How do you build a startup team that grows with you—right from your first hire? Startup founders have a lot on their plates—but one of the most important things they can’t afford to neglect is how they build and lead their early team. Kim talks with executive coach and author Julia Austin about one of the most overlooked—but crucial—skills for founders: setting clear expectations and providing constructive feedback early and often.
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Drawing from Julia’s book After the Idea, they cover how early hires shape company culture, why feedback systems matter from day one, and how to align as a team to create realistic, shared goals. Founders, joiners, and anyone curious about startup life will find valuable advice on leading with clarity, compassion, and purpose—because building a business starts with building relationships.
[00:00:00] Kim Scott: Welcome. I'm here with my friend Julia Austin, who has just published a fantastic book called After The Idea, and this is really sort of some truth, some Radical Candor about what it's like to be an entrepreneur, and to take a glimmer in your eye and turn it into a reality in the world. So welcome Julia.
[00:00:27] Julia Austin: Thank you so much, Kim.
[00:00:28] Kim Scott: It, it is great to be here. You know, you and I first met, I don't know if you remember this, but I was doing a Radical Candor talk for you and your team, and there was a lineup of people who are asking questions, but I was joining over Zoom.
[00:00:45] Julia Austin: I remember that.
[00:00:45] Kim Scott: And my daughter walked in behind me and I didn't recognize my own daughter, and I was like, gosh, they're hiring people that seem way too young.
[00:00:57] Julia Austin: So that was a long time ago.
[00:00:59] Kim Scott: My daughter was like 12 at the time.
[00:01:01] Julia Austin: Yeah. So funny.
[00:01:02] Kim Scott: Anyway, welcome. It's been a pleasure to work with you on and off again ever since.
[00:01:08] Julia Austin: Likewise.
[00:01:09] Kim Scott: Why don't you start by telling folks why you wrote the book and why you chose to do this labor of love, which writing a book always is.
[00:01:18] Julia Austin: Sure is. Sure is. Yeah. So I've been in the startup industry for almost three decades, which is frightening to say out loud, but I've been doing this a long time, and as a joiner versus as a founder. But I'm teaching a course for many years at Harvard Business School called Startup Up Operations, which is for entrepreneurs who are building real businesses and were missing the sort of secret ingredients of everything it takes beyond that idea, beyond fundraising. What does it really take, right? To do your finances and your legal, and your marketing and all those things. And frequently, I was hearing from people who don't have the privilege to go to that university. I wish I could take your course or I wish you could do things outside of the classroom.
[00:01:57] And so I said maybe that should be a book. So I decided to put it into a book and democratize my course as I say. Make it available to everybody. I really was trying to be thoughtful about the book being for an audience that I don't have to assume has all the background or other prerequisite courses that my students had. So it was very digestible and useful. That was my ultimate goal, is I want you to be able to read this book front to back, to understand everything that will go into starting a company. Or maybe you're already in it and you're trying to figure out, is this normal? But also for the joiner, for the investor, for anybody sort of in the thick of it who just wants to understand how are we supposed to do all this? And so that's what the book has achieved.
[00:02:36] Kim Scott: Awesome. Well, and there's so many people out there who want to be entrepreneurs, but they don't know if they want to do the things that entrepreneurs really have to do. Or they want to join a small startup, but do they wanna do what they're gonna have to wind up doing. So I think one of the things I really like about your book is you talk a lot about, not only raising money and the product, but the people side of things. So, so tell me a little bit why, from your perspective is hiring the right people and setting expectations and creating a culture of feedback, why is that so important with your early hires when you're just learning?
[00:03:15] Julia Austin: So I've observed, and I've experienced myself firsthand, that the first 10 to 15 employees really set the culture for the company. And in the beginning, we don't always know what we're doing or where we're going and whether to pivot or who knows how much we're gonna scale. It's all big mystery. But humans that are gonna be involved in that journey are really gonna set the tone for the company. Too often we're moving so fast, we're pivoting, we're doing all these things, we're raising capital that we haven't really put the thought into who are these people and how are we going to work together in a cohesive way. I call it the gestalt of the team, right? To really build magical things. And when we don't do that, we end up spending, our leaders, our founders, spend a lot of time fixing, starting over, just dealing with a lot of stuff that they would rather not be dealing with, which I think can be avoidable if you really put some thought into it.
