Love and Truth in Work and Life

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Kim Scott, bestselling author and CEO coach, talks with Jesse about her new book Just Work and her New York Times Bestselling book Radical Candor along with the experiences and lessons that moved her to write. She talks about her lifelong love of writing and the value of storytelling in helping change behaviors. Kim reflects on the connected nature of her writing and executive coaching and on her philosophies on being an engaged professional advisor.

 
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Episode Notes

Kim shares specific and moving examples of how she learned to care personally for people while also challenging them directly, and how caring personally and challenging directly became the basis for her Radical Candor. She also discusses how leaders can foster the right mix of meaningful debate and clear decision making, Kim speaks openly about the discovery of some of her own biases, and how that exploration and her conversations with underrepresented-minority colleagues and their experiences became the motivation for writing Just Work. She even shares a secret she learned about identical twins early on in parenthood.

How do I give critical feedback without damaging my relationships? What is radical candor? How can a leader be caring while also pushing for high achievement? How can we foster a culture of healthy, productive debate in order to drive better decision making? How can we achieve a more just and productive work environment?

Guest Bio

Kim Scott is the author of Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity and co-founder of the company Radical Candor. Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and other tech companies.

She was a member of the faculty at Apple University and before that led AdSense, YouTube, and DoubleClick teams at Google. She’s also managed a pediatric clinic in Kosovo and started a diamond-cutting factory in Moscow. She lives with her family in Silicon Valley.

Building Blocks

What skill or activity or habit is essentially you?

Write about what it is and why it's essentially *you*. Maybe you're a surfer and surfing is not just your way of staying in shape and in balance, but of completely escaping the terra firma that anchors you to the day-to-day and inspires you to think of each day anew. Maybe, like Kim, you're a writer - and you have your own ways of using the written word to relax, reflect or reason with yourself. Or it could be art, music, building and repair … or really anything at all. Just take 10 minutes and write out what it is about this skill or activity or habit that's absolutely essential to you and give yourself gratitude for having discovered it and for living it. If you can't put your finger on anything specific, talk to two or three people who know you well and see if they can help you discover something hidden in plain sight or find a passion that you can make your own.

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+ Episode Transcript

Kim Scott [00:00:06] I think also part of writing for me is my way of challenging myself, to be honest with myself, and there was a lot of writing this book that was me challenging myself to become more aware of the things I had done to other people and also the things that had happened to me. I say in the beginning of the book, you know, I hate to think of myself as a victim, but even less do I want to think of myself as a perpetrator. And part of writing this book was coming to grips with the times when I was a victim and also the times when I was a perpetrator trying to help identify like what are the tools that I could have had at my disposal that would have made it easier for me to name what was happening earlier so that I could change it.

Jesse Purewal [00:01:00] From Qualtrics Industries, this is Breakthrough Builders, a series of conversations with people whose passions, perspectives, instincts and ideas fuel some of the world's most amazing products, brands and experiences. I'm Jesse Purewal. Today on the show, how Kim Scott mixed deep empathy with an aptitude for storytelling and a dash of bravery and vulnerability to become a successful writer while rising to the executive ranks at Apple and Google and what she thinks we can do to reinstill the art of good debate in the workplace while being more inclusive and more radically candid than ever before.

Jesse Purewal [00:01:49] Kim, great to be with you. How are you?

Kim Scott [00:01:51] I am doing all right. How are you doing? It's Sunny here in California today, which is nice.

Jesse Purewal [00:01:57] It is Sunny. I woke up this morning and other than the temperature, had a thought that I might be in Southern California, given how beautiful it was walking around.

Kim Scott [00:02:06] Yes.

Jesse Purewal [00:02:06] Kim, I want to actually start off on a personal note. You and I share the qualification of being twin parents.

Kim Scott [00:02:14] Yes.

Jesse Purewal [00:02:14] We qualified for one. I'm not sure, but we're twin parents. I want to ask you what the craziest observation or question our dialog you had when you were a twin parent early on. What either cracked you up or confused you or inspired you?

Kim Scott [00:02:29] So I have a boy and a girl, and often people would walk up to me and say, oh, are they identical twins? Sort of like I never knew quite how to answer. And then I learned that, in fact, boy, girl twins can be identical. It just depends on when things divide. If things divide before gender is determined, then a boy and a girl can be identical. So I learned something first. I laughed at the question and then I learned that I didn't know the answer. But it wasn't as ridiculous a question as it seemed on the surface.

