise. They may have perceived it as insincere praise or something like that, and they put it into the manipulative category. And she gets to immediately get feedback on her feedback, and gets to see, oh, wow, I'm not getting stuff into the compassionate candor quadrant as much as I would like, and it allows her to kind of tweak her own behavior and to start thinking about how she's handling feedback. So I've never tried this, by the way.

[00:48:37]  Bruce: This one's a brand new idea. It's a really interesting idea. Anyone else have thoughts or ideas around this one?

[00:48:45]  Cameo: I've never done anything like this either, and even without using her framework, it has some real appeal because it's hard to give people feedback and feel like it's productive sometimes. I think this is a phenomenal idea.

[00:49:01]  Unidentified speaker: Yeah.

[00:49:02]  Bruce: [Bart?] Thoughts?

[00:49:03]  Bart: Yeah, this falls into the remark I gave about the two directions that are so important. This is really asking for them to critique your feedback. So this is switching the direction of the criticism, which I think is always a necessity if the criticism will be lasting or will have a lasting positive effect. So that's crucial that you, from time to time, switch the direction. Here it says specifically on the feedback you gave as an extension. You could even open up suggestions about other things than only the feedback you gave, because you're framing it then already maybe a little bit too narrow into the specific feedback you gave, and you allow for comments and criticisms on that. So yes, for sure, because you're turning around the direction of the criticism, which is a vital condition, I think, for success, but possibly to open it up to a wider scope of feedback than only the one that you happened to give.

[00:50:14]  Bruce: Yes. The other thing that I like here is, again, this is an example of setting up an institution. You have the framework up on the wall, it's in your office or somewhere that's public, and people have stickers, and they're expected to go put stickers, and then people see other people putting stickers. The stickers are going up, so there's this environmental culture where people can see, oh, I am expected to put a sticker up. You don't have to do it when the person's there, and it depersonalizes it. You don't know specifically who. And yet it still gets you the information you need. Am I generally being compassionate, or am I just being too obnoxious, or am I just being too empathetic, ruinously empathetic, and I'm not really giving people the feedback that they need. So this is one that I actually would love to see more managers do, and should probably do myself.

[00:51:09]  Bruce: I'm not sure how you would do this in a COVID environment, but like in an environment where you're actually working, the idea of putting up on the wall seems like it depersonalizes it quite a bit, so that you can immediately just get the feedback, and yet nobody feels awkward about it, if that makes any sense. All right. Any other final thoughts here, guys, on Radical Candor?

[00:51:32]  Cameo: I know I need to work harder on it.

[00:51:35]  Bruce: Yeah. I've got a long ways to go myself on this. I really need to start implementing some of these things.

[00:51:44]  Bart: I must say, I like it. There are really great points in it, really good stuff. How does it work in the US? I've been out of the US for a while, but does this gain a little bit of traction? Is this getting momentum? Is this based upon the book or the principle in general?

[00:52:03]  Bruce: Good question. So, you know, the book became a popular read at where I work. And so in that sense, I think it has gained some real traction as an idea, right? That everybody wanted to read it and we all got excited about it. But I don't think I've seen hardly any of it implemented at all. And of course, this is a common thing, is that you've got the popular book, you've got the popular idea of the day, and everybody has to read it and talk about it and things like that. But then things don't really change.

[00:52:40]  Bart: It doesn't become an institution as you…

[00:52:42]  Bruce: That's right. That's right. It never really gets institutionalized as part of the business environment. My feeling is—so let me… This is not unique to… I won't mention where I work. But this is what I'm about to say is not unique to where I work. And so I'm not calling out any one particular employer. But it is super common to, in software in particular, but this is probably not specifically a software problem, to have the thing that kills the project come from outside the team, right? The thing that causes the project to go off the rails is actually a management mistake or a problem with the user group or the customer or something like that, right? There's tons of research on this too that we could probably do as a separate episode. So there's always this kind of issue that you're dealing with where you're trying to figure out how to not let somebody outside the group kill the project, cause the project to come off the rails and go over budget.

[00:53:46]  Bruce: And of course, just because if someone up above, let me give a specific example, not a specific example like a real life, but one that I'm sure all of us have seen. A manager who says this project must be done by a certain date, and they set a date and they publicize it, but they've never actually checked with the team about if it's realistic or not. Super common problem in software. Not that if they do check with the team, that the team's estimate is going to somehow magically make it so that they don't misestimate it. The estimation in and of itself is a problem in software. This is like the first level of problem, right? And then there's like tons of problems you have to solve after that. The very first level that the manager publishes a date, okay? Now when that date gets missed, which it often does because there was no thought that went into it at all, suddenly there's this perception of failure and problems and missed expectations.