[00:04:08] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. So I think there's, from my perspective anyway, two aspects to this. One aspect is who you hire, or, one of the hardest lessons that I learned was that it didn't really matter that I had good expectations and that I was, you know, wanted to be a good person, had excellent intentions. What mattered, and it also didn't matter that the original people who I hired at my startup also were good people with good intentions, wanted to do the right thing, not only wanted to be successful, but they really cared about building a good company, a good and great company. And yes, some bad things happened at that company, and I think the thing that I didn't understand till much later is that your job when you're starting a company is not only to build a great product and build a successful business and to hire good people, but also to build systems that are gonna create good incentives so that good people stay good, right? Because if you wind up creating a system where, I mean, one of the mistakes I made was I thought it was really important that I maintain control of the company. Because I didn't want my investors to control me. But what I didn't stop to think about was that it was important for me to create checks and balances on my power and also on my investors' power, which meant I needed to give more power to range of loyal employees. So what do you think about that? I mean, I'm sure you talked to a lot of people about a lot of different products, but what about thinking about your company as the most important product you're building.
[00:05:53] Julia Austin: It's so important to think, I'm building a whole thing. I'm not just building this widget that I have to go and sell, right? Yeah, right. And if the people with all their good intentions and all those other things are not set up for success with those systems, whether it's feedback systems or communication systems, or road mapping or whatever it is that you're doing, then no matter how great they are, they're not gonna be able to move forward. Well, I think that that's, it's really, really common. I've worked with businesses where all the right ingredients, I'll use DigitalOcean as an example. You know, I was there, I think that's actually where you,
[00:06:26] Kim Scott: That's where we met.
[00:06:26] Julia Austin: And you know, this is a company that was 4 years old growing rapidly, 150 people in 4 years and was insane. They raised a ton of money and the humans were so good. Like the, you know,
[00:06:37] Kim Scott: They were good people.
[00:06:39] Julia Austin: Yeah. Like smart and good and scrappy and all the things that you really want in a startup. But honestly, and, and I'm saying something they'd all agree, really directionalist, they were really like, what do we build? Uh, we're becoming departments. We're no longer, it happens really fast. If a company does well, all of a sudden you went from like 10 people sitting in a WeWork, you know, just chatting with each other at the same desk or all on Zoom together. To all of a sudden, I'm navigating departments and people and like how did that happen? But even in smaller stage businesses with 20 people, that can be the same case, right? Where you go from 3 people to 20 and how do we do one-on-ones and have team meetings and make sure we spend, if we're all remote, that we spend time in person together and build relationships so that we're not just two dimensional screens to each other. All the things matter. And I think those are things that it's easy for founders especially, or early the first hires to not appreciate, we've lost touch with each other, or we don't really know how to give each other feedback or reset if we pivoted or whatever it is we're doing and making sure that that's all flowing.
[00:07:45] Kim Scott: And I think even when you get it right, so let's say you, you're a founder and, or a co-founder and you've hired your first 10 people. You've hired really well with each of those 10, right? So you have, you're now, you know, 10, 11, 12 people, and you all know each other. You trust each other, everything's going great. As a result, you're successful. And now you grow to 40 people.
[00:08:13] Julia Austin: Yeah.
[00:08:14] Kim Scott: Even just, and 40 people's not that many. A sociologists would tell you 40 people ought to be able to get stuff done without a whole lot of systems and process. But even then, it starts to break down. Like I remember when Juice, one of my early startups hit about 40 people. There was this moment where everyone who reported directly to me, and therefore was in my staff meeting, all of them were annoyed that my staff meeting was taking too long and they wish they didn't have to be there. They wished that they were more efficient. And everybody who is not there felt sad and left out. And it was like, this is the worst of all worlds. So how do you, as you start to grow, make sure that you can get big without feeling big, without falling afraid of bureaucratic slowness?
[00:09:04] Julia Austin: Well, even in that example, which I love, is this idea of setting the expectations early. Hey, good for us. If we, if we go from 10 to 40 in the next year or 18 months, whatever it is, things are gonna change, right? There will probably be meetings you will no longer get to go to. You might not know what our, you know, a ARR is on a more like daily basis than you knew before. I might have to hire someone over you because, you're awesome, but we're at a point now where we need someone who's seen the movie before to do the thing, because I don't have time for you to, you will, you'll eventually get there, but I just don't know if I will. But that's good news for us. Like that means we're doing really well, which means you're actually worth money and all these other things. And I think that's so powerful to say to a new employee or early employee, like the win for us is we get that big, that we have this problem. And we actually have to deal with that, but also understand, I call it founder separation anxiety, right? Where like, let's get ahead of that and anticipate that. And what will that look like? And how will we keep people informed? And where will the lines be where there'll be things that we might not be able to be as transparent about, that we cared about? And what are the things we are going to be transparent about no matter what, right? Did great at that. Every company, all company meetings, we shared the numbers with everyone and we're same thing, right? I mean, there, there was a question, do we wanna make that very transparent so everyone knows how we're doing without everyone sitting in fear like, I don't know what's going on. And the flip side is like, we can also consciously say, let's make sure we don't get stuck in meeting hell, and look at the calendars once in a while and make sure that we're not like.