Jesse Purewal [00:03:01] Kim, speaking of learning, there's no doubt you have been an adroit learner in your career and your life. You've written, you've been an executive, you've been an entrepreneur, a CEO, a teacher, a coach, lots of things. But how would you frame who you are from a professional perspective?

Kim Scott [00:03:17] I would definitely say I'm a writer. My long term goal was to be a writer. In fact, my business career was sort of a crazy plot to subsidize my novel writing habit. And so, yeah, I would say I am primarily a writer.

Jesse Purewal [00:03:31] Well, I have the experience of thinking of you as quite a strong writer. And it's not just me. If I look at reviews, people say stuff like swift, fun, refreshing, entertaining, engaging, humanistic. I would add witty and direct and evocative and approachable to that. Thank you. I'm blushing. My question is, when did you realize you had a gift for expression through the written word, and how have you cultivated that in your life?

Kim Scott [00:03:58] I don't know if it's a gift or a compulsion, but I have always written I have always dealt with the things that I'm going through by writing in my journal. All I wanted to do as a kid was lie in bed and write in my journal. I would have spent every day after school doing that, but I wasn't allowed to do so. And I think it probably would have been a better use of time for me to lie in bed. I wrote in my journal then study for the SAT or whatever, trying to get better grades. So I hope that we can give our kids that gift of freedom to pursue what they want to do. So I just I've always written I've always turned to writing to sort of try to understand myself in the world around me and try to work through things that that confuse or hurt me.

Jesse Purewal [00:04:39] Are there authors that you admire?

Kim Scott [00:04:42] Yes, many, many. I mean, what I really love to read is novels. And George Eliot is one who I who I really admire. I try to read Middlemarch every couple of years and in fact, maybe it's time to do that. I love I studied Slavic literature, so I love the Russian writers. I'm more of a Tolstoy person than a Dostoyevsky person, but I love all the big Russian novels. I also spent a lot of time studying American literature in college and have read it ever since. Some of my favorite writers are Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. I also really love Virginia Woolf. I reread her books as often as I can.

Jesse Purewal [00:05:21] And you've written two business books. You've written one. You're about to publish your second just work, but you've also written fiction as well. So as somebody who has written fiction novels as well as business books, what common elements to those genres share and what intellectual firepower does one side of your brain give to the other as you're thinking about those genres?

Kim Scott [00:05:42] If there's an underlying through line in in the books that I've written, it is how can we be happier and more productive in our lives and how do the systems around us impact our ability to be our best selves and to do our best work? One of the most intense experiences of my life was when I was working in Moscow. I decided to take a train to Paris and as you went west, life just got better and better and better and better. And I thought, gosh, how could the it was still the Soviet Union at the time. How could these Soviet leaders not understand what they were doing to their own people with the system that they were creating was a disaster? Not that capitalism has all the answers. In fact, my first novel is called The Measurement Problem, and it's about how capitalism is really good at rewarding what it can measure, but really bad at rewarding what it values. So that's a question that comes back over and over and over again to me.

Jesse Purewal [00:06:40] Is there any relationship between executive coaching and being an author like exploring another's mind versus your own? Find other synergies there, or are these two distinct parts of your brain and never the two shall cross?

Kim Scott [00:06:54] No, they're absolutely related. I mean, part of the reason I write is because I want to help people make their lives better. And one of the great benefits of being a coach and writing radical candor at the same time and also being a coach and writing just work at the same time, is that it gave me an opportunity to test out ideas that I was that I was putting in the book. I mean, obviously, I tested that myself in my own life and in my own career. But would they work for other people? I hope that people when I write these books, I hope that people will read them and then I hope they'll return to them, because one of the ways that I use my writing and my coaching is something will come up in a coaching session and I will have written about it in the book. And so I'll go to manuscript and I'll copy and paste and I'll send an email. And the person's like, this is exactly what I need. Like, why didn't I notice this when I read it? And because I think very often when we read, we read what's relevant to us at the moment. And very often we have filed away in our mind this thing that may be relevant when we're in a different situation. So I hope the books are fun to read, sort of just sit down and read the book. But I also hope some of the ideas in the books will be helpful to people when they're in the situation that's relevant to that chapter.