[00:54:44]  Bruce: And everyone is very likely to blame the team, right? And the team knows that they'll, under those circumstances, very likely get blamed and it'll be bad, right? So they go work as hard as they can. They just can't get the work done. Maybe it's just too much. It's just physically impossible. Or maybe they just give up. Maybe they just don't even worry about it. I've seen that happen too. And they just miss the date and then they take the blame and they grumble and they move on. Well, the real problem here was the manager. The person who's not even on the team, not doing any of the work, they made the initial mistake that pretty much guaranteed that project was going to be a failure up front. So this is a really common one. But there's a whole bunch of subtler versions of it that I think a lot of managers would be surprised that they were actually the one that killed that project.

[00:55:34]  Bruce: And they can't even conceive the idea that it was their fault the project went off the rails because they're so far removed from the project. In fact, being so far removed from the project is one of the things that can cause a project to go off the rails. Because they just haven't given the good feedback. They don't really understand what's going on. The developers are flapping in the wind trying to figure things out. The person who's too far removed, that may be what caused the project to fail. That may be the proximate cause for what caused the project to fail. And yet that manager would, from a certain point of view, think, how can I be the problem? I had nothing to do with it, right? And I think there's many things like that in a work environment, where if you don't have the right feedback mechanisms in place, or the feedback mechanisms only happen at the team level.

[00:56:27]  Bruce: Maybe the team is very good with Agile, and they're having their retrospectives, and they're talking about how to improve things. But if they don't have access to the right people who actually caused the problems as part of that retrospective, which might be the manager, it might be the users or the customer or somebody who's not part of the immediate team, some other stakeholder, right? If they're not really part of those retrospectives, and they are part of the error correction going on [wording ambiguous here], the team may simply lack the ability to actually correct the error. And I think that's one of the things that Radical Candor—trying to spread it through as a culture and trying to start it off at the top and have the managers… That's definitely the ideal circumstance, right? And she gives the example of what do you do to initiate criticism against your boss if your boss isn't signed on to Radical Candor.

[00:57:19]  Bruce: And she suggested that you still do things the way that you would initially elicit criticism, and then you would see how that goes, and you would talk with them openly about Radical Candor and say what do you think of that and find out what they think. And then she does this several times in the book. Then she says, if all that doesn't work and the boss doesn't want to accept criticism, my advice for you is to go find another job. And that seems to be her kind of out for if you can't actually get it to where it's going both ways and it's going up the chain and you're getting the right people involved where the error correction can actually make a difference, is to just go find another job. And I don't know. I don't know how realistic that is. And Kim Scott's an awfully talented person who can probably easily get any job she wants at this point.

[00:58:11]  Bruce: But that is kind of her answer to the question, and it's hard to know what the right answer is in that circumstance.

[00:58:18]  Cameo: I think her answer is right. If you work in an organization and you've tried to elicit that change, and I think it's in my mind that those are indications of an organization that I would want to work for. [The wording is ambiguous; her next sentence advises leaving if the problem persists.] If that is an ongoing problem, absolutely, go find a new place.

[00:58:40]  Bruce: Yeah, Bart, what do you think?

[00:58:46]  Bart: Yeah, it may lead us too far, but I think you mentioned the team, but I think there's a lot of interesting things to say about expanding the team and including some of the hierarchy in there who makes those decisions about deadlines, some of the customers, some of the testers. And whenever you make a new team, which has a shared responsibility for success, then you're getting into other dynamics, and then the criticism goes around and is shared within that new team. But if you indeed say or talk about the team as being the development team in this case, then there are too many dependencies with other teams that are outside of this criticism dynamic and can escape it or distanciate themselves from it. Then you run into the type of situations and problems that you're describing. So you have to define a new team, which includes all the stakeholders and the ones with responsibility for success, and then try to set up a dynamic of criticism in that team.

[00:59:54]  Bruce: Across the extended team, right. Yeah, makes sense.

[00:59:58]  Unidentified speaker: All right.

[01:00:00]  Bruce: Well, I think we're just out of time anyhow. So Cameo and Bart, thank you so much for joining us. This has been an incredibly fun discussion.

[01:00:09]  Bart: Thank you. It was great.

[01:00:11]  Cameo: Yeah, I always enjoy it, and I look forward to our next conversation.