[00:10:39] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah. I think what, there was one moment in my career when I hired and there was, there was this big debate like, are you gonna promote from within or are you gonna hire expertise from outside? And we really needed some expertise from the outside at this point in time. I knew this was gonna be very unpopular with people. The decision, even if they agreed, no matter what I said, it feels bad to get layered, you know? And it's not fun to educate a new boss. And there were a couple of things that I did that I think helped. So I wonder, I wonder what you've advised people. One was, I said to people, we're gonna do this, but my commitment to you is that we're gonna hire people who you would rather work for than work for me. I put a check on my own power, which is, I didn't get to decide who this, that people had to interview their boss.
[00:11:35] So I think that, and in fact, I remember I hired one person I was nervous about, you know, I wanted to make sure I was creating space for, and somebody came in and they were like, you did it. I'd much rather work for that person than for you. I'm like, yes. We're, we've succeeded together, we found the person. And so sometimes just calling it out and making a joke about it can be helpful. But also making sure that people, when people feel like decisions are being made that are gonna impact them, that they have no voice in, that's when the angst really can set in. And so if you figure out a way to make sure that, you know, I'm not gonna be the dictator, you're not gonna be the dictator, but we're gonna make this decision together, that can help.
[00:12:18] Julia Austin: Yeah, I agree. I like to always refer to Brene Brown's painting then. And this, let's sit down first and get an alignment and paint down what would great look like. It can be tricky if you're at an early stage company where the people who are working for you don't know what good looks like 'cause they've never had it. I, I don't know what a great head of product is. I never had one before, so I have no idea. So we can talk through some scenarios and say, okay, well imagine this person was doing this instead of me. What would you want from them? And that's our, so I think that's a great way to start of like, let's just at least get alignment and imagine the future when I'm not doing this every day, which is both saying, hey, PS doing this every day, but also be part of the process and engage them. I think that really helps. I want you to interview people that you love and hopefully you come back. And I have a founder who does fuck yes or fuck no, that's it. There's no control. Basically like I want you to say like, I will quit if you don't hire this person. Or I will quit if you do.
[00:13:19] Kim Scott: Yeah. And you know, Google did that for a long time. I mean, I left a long time ago now in 2010, but I remember I was there probably, this was probably like 2009. There was someone who had interviewed who one of the founders really wanted to hire, and I was a F no on that person. I knew, I knew the person. And I felt I, I was given the opportunity to interview the person and to write that, and, you know, and, and it was, they listened. It was, it felt, that felt good, you know?
[00:13:55] Julia Austin: Yeah. And that's, I think at the end of the day, what employees want, right? They wanna feel heard and listened to. But I also think it's important that it is not all democratic. To my earlier point, like they don't always know.
[00:14:06] Kim Scott: And, and I'd, like also the founder, like another one of my favorite stories from Google is Larry and Sergei had to hire a head of sales, but they had no idea what a head of sales would do. Like they, they, they didn't know, like, they're like, this is hard. I remember when I was at Juice, I had to hire a head of product. I had no idea what product management even was. Like, and I remember I wound up hiring somebody who was fantastic, Jared Smith. But I remember saying, can you explain to me what the job is? And then can you tell me what I should be asking you? And that was sort of embarrassing.
[00:14:47] Julia Austin: But that's fun. How they answered gave you a sense of what it'd be like to work with them.
[00:14:51] Kim Scott: Yeah, and he explained it very well. I was like, oh, now I know why we need a product manager. I didn't know before. Somebody said I should hire a product manager, but I didn't even know what that meant. So let's talk a little bit about expectation setting. One of the things you say in the book is, expectation setting is the cheapest most powerful management tool founders have and the most underused. So say more about that.
[00:15:26] Julia Austin: Yeah, so when I look at the sort of broad scope of all the founders that I've worked with over the years, oftentimes the things they're wringing their hands over when I'm talking with them of like, I don't know. They might be doing the job. They might not be. I'm not sure I really like them. They're loyal, but I'm not sure what product management, whatever it is. Or I'm seeing what's happening. They're not really doing the job that I hired them for. When I dig in a little bit deeper, I realize they never really took the time to take a step back and say, we don't know what job we're hiring for. I don't really know what product management is, or I think this is a classic one, if I had a nickel for how many marketing people get hired and everyone thinks I need a marketer.