Jesse Purewal [00:08:15] Yeah, there are references and what I love about them is that in some ways they're these chronicles of short stories that every time you provide an anecdote, you tell a story about a time when you were in a place and having an interaction and having a conversation. And that makes it actually easier to recall the book's utility as a reference asset, because you owe the time when Kim told me by reading that she wasn't telling the time when Kim told me that story and I wrote, let me go back to that. I find that very, very helpful and actually very distinctive in a business book.

Kim Scott [00:08:48] Yeah. People remember stories and they don't really remember abstractions in the same way. So I was talking to Angela Duckworth, who wrote Grant, who's a writer I really admire, and she was telling me and her research like what helps people change their behavior and very often having a story so that you're hooking into someone's emotions and they remember the story, but putting the story in the context of a framework and then having specific ideas about how people can put the morals of the story into practice in their own life when they're in that situation can be a good way to help people change their behavior.

Jesse Purewal [00:09:29] And then what about on the coaching angle? Obviously, you could make an argument that one could coach hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands, maybe more people through a book. But as you think about the one to one conversations in the relationships, how do you elect whom to spend your time with in a coach Cochi relationship? And maybe what do you take from those conversations knowing that you're ostensibly most of the time giving?

Kim Scott [00:09:56] Believe me, I always get more than I give in these in these relationships. I want to give and give and give, but I find I often learn more than I teach. So first of all, the thing about coaching is I believe for one on one coaching, you can't have more than about five people that you're coaching because. These are relationships and relationships don't scale, you can only have so many invariably when you're coaching someone, you think it's going to be an hour, a week. But when something big happens and in their careers or in their lives or at their companies, you need to spend more time with them. And so you want to make sure that you've saved space in your calendar for people. You want to make sure that you spend one on one time with people who you have a relationship with. And you also want to make sure that you have time when they need you.

Jesse Purewal [00:10:48] There also has to be like you intensely have to look forward to spending the time with that person, because if you're any less than compelled by and looking forward to that moment and you're like, oh, look, if this meeting goes late and it's like, no, that's the wrong orientation.

Kim Scott [00:11:03] Yeah. Yeah. And that's also true for managers and direct reports. I at Google, there was there was a rule of seven, which was that a manager cannot not have fewer than seven direct reports because they wanted to minimize the layers of hierarchy. But I had a rule of five, which is that I would not have more than five. Right. So I violated the rule of seven. And the reason why I like to have only five direct reports is because I find a one on one meeting is very energizing, but you also need to bring your best self to it. And if you have more than one, one on one meeting per day, you're probably not looking forward to it.

Jesse Purewal [00:11:40] That makes sense. Let me ask you about radical candor. So you wrote in my mind the first of two seminal treaties with the second being Just work the new book and you published Radical Candor, those twenty seventeen. Can you briefly state what the thesis of radical candor is and why you decided to both write a book and start an organization, cofounded an organization based on the premise.

Kim Scott [00:12:01] So the basic idea of radical candor is that in order to be a great boss and also a great colleague, in order to do the best work of your life and build the best relationships of your career, you need to be able to do two things. At the same time, you want to care personally about the people who you're working with and at the same time you want to challenge them directly. And when you care and challenge at the same time, that's radical candor. The vast majority of people are actually pretty nice people. So we do remember to show that we care personally. But because we are so concerned about not offending someone or not hurting their feelings, we fail to challenge them directly and that I call ruinous empathy. And so my secret goal, and here's the theory behind radical candor is my theory is that the vast majority of people struggle most of the time with ruinous empathy. And if we can just move some percentage of people from ruinous empathy over to radical candor, then we eliminate the advantage that the jerks have in the world. So unless people are willing to be radically candid, then if a vast majority of people are hanging out over there and ruinous empathy, then the jerks have a real advantage. And I want to get rid of that advantage.

Jesse Purewal [00:13:16] And the movement in your two by two or your north, south and east west plains moving from ruinous empathy over to the right to radical candor. It presumes that we're in or near the right place on the care personally dimension, but it's the challenge directly that we have to do better at and that does pass the sniff test as being the harder thing. I mean, we are conditioned I have two, six and a half year olds. It's like challenge directly is is in no way any part of what they learn. It's what they do to us as parents, no doubt. Yeah. But it's like the care personally gets 96, 97, 98 percent of the attention. It's harder to learn challenge directly simply because it has less play as we grow up. And I'm reflecting on that as a parent, but also as someone who's been in the working world for a couple of decades thinking, boy, I missed some real opportunities to do that better.