[00:16:05] Kim Scott: I mean, we're guilty at Radical Candor. We keep saying we need marketing and then we didn't hire somebody because we realized all of us who currently work there had a different, we meant something different when we said we need marketing.
[00:16:19] Julia Austin: A hundred percent. And marketing, which is, can be brand, it can be social media, it can be copy, it can be product marketing. It can be so many different things. And so when we can take a step back and we can say, hey, we think marketing is a thing we could be better at, and we can set an expectation with a candidate, we don't know if you're gonna be the right hire for us. We don't even know what work is here, right? Or right now for the product we're building your background lines up a lot with what we wanna do, but we could pivot. And you may roll with that. I've been at companies, my job changed like 5 times depending on where we were going as a business. And that might be so much fun for you, to wing it and say, okay, you want me to brand, I'll do brand, okay. I'm gonna go do so, whatever. But you might not.
[00:17:08] Kim Scott: Yeah. But it was clear also, I imagine like,
[00:17:11] Julia Austin: A hundred percent.
[00:17:12] Kim Scott: Yeah. As long as you, as long as the pivot is clear, there's a limit to how many times you can pivot.
[00:17:18] Julia Austin: For sure. But as a company evolves, I mean, I use Akamai as an example, and we talk about it in the book a little bit. When they hired me, they were like, we just need to get it organized. Like, I don't know, what should we call you? And I was like, I don't know. And they're like, we'll call you release manager. And you know, I was like, release manager, meets product manager, meets program manager. I don't know. But it was like that was fun for me and I love that they were like, we don't even know what this is. We just know we need a little something you like coach. I felt like secure in knowing they don't know. But also that we were all comfortable with evolution and just like, let's see what happens. And if you do work here, we'll figure it out.
[00:17:52] Kim Scott: And I think that's why some kind of system of goal setting, where the employees say what their goals are not the founder, is really important. If you have a bottoms up goal setting system, it doesn't have to be like a complicated system, it can just be a matter of writing them down and looking at them once a week on a shared document. But if everybody knows what other people's goals are and whether they're achieving them or not achieving them, that helps people know whether they're winning or losing. We hired a summer intern and he said to me the other day, he is like, I don't know whether, I mean, I'm getting feedback, but I still had this uneasy feeling that I'm not doing well. And I felt bad. I was like, we failed in expectations setting in this case. But I didn't have time to tell him what his, and I was like, write down what you could achieve that would make you feel successful. And what you're gonna do to achieve those things. And voila. And he's like, oh, great idea. So expectation setting can be bottoms up. It doesn't have to be founder down.
[00:19:01] Julia Austin: For sure. In fact, I always recommend the 30, the classic, 30 60, 90 day, when someone's starting, you can say like, what do you think you're gonna be doing in your first 30, 60, 90 days?
[00:19:11] Kim Scott: The answer in the first 30, even in a startup, should be listen.
[00:19:15] Julia Austin: If, if we spend the first 30 days just understanding how did we get here? For sure. Don't assume.
[00:19:21] Kim Scott: Get to know people, get understand what, you know, above all no harm. And that means you gotta figure out why the company is where it is right now.
[00:19:31] Julia Austin: Totally. And then co-create them. So start maybe you ask the employees like, what do you think it looks like? And then let's sit down and co-create something that, that we can get aligned on and then feel good about it, to your point. But also because it's a startup, after 30 days, who knows what it's gonna look like? We'll probably have to revisit it. Because you're gonna learn a lot and you're gonna see a lot. You may have made some new decisions during that time.
[00:19:53] Kim Scott: And I think as things change, just explicitly crossing off, that was the goal, and I'm gonna cross that goal off and replace it with another one. And that's okay. It doesn't mean you've failed. It means you're explicitly pivoting instead of implicitly pivoting and forgetting why you're there. Danielle has a great question. Danielle asks, what about someone who never seems happy with the system, despite a founder trying their best to make changes and accommodate, like what do you do with those people who it feels like you can never win with them?