Kim Scott [00:14:11] Yeah, I mean, I think that very often we hear some version of if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. From the moment we learn to speak, it's important, obviously, to teach your children to be kind and and not to hurt people. But it's also important not to silence them when they're speaking their truth. And so one of the things I really tried to do was to listen to the feedback I was getting from my kids when they were saying obnoxious things and then to try to help them reframe it. How could you say that in a way that shows that you care about the person you're talking to?

Jesse Purewal [00:14:47] So let's apply this and I want to apply this in the context of debate for my money. The more debate and discussion that go into decisions, the higher quality those decisions have been made. But I worry that in some ways, and particularly with a lot of us going remote and having meetings have to end at a certain time. And there's no sort of conversation to follow the conversation that we're not leaving as much room as we should for the quality of ideas that comes out of the debate. And I'm wondering if you have any mechanisms that we as a professional society might have to rediscover our pension for good debate for the sake of being better bosses as you write about your radical candor, but also for just getting to better outcomes as organizations.

Kim Scott [00:15:32] So I think that that is one thing that can really help to create a culture of debate. One of my favorite things that I learned when I was at Apple was the metaphor of the rock tumbler. So Steve Jobs would tell the story about how when he was a kid, he went over to his neighbor's house and his neighbor told him to go get three or four ordinary stones from the yard. The neighbor put them in this contraption called a rock tumbler, which is basically a tin can on a motor. He threw the rocks into the rock tumbler, turned it on and said, come back in two or three days. And so so when Steve went back to his neighbor's house, he said the you know, there's the rock tumblers going. There's a lot of noise, a lot of friction. The neighbor turns it off and pulls out these three beautiful, polished stones. And he likened Steve Jobs like in debate on a team to a rock tumbler where you put people in. There's a lot of noise, a lot of friction, but they work together to come out with the best ideas. So there's a few a few rules of conduct with the debate. I think one is you want to pull ego out of debate. You want to make sure that to the maximum extent possible, people are not viewing debate like a presidential debate where there's winners and losers, where individuals are winning or losing. But it's a collaborative endeavor to get to the best answer together to the maximum extent possible. You want people bringing data and information, not recommendations, to a debate, because when you bring a recommendation, whether you mean to or not, you hook your ego into that recommendation. And if the group doesn't go with your recommendation, you feel bad. And so at Apple, they really work to focus on data, not recommendations. And then there's always a time in a place where one person has one recommendation and another. And one of the things that was routine at Apple is that people would switch roles. So one of the things that Steve Jobs was aware of might happen to debate at Apple is that everybody would just do what he said because he was who he was. And so he would often insist that people switch roles. So there's a story about the decision to launch. ITunes on the Windows platform, and that was a big decision because Apple had launched the iPod as a way to get people to switch to Macs, the iPod was never going to achieve its success if it stayed on the Mac platform. Only this was a big kind of bet, the company decision. And Steve was very opposed to launching iTunes on the Windows platform and he fought it. But he realized people were just sort of caving. And so then he started arguing the other position and made the iPod team argue the position not to launch. And that was what allowed the debate to go on until they were convinced that it was the right thing to do. And if they hadn't allowed that debate to go on and on and then the iPhone, the iPad, like we wouldn't have these things.

Jesse Purewal [00:18:48] And Kim, do you have any counsel for teams or leaders who are trying to maintain or improve a culture of debate? Where. In this current moment, we often can't sit in the same room, we can't see body language, we can't sort of see shifting and somebody really wanting to build on a point, or sometimes we just literally can't have someone say what they wanted to say when they wanted to say it, because the platform doesn't allow at the same way a single room would. Are there ways that we can manage sort of this new reality and not lose ground or lose time on the importance of debate and getting to the key decisions that are going to underlie this moment?