[00:20:32] Julia Austin: Yeah, well, it's sort of a two part element to that. First thing is asking yourselves, am I at all, and this is from Jerry Colonna's classic line, how am I complicit? So I always start with like, did I, was I transparent enough? Did I set the right goals with them or co-create things? Did we just be introspective first? Like is there anything that I could have done to set this person up better for success? But if the answer is I've done all the things and, and I'm pretty sure I've tried to bend over backwards for this person, then the real question is, are they a right fit? I think one of the hardest things that founders struggle with, in early stage companies, struggle with is you're not gonna get it .Right and sometimes you just don't have time to do the coaching and the performance management and all the things that you wanna do. Now, I'm not saying like fire everyone, but I'm saying you have to be honest with yourself. Have I done everything I can do to really set this person up for success? But they, is this what lights them up? Sometimes, to your earlier point, they like the idea of the glamor of going to a startup or the possibility of a big financial upside. They don't really understand or appreciate this is like scrappy times.
[00:21:38] Kim Scott: Yeah, we gotta put the furniture together tonight, after.
[00:21:41] Julia Austin: And we might not have all the screws and no instructions, like what happens. And so you just have to, you know, sort of, that's a good time for that kind of conversation, which is, you know, what, what were you hoping to achieve here? Can you reach your goals? Can you self-actualize? And get what you need here. Is this really where you wanna be? The other piece of this is also role. A lot of times people come in thinking, that's what I wanna do. I wanna do product management.
[00:22:06] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:22:06] Julia Austin: They're a former engineer. And they're like, but I really wanna code. And they're like looking at, I think that conversation, 'cause it could feel like you're trying to fit them into a role that's not really the right role for that.
[00:22:14] Kim Scott: Yeah. I think also there are people who are sort of, they're just grouchy and I think it's useful to have a few at yours in every company, actually. Not everybody has to be happy all the time. The person who disagrees, who's skeptical, may be a huge, of huge value. And you don't wanna, you don't wanna undo that.
[00:22:38] Julia Austin: Yeah. I had a coaching session with one of my clients this week, and she said that her leader, big leader she hired about a year ago, a C-suite leader, was always the contrarian in the room. And I said, so is that a bad thing? Let's talk about that. You know, is it disruptive? Does it bring the whole team down? Is it an Eeyore situation, or is it just giving a new perspective on how to think about things? And at the end of the day, it's not disruptive, and everybody's like, well, that's an interesting way of thinking about it. She really took a step back and she said, yeah, no, it's not. I mean, it's, he's definitely that guy in the room.
[00:23:10] Kim Scott: Yeah. It's good to have that person sometimes.
[00:23:14] Julia Austin: As long as they're not toxic. I think there's a,
[00:23:15] Kim Scott: Yeah, as long as they're not discouraging other people from doing their best work.
[00:23:20] Julia Austin: That's right.
[00:23:21] Kim Scott: But I think it's important to realize that a successful company is gonna have a lot of different kind of personalities, and part of your goal as a leader of the company is to create a situation where different kind of working styles can work together.
[00:23:35] Julia Austin: Yeah, I think that's really important. I like the, find the add, who's additive.
[00:23:38] Kim Scott: Yeah. Culture add is really important.
[00:23:40] Julia Austin: And just that variety is important. This person isn't like me or they think differently than me they're a contrarian once in a while, could be just the spice you need to really.
[00:23:49] Kim Scott: Yeah. So what are some examples from startups you've advised? Like what specific practical, tactical suggestions do you offer people for making sure that expectations are clear?
[00:24:05] Julia Austin: Yeah, so I think to going back to your point about pivoting and pivoting too much, I think even just being honest in the early stages of the business, this is what we're going for, this is what our goals would be, measurable goals, that, that we have that would tell us we're actually getting some traction or getting product ahead. It sets the expectation, not only, we're building to solve this problem, but like here's how we'll know if we're actually solving it. I think that's really important 'cause everyone wants to know like, what is good, right? Are we hitting our goal and what are the repercussions? And if we're not doing well, what's the plan, right? Like, what comes next? It could be as simple as just being honest. We have no idea. We have some other ideas, but right now this is where we're focused and with some timeline, like we're gonna try this for the next two months and this is what we're gonna see in terms of customer traction or units sold, or whatever it is that you're trying to achieve in the early days.
[00:24:58] Uh, and then go from there. I think the other thing is in terms of expectations of growth of the business, I've seen different founders and there's been the slow growth, we don't care about a ARR right now. We're really want traction. We really wanna make sure that we're building the right product that meets the right demand for this particular type of customer. And then will worry about rocket ship growth at some point. Is the companies are like, we're gonna raise our series B in the next two years and, and we're gonna go IPO before you know it and, and if that's who you are, that's great. But like setting the next expectation with your employees in terms of how you imagine this business growing and scaling. Also can temper expectations of urgency, and how am I gonna be working with other people if we're gonna kind of grow that fast. And it just gives you a better sense of what you just signed up for.