Kim Scott [00:19:25] One of the things that I have found helpful is to really have a formal big debate meeting and a formal big decision meeting and have these meetings be separate meetings. And so one of the things that we decided to do was to not make any decisions or not have debates in my staff meeting. So what we would do in the staff meeting is we would look at the metrics and then we would decide what are the big debates the team needs to have this week and what are the big decisions? The team collectively and we pushed decisions and debates into the facts. And then I think you teach the people who are leading these meetings to make sure you do things like go around the room. There's an awful lot of research that shows that teams where everyone speaks are more effective than teams where one person dominates the conversation. And so if you're going to have a meeting and one person is dominating, you may as well not have the meeting, actually. So one of the things that I encourage people to do, especially in this new world where we're on Zoomer and Google Hangouts, is there's a bunch of different apps that will record what percentage of time in a meeting you spoke and let you know if you spoke too much or too little. And I think it's really good to know to know whether you're speaking more than your expected share of the time or less. And you don't want to be dictated to by these metrics, but you want to let these metrics inform you about whether you're talking too much or too little.

Jesse Purewal [00:21:02] Can you spent time in a lot of different countries. You spent time in some different industries. So I imagine that your perspective on radical candor is pretty well informed by the diversity of organization types and culture types. But let me ask you about an organization like a military, for example. Are there places where the principles of radical candor need to be applied with even more specificity than maybe in a private sector technology organization? Or is it just a matter of the how like the how might show up differently relative to what the organization was used to?

Kim Scott [00:21:40] It's really interesting. So much of what I learned about management. I learned from Russell, who's a Marine who who worked with me at Google, and then Russ and I, Russ and I started a company together. And one of the first things I learned from Russ was what a good job the military does in teaching people how to care personally about one another. Russ came to me one day and he said, I want to fly my managers from all over the world to Mountain View, California. And it's like one hundred people. It was a lot of people not going to be cheap. And I want to teach them how to have get to know you conversations. And to my shame, my initial reaction was, oh, that's ridiculous. People either know how to do this, you don't. And Russ said, actually, a lot of people do know how to do it, but they don't know that they're supposed to do it at work. And furthermore, a lot of people don't know how to do it. And one of the things I learned in the military is that this is a skill that is not innate. It is a skill that can be taught and should be taught. And and I realized with Russ is very persuasive. I realized he was right. And then I saw what he did with those meetings. It was incredible. It was incredible how much it improved the management. So in my experience, radical candor is about love and truth at the same time, and that is pretty universally human and applies across cultures, across industries, et cetera. I think obviously the way that love and truth manifests for specific individuals and in different cultures and in different industries is going to be different. So you want to make sure that you always remember that radical candor gets measured not at the speaker's mouth, but at the listener's ear. And so you want to make sure you're adjusting so that you're not getting creepily personal when you're trying to care personally and that you're not sort of really upsetting someone with what you think is challenged directly and they think is mean.

Jesse Purewal [00:23:39] So perhaps no better instance of radical candor as a book than writing a book that is radically candid, I would argue, to just work. Your second nonfiction book is just that. So I'll just read the summary here. Just work, get shit done. Fast and fair is about how we can recognize, attack and eliminate workplace injustice and transform our careers and organizations in the process. Well, somebody might say, oh, you responded to the current moment. This is great. This is exactly what we need. But the reality is it wasn't like when Black Lives Matter protests started. You started writing this book. You have actually been working on this for a while. When did you get started? What drove you to write it?

Kim Scott [00:24:22] So I think Just Work was born shortly after Radical Candor came out and I went to a tech company in Silicon Valley and I presented radical candor. And the CEO of the company, who's one of too few black female CEOs in tech or in general in this country, she said, I really like radical candor. I think it's going to help this team be more effective, this company. It's going to really help build a good culture. But she said, I got to tell you, Kim, it's much harder for me to put radical candor into practice than it is for others, because as soon as I offer a little radical candor, I get signed with the angry black woman stereotype. And so I have to do a lot of navigating that other people don't have to do. And I knew this was true. And not only was it true, I also realized in that moment I had known this woman. We had worked together at Google. I had known her for a long time. And I realized in the decade plus a period of time that I had known her. I had never seen her seem even a tiny bit annoyed. I realized that I never noticed and I should have noticed the toll that that must have taken on her. So one of the things I really want to do with just work is identify the things that get in the way of our ability to create the kind of working environments where we can just work. These companies want people to just work. People want to just work. And yet there's all this stuff, these terrible workplace injustices in the way. So how can we get them out of the way so that we can do great work and enjoy doing it.