[00:25:44] Kim Scott: Yeah. Uh, uh, a conversation you and I had early on that has really struck with, stuck with me is that it's okay not to grow, not to grow as fast as venture capitalists, but don't raise venture capital money if you don't wanna grow that fast. 'Cause you're gonna come under a tremendous amount of pressure. One of the things that Jason, my co-founder, and I were very clear with each other about upfront was, we don't want to raise money. We wanna grow at a sustainable, and there's nothing wrong with having a profitable business that's not growing 30% a quarter. That is success.
[00:26:24] Julia Austin: And alignment on that is important, right? You and your co-founder were aligned on that. And I see too many co-founders, I actually share this story in, in the book, a former student of mine were, they were very aligned on what problem they were solving and who they were solving it for. Uh, but they had not talked about what is, other than potentially a number, you know, everyone has like the number, what would that number look like for them to check out and say I'm done. But they hadn't really talked about the dynamics of that, and they ended up 2 years into the business getting an offer to be acquired. And what's fascinating is my student was like, hell yeah, that sounds great. The number was fine. He had another business idea he had in mind anyway that he was thinking about going after, built something. His co-founder was kinda like, meh. I really like having like this little business that we run, and I don't really care about the money and I don't wanna go work for some big company who's gonna buy it. I don't have an idea that I wanna go into.
[00:27:19] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. That's hard.
[00:27:21] Julia Austin: It was really hard for them. Fortunately, they're good friends and they worked it out. They did not take the deal. They waited for something else to come along, but they didn't have that expectation setting conversation.
[00:27:30] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. And there's gonna be moments where you're like, you realize, I think recently Jason and I have seen, oh, this business can grow faster, like, and that could be interesting. There's new stuff we could do. So sometimes it changes. Being explicit about those changes I think is really important.
[00:27:47] Julia Austin: I'm glad you said that though, because I see too many founders who think the goal is to raise the money.
[00:27:53] Kim Scott: Our goal was very explicitly not to raise the money, to make the money. To grow a profitable business.
[00:27:59] Julia Austin: I have founders, I'll ask them, well, so why do you wanna be a founder? And they'll, or an entrepreneur, and they'll say, 'cause I really wanna be my own boss. And I'll say, are you planning on raising capital? They'll say, no, of course.
[00:28:10] Kim Scott: Yeah. Then you're not your own boss. Then you're, you know, at the mercy of the market. But that's okay. I mean, I think that took me a while to realize this, but I didn't need power and control to enjoy my career. And in fact, when I did have too much power and control, that was when I really screwed up. I know that's not conventional wisdom, but for what it's worth, that's what I think. I really like what you said about teaching your founders to set expectations. What about feedback? I mean, you know what Radical Candor is caring personally and challenging directly, but how do you think about feedback and creating a culture of feedback? Why is that so important for founders?
[00:28:53] Julia Austin: Yeah, so there's a assumption founders make that everybody's in their brains and knows everything that's going on. Because they're a million with, and nobody understands what's happening or why, you know, doing those things. You mentioned earlier about the ambiguity that can happen when you're not getting feedback and that creates an amygdala response. It's a natural response. Fight or flight. I don't know what's happening, so I'm gonna make up a story.
[00:29:15] Kim Scott: Yeah. Reason why I'm happy story.
[00:29:17] Julia Austin: Right. So the reason my boss all of a sudden wants to do one-on-ones with me must be because I'm not performing well and I'm in trouble. But it's kind of amazing when you flip it and say, hey y'all, I've decided I'm gonna do one-on-ones with each of you every week now, or every other week, or whatever. It's just to touch base and make sure we're all good. That, that responds off immediately that fear of like, what am I doing wrong? So I think it's some, like, it's such a small tweak, but just saying, hey, I'm changing my behavior. Uh, or we're gonna do something differently now, just calms everybody down. So I think that.
[00:29:50] Kim Scott: Explaining why you're doing what you're doing and being open to feedback that, you know, either what you're doing is wrong or your reasons for doing it are wrong is really important. Yeah. Bruce has a really good question. Bruce said, what would you suggest for a senior leader in a growing slash scaling company whose founders have unrealistic expectations about what's achievable? Too much, too fast and too early. The, the reality distortion field.
[00:30:18] Julia Austin: That's right. Oh, I know those founders. So I've worked for those founders. So, cool. That means they're really ambitious and they have big vision for the business. So I think you have to respect that a lot of ways. I think the best thing that you can do is, is on the feedback side, and if you have that caring relationship where you can have that sit down conversation, say, I hear you. And I used to do this all the time with Danny at Akamai, we would fight ruthlessly. He was CTO, I was in engineering, and he would come back from some big meeting with David Filo at Yahoo, and would be like, we have to go all together. I'm like, okay, I hear you. But let me show you what's on our plate right now.
[00:30:53] Kim Scott: What are we gonna take off our plate?
[00:30:55] Julia Austin: Right, exactly. So I had an old boss, one of my first jobs, who always used to say, facts are friendly. So I think instead of arguing, or you're crazy, you're unrealistic. Presenting a, okay, I hear you. I understand how that lines up with our vision or I don't. Like tell me if that gets us there. Just presenting it in that very factual, straightforward way I think can help founders kinda get back to reality a little bit of like, oh, okay, I got you.
[00:31:18] Kim Scott: There was one founder I coached, and I did a 360, and what people said they wanted from him was radical reality. This is a super successful founder, but it frustrated people and I think what frustrated people was not that he was ambitious and he was pushing them. They felt like they couldn't push back, and that was what he had to learn how to do. Not to lower his expectations, but how to make it easier for people to tell him, you know, if we're gonna do this, we're not gonna do that, because he was fine not doing things. In fact, when I was at Apple, I used to teach this course called, Saying No In a Way That Strengthens Your Relationships.
[00:32:02] Julia Austin: Oh, I love it. Yeah, it's interesting. One of the things that I have to remind founders regularly is you underestimate this big hat that you're wearing, right? And you don't realize how intimidating you are, even if you're like the nicest, most laid back founder ever. And people are like, oh, you know, he, he just, or she just rolled their eyes at me in this meeting. And it could be they just read a text message and it didn't occur to you that other people were watching your every move. I always encourage founders to say like, I'm gonna have regular open office hours. I'm not gonna direct you or give, anybody can meet with me, but I'm the, I wanna hear your ideas. I'm not gonna commit to anything. I'm not gonna change a roadmap and piss everybody off if I do it, but I'm open and available.
[00:32:44] No judgment zone. Just like come talk to me, can start to bring those barriers down a little bit. Because I do think what happens is, especially as a business is starting to scale, like, Bruce, in your example, is they lose touch with what's happening. I call it the adminisphere, you know, all of a sudden up here and they're fundraising and they're talking to the board and they're doing sales and they forget that machine is going, hello. You know, so finding whether it's town halls, lunch and learns, any opportunity to just kind of demystify what's happening and give people a chance to give casual feedback, and then on the harder things when you're really being pushed in the wrong direction, it's just presenting them with real facts to work on. Just pushing.
[00:33:24] Kim Scott: Yeah. There was one CEO who I was coaching, and he said that somebody told him that he was not approachable. He said, you know, throughout the day you look like you have the weight of the world on your shoulders, and you're racing from one thing to another, and I wanna figure out how to have this 2 minute conversation with you, but those 2 minutes are not available to me. Like, what do I do? And he felt terrible. This was not who he wanted to be as a leader. He said, what do I do? Like, and so we talked about it and one of the things he started doing was blocking 2 hours a week to just wander around and chat with people who he hadn't talked to in the last couple of weeks.
[00:34:08] And just to ask people, you know, what's going on? One of the things I did, this only works up to about 60 people. I used to try to call everyone in the company at least once a month for 10 minutes and say, what's going on? Anything's fair game, furniture to strategy. And so I would book little chunks of time in my calendar to make sure I was keeping in touch with what was going on three levels deep. Once you get beyond that, what I found helpful was to have skip level meetings. Or speak truth to power meetings. So with each of my direct reports, I'd meet with their direct reports, you know, probably twice a year and say, you know what could so and so do to be a better leader.
[00:34:55] Julia Austin: Yeah. I think the other thing I love is finding time to build relationships with your organization, not just your directs, but everybody out of the office or if you're on Zoom, you know, getting everybody in person, to really build connections that allow for those harder conversations. I can tell you from all three businesses that I worked in, Akamai, VMware, and DigitalOcean, those moments, doing a fun game in a field with somebody or just having a beer or whatever with people, you would never interact with otherwise, VMware, we used to do a big innovation conference every year for all of engineering at, well, not all of, because we got pretty big, but like 1400 people would come in from everywhere, right? And it was like a giant science fair for 2 and a half days was amazing. So much fun. Highlight of my year every year. But one of the best things that we did after, like after the day of presenting ideas and having all sorts of fun worky kind of things, there would be poker games over here and there would be people playing cards, you know, or, or darts over each other and whatever. And those were like, you just wander around and sit down. You get to know people who work in your organization, who just, who are acting as humans. And then when a hard thing comes up or they're nervous and intimidated because you're some big executive, we just played parts together, right? Now we can have a real conversation and it doesn't feel so awkward, right?