Jesse Purewal [00:26:03] So I want to ask you about the broader context in which you think just work sets. Are we well off thinking of this as part of the broader movement that's coming out of this moment? Or would it be a mistake to say, yeah, we can solve for a lot more than the workplace specificity with what you've posited in the book?

Kim Scott [00:26:23] I hope, obviously we can solve for a lot more than the workplace. I chose to focus on justice at work because work is where so many of us spend so much of our time. And it's also where where we get paid and and where we get access to the resources we need to create larger social change. I mean, I talk about bias, prejudice, bullying in the workplace. And then I talk about how when you layer power on top of those attitudes and behaviors, you wind up getting discrimination, harassment and physical violations. And then I talk about how the systems that we create in the workplace often create systemic injustice instead of systemically eradicating these problems. And I think it's a little bit easier for me at least to think about how to do it at work, then how to do it in society at large. But I hope that a lot of the lessons that I've learned from watching leaders change things at work or fail to change things at work can be applied more broadly.

Jesse Purewal [00:27:34] You write in the book about a prejudiced belief that you had until you were about 18. Yeah, I have to think that makes you not unlike a lot of other people because it takes until later in our lives to get the kinds of experiences that surface beliefs and challenge assumptions and rewire biases. So my question to you, and maybe this is parent to parent, is what can and should we be doing? What kinds of influences can we bring and behaviors can we model to address the question of bias even earlier in people's lives than when they first arrive at the workforce? Given the importance of the early years in human development, as there any rewiring that we can do that will then have and pay dividends later on in a professional context?

Kim Scott [00:28:19] Yeah, so. So my prejudice, belief I was raised as a Christian Scientist, which is one of very few religions founded by a woman, and she wrote in the book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures that women were sort of closer to God than men. That woman was a higher manifestation of God than man. And and so I just assumed from a very young age that women were superior to men. And somehow it wasn't till I was 18 and I was reading William Wordsworth and I thought, gosh, a man. That maybe they're not such stupid, heartless beasts. I've been led...and when my father read this in the book, he said, gosh, like what about the example that I set and your grandfather set and all of the men in your life and like and also like what about the fact that all the presidents were men and all the leaders? This tendency to sort of dichotomies and degrade goes deep and it starts early. And when when my kids were in kindergarten, they had started at the school and they were talking about their school. It was a public school in Palo Alto. And they said, you know, that was called Aloni. And they said Aloni has a library. So it's the best school in the world. And and so I said to them, well, you know, most most schools in the United States have a library. And they were kind of crestfallen. And I said, you can still why can't you like why can't you enjoy the library just as much as you did before knowing that everybody has that? Like, why do you have to have exclusive access to a library for to feel good about the library? I'm not sure that question really penetrated their minds, but but it's something that I keep coming back to is how can we interrupt these tendencies to dichotomies and degrade and how do we interrupt them early? I remember one time, my son, what I was giving him a bath and he kind of poked his head out of the shower curtain and he said, Mom, so men are smarter than women, right? Believe me, the poor child got an earful that night. But it was really important to to take that question seriously because there are so many messages coming at us that are just nonsensical that we wind up believing, well, this is I mean, shortcutting some of the stuff and knowing what to tackle versus what maybe to wait on, I think is critical.

Jesse Purewal [00:30:57] I mean, I having six and a half year old children. While the election of Kamala Harris to vice president is happening, while Black Lives Matter protests are happening, while there's police brutality happening, all of this is going on at a time just when my kids are old enough to sort of know the questions to ask. And because I'm half Indian, they happen to be a quarter Indian and they're by definition a little bit differently pigmented than some other people around them. And so they're wondering, hey, is it OK for people to go out for that walk, you know, at night? Is it OK for us? And even though you sort of explain no, what's right is right and people are equal and and they see different things unfolding in front of them than what they're being told is right. In some ways, they're like, why hear what you're saying, Dad? But I'm looking at the TV and it's not kind of squaring in my head. So do I believe you around the all people are created equal or do I believe what I'm seeing with my eyes? And it's like this work must never be done.

Kim Scott [00:31:57] Yeah. Yeah. You know, my my daughter goes to an all girls school and they have really developed a really good anti-racism curriculum, I think. And that things that my daughter says when she comes home are sophisticated and at the same time quite basic. And so I'm really glad to see those kinds of curriculums being being rolled out in school. It's helpful and it's helpful to me as a parent to have a partner in the school of helping teach them to ask the right questions and and to become aware of their beliefs and to question their beliefs, because I'm sure I'm sure there's something I believe right now that is wrong and harmful and I'm just not aware of it. And so sort of one of the things I talk about and just work that can be very helpful is to identify sort of bias busters in your life. Who can really who can really point out to you, because I know some people can become enlightened alone, but I'm not one of them. I need other people giving me feedback. That's why I wrote radical candor. And so making sure that you're getting people who will point out the things you say that maybe reflect not just a bias, but actually a prejudice that you're unaware of.

Jesse Purewal [00:33:24] Kim, I know that writing just work was a journey for you, to say the least. There are times when you put on the page some intensely personal and private things that happen to you. And I think the vulnerability that you showcased was very it was very brave and it showed a lot of conviction and just strong writing ability as well. It gives the book a ton of credibility because you're willing to put yourself out there. So thank you for doing that.

Kim Scott [00:33:49] Well, thank you. I will confess I'm slightly terrified for the book to come out.

Jesse Purewal [00:33:54] Well, I want to ask you about this. Alchemy of bravery or authenticity and catharsis, or maybe it's just straight up flow as an author, maybe other elements that came into play, as you wrote, just work. How were you able to bring in so much that happened to you personally?

Kim Scott [00:34:11] It's really interesting. When I started writing the book, I thought I was going to need to talk to a bunch of other people and get their stories because I was sort of like, oh, about a couple of bad experiences. But overall, you know, I haven't suffered injustice in my career. And then I started thinking about it. And as I started building this framework and challenging myself to think of stories, when I maybe experiences things, I suddenly at some point realized, oh, my goodness, I've experienced this junk every hour of every day of my whole career. I have so many stories, like I can't possibly tell them all. And so, you know, it's hard for the author of Radical Candor to admit it. But I was in denial. I was in denial about the things that had happened to me. And so one of the things that I do when I write is I just I turn off my inner critic and I just write as though I'm writing in my journal. And and then I go back and I edit it and I will say that there's definitely a few stories in the book, sort of after I had sent it out where where people asked me, do you really want to tell that story? And it felt a little bit like it wasn't that I had been brave to write it. I had been sort of unaware of how I might feel when it came out. But first time I did trapeze school, it never occurred to me that I would be afraid until I was at the very top of the ladder and it was too late to go back. It was just too scary to go back down to swing off that. And I think a little bit of that happened with this just work. I was like, oh, gosh, you're right. That was that. You know, that is kind of an intense story to share publicly. So I wish I could say it's bravery. It might be a lack of awareness of my own feelings.

Jesse Purewal [00:35:59] Well, I can posit a version of the radical candor framework where instead of the personality dimension, it's share authentically or something. And then instead of the challenge directly, it is become becomes a challenge to the person to apply this. It's like I'm not telling you this story just to get it off my chest. I'm telling it to you so that you know, that you sort of acknowledge if it's happening to this person, it's probably happening to other people. And then there's a call to action for this person to recognize it and do something about it.

Kim Scott [00:36:30] Yeah, I think also part of writing for me is my way of challenging myself, to be honest with myself. And there was a lot of writing this book that that was me challenging myself to become more aware of the things I had done to other people and also the things that had happened to me. I say in the beginning of the book, you know, I hate to think of myself as a victim, but even less do I want to think of myself as a perpetrator. And part of writing this book was coming to grips with the times when I was a victim and also the times when I was a perpetrator trying to help identify like what are the tools that I could have had at my disposal that would have made it easier for me to name what was happening earlier so that I could change it.

Jesse Purewal [00:37:16] OK, Kim, I want to move into our lightning round for some rapid fire questions. Are you ready?

Kim Scott [00:37:22] I'm ready.

Jesse Purewal [00:37:24] OK, most magical thing about being a parent of twins.

Kim Scott [00:37:29] You know, the most magical thing about being a parent of twins is that feeling when you have one in each arm and their heads are on your shoulder and you just feel like everything is right with the world.

Jesse Purewal [00:37:42] Favorite one of your published or unpublished novels?

Kim Scott [00:37:46] The first one I ever wrote, which is called The Measurement Problem, which is sort of a lighthearted critique of capitalism explored through a romance.

Jesse Purewal [00:37:56] First, three words that come to mind when you are describing Ryan Smith.