[00:36:20] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. I think also when someone tells you something, if you do something about it, you wanna make your listening tangible. So if people know that if they come to you with something, uh, and even if you disagree with them, just explaining why you disagree is, is really helpful for, for creating that kind of cultural feedback. So what are some of the most common mistakes? We've got about 3 minutes left. What are some of the most, I told you it would fly by. What are some of the most common mistakes that you've seen founders make?
[00:36:53] Julia Austin: Okay, so common mistakes. The myth that the product is the business. So I think that's centering too much on the product. Or worse the solution. Without understanding everything it's going to take to actually get, to building a whole business. So I think that in itself is a common mistake. The appreciation, understanding of the gesalt of the team. So again, how it's, I'm gonna hire this smart person to do this thing and this smart person to do that thing, but oh my gosh, they're gonna have to work together. And you can get stuck in, what I referred to as the hub and spoke in the book, where like, I'm gonna work with you and I'm gonna work with you, and I'm gonna work with you. And the way I'm gonna stay in the loop is you all have to pass through everything. And it happens all the time, right? And they think they're serving everybody, right? Like you don't have to spend time on that.
[00:37:38] Kim Scott: And then you're the bottleneck and you're creating politics, by the way.
[00:37:43] Julia Austin: Totally. And they often fall into, they don't mean to, but they'll like gossip or excuse other employees. And then your employees saying, well, what are they saying about me if they're saying that to be about them?
[00:37:55] Kim Scott: Yeah. Do not talk to one employee about another.
[00:37:58] Julia Austin: But it happens all the time.
[00:37:59] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah. There was a founder who did that. I said, you are creating a Stalinist culture here. You know, because people think if they can get your ear, that you'll then go, you know, they're making bullets and you're shooting them, and you don't even understand the situation unto which you're shooting these bullets. And he was really worried that he wouldn't hear things if he didn't participate in gossip. I'm like, there's a better way.
[00:38:26] Julia Austin: For sure. For sure. Right? And that just learning how to let go and say, that's great. Why don't the two of you talk about it? Let me know what you all came up with.
[00:38:35] Kim Scott: Yes, yes. Yeah. Clean escalation. Absolutely. All right. Believe it or not, we are at time, but I wanna encourage folks to get the book, After the Idea, with practical tactical ideas about how to build a super successful company.
[00:38:53] Julia Austin: Thanks so much, Kim.
[00:38:54] Kim Scott: Thank you.
[00:38:55] Amy Sandler: The Radical Candor Podcast is based on the book, Radical Candor: Be a Kick Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, by Kim Scott. Episodes are written and produced by Brandi Neal, with script editing by me, Amy Sandler. The show features Radical Candor co-founders Kim Scott and Jason Rosoff, and is hosted by me, still Amy Sandler. Nick Carissimi is our audio engineer. The Radical Candor, podcasting music was composed by Cliff Goldmacher. Follow us on LinkedIn, Radical Candor the company, and visit us at RadicalCandor.com.
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Improvising Radical Candor, a partnership between Radical Candor and Second City Works, introduces The Feedback Loop (think Groundhog Day meets The Office), a 5-episode workplace comedy series starring David Alan Grier that brings to life Radical Candor’s simple framework for navigating candid conversations.
You’ll get an hour of hilarious content about a team whose feedback fails are costing them business; improv-inspired exercises to teach everyone the skills they need to work better together, and after-episode action plans you can put into practice immediately.
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We’re excited to announce that Radical Candor is now available as an hour-long videobook that you can stream at LIT Videobooks. Get yours to stream now >>
The Radical Candor Podcast is based on the book Radical Candor: Be A Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott.
Episodes are written and produced by Brandi Neal with script editing by Amy Sandler. The show features Radical Candor co-founders Kim Scott and Jason Rosoff and is hosted by Amy Sandler. Nick Carissimi is our audio engineer.
The Radical Candor Podcast theme music was composed by Cliff Goldmacher. Order his book: The Reason For The Rhymes: Mastering the Seven Essential Skills of Innovation by Learning to Write Songs.
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