Kim Scott [00:38:00] He builds trust. He builds trust.

Jesse Purewal [00:38:03] Most important lesson, 20-20 taught you.

Kim Scott [00:38:06] That I love staying at home and should travel less.

Jesse Purewal [00:38:11] Somebody you've never gotten to meet that you would absolutely love to.

Kim Scott [00:38:16] I'm going to transfer this wish to my daughter. My daughter would love to meet Billy Eilish. And if I could if I could arrange one meeting for anyone, I would arrange a meeting for my daughter with Billy Eilish.

Jesse Purewal [00:38:29] All right. We're going to tag Billy's accounts on all the socials here. And then lastly, what should we not be surprised to see? Kim Scott up to five years from now?

Kim Scott [00:38:39] Writing another book.

Jesse Purewal [00:38:41] Nice. So, Kim Scott, thank you. Thank you for joining us. Your incredible human being, a great writer. You are the author of Radical Candor. Your new book is called Just Work. Kim, can people just find just work wherever they get their books, wherever they get their books, just work will be there and please preorder it.

Kim Scott [00:39:01] Preorders really matter, so buy copies of it. I would be deeply grateful.

Jesse Purewal [00:39:06] All right. Well, thank you for the wisdom and the time in the conversation and my deepest gratitude. I appreciate you be well.

Kim Scott [00:39:13] Thank you, Bewell.

Jesse Purewal [00:39:20] Big thanks to Kim for coming on the show today and talking to me about how in some sense she became what she always was, as I reflected on the conversation, I thought of the title of a book of another incredible writer, Michelle Obama, becoming I think Kim's story is really one of becoming of all the things she's done, coaching leading organizations, building companies.

Jesse Purewal [00:39:47] It's writing that she puts at the center of her quote, still makes me laugh. My business career was sort of a crazy plot to subsidize my novel writing habit. She snuck away moments to write in her journal as a young girl and now as an executive, a coach, a mother, a wife and more. She's sneaking away time to be and to become one of the best business authors of our generation. I have to admit that this interview was a bit of a milestone for me, Kim's writing is the envy of any good storyteller. And in the brand world where I come from, there are a lot of really good storytellers. So there was plenty of envy and admiration to go around to connect with Kim and hear about how and why she writes was a real privilege. It really was my gratitude to Russell Crowe for making it happen. And I so appreciate you, Kim, and hope to have you back on the show. For this week's building block, I'd like you to dwell on the question of what skill or activity or habit is essentially you and in the spirit of Kim Scott, write about what it is and why it's essentially you, maybe you're a surfer and it's not just your way of staying in shape and in balance, but of completely escaping the terra firma that anchors you to the day to day and inspires you to think of each day anew. Maybe like Kim, you're a writer and you have your own ways and tools of using the written word to relax, reflect or reason with yourself. Or it could be art, music, building and repair or really anything at all. Just take five or 10 minutes and write out what it is about this skill or activity or habit that's absolutely essential to you and give yourself gratitude for having discovered it and for living it. If you can't put your finger on anything specific, talk to two or three people who know you well and see if they can help you discover something hidden in plain sight or find a passion that you can make your own. If you want some help getting started, check out the show notes right here in the app. You're listening to this episode on or over on our website, Breakthru Builders Dotcom, that's Breakthru hyphen builders dot com. Hit me up through the website and share some of your reflections. I'd love to hear from you. Take care, breakthrough builders and bewell.

Jesse Purewal [00:42:05] Thanks so much for listening to Breakthrough Builders. You can subscribe to the show wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed the show, I'd be grateful if you could spread the word by leaving a rating and a review. It really does help other listeners find us. And please tell your friends. Breakthrough Builders is a production of the industries team at Qualtrics. The show is written and hosted by me, Jesse Purewal. Mastering by Nate Crenshaw. Post-production and music by Clean Cuts Audio, part of the Three Seas Collective. Design by Baron Santiago and Vansuka Chindavijak. Website by Gregory Hedon and photography by Christy Hemm Klok. Special thanks to the entire Breakthrough Builders crew at Qualtrics, including Ali Rohani, Jeremy Smith, John Johnson and Kylan Lundeen.

Season 2Jesse Purewalkim scott, leadership, just work, diversity, executive coaching, cognitive biases, inclusion, management, equity, radical candor