Feeling overwhelmed by workplace polarization, the loneliness epidemic, and the constant whirl of change? You’re not alone—and neither are your teams. We’ve got your back. Tune in as Kim and Amy bring in Heather McGowan, future-of-work strategist, to dig into why we’re so divided and distracted at work—and what leaders can actually do about it.
Listen to the episode:
Episode at a Glance: Rebuilding Connection and Collaboration
Radical Candor Podcast Checklist: Rebuilding Connection and Collaboration
- Tip number one. Ask, “How did you come to believe that?”, not, “Why do you believe that?”
- Tip number two. Listen to frontline workers, they will help you succeed.
- Tip number three. Talk to actual people in your community, and in person would be great.
- Tip number four. More books, less media.
- Tip number five. Listen to what’s not being said. Give the silence so that somebody can say something that they’re just on the cusp of sharing with you that might be really important.
Radical Candor Podcast Resources
- Heather E. McGowan – ImpactEleven | LinkedIn
- Heather McGowan
- Navigating the once a century shifts: cultural, social, demographic, technical, and economic
- Loneliness Epidemic is Leaving Us Distracted and Divided
- Managing Post-Election 2024 Tension At Work 6 | 43
I Never Thought of It That Way: How to Have Fearlessly Curious Conversations in Dangerously Divided Times - Bowling Alone: Revised and Updated: The Collapse and Revival of American Community
- The Adaptation Advantage: Let Go, Learn Fast, and Thrive in the Future of Work
- The Empathy Advantage: Leading the Empowered Workforce
- Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries
- Braver Angels
- Heather McGowan
The TLDR Radical Candor Podcast Transcript
[00:00:00] Kim Scott: Hello everybody and welcome to the Radical Candor podcast. I’m Kim Scott.
[00:00:08] Amy Sandler: I’m Amy Sandler. And today we’re picking up the conversation we had recently with Denise Hamilton, where we focused on how we can overcome polarization at work so we can work together better. And if you didn’t listen to that recent episode, we’re going to put that in the show notes.
[00:00:24] Today we are so excited to have Heather McGowan, join us as we continue that conversation. Heather is a future of work strategist, a keynote speaker, executive consultant, lecturer, and author of books, including titles like Disrupt Together, The Adaptation Advantage and The Empathy Advantage, all of those things seem more important than ever. And so today we’re talking with Heather about how did we get so divided, so distracted? What does this mean for workplace performance? And we really want to get into some practical tips so that leaders can develop more cohesion and focus on their teams. We might spend some time talking about the loneliness epidemic as well. We’ll see why Heather thinks this is such an important part of the challenges we’re facing now. So welcome Heather.
[00:01:23] Heather McGowan: Hey there. Thanks so much for having me
[00:01:26] Amy Sandler: Thank you so much for joining us. And I always like to start, how did you and Kim connect?
[00:01:31] Heather McGowan: Well, we were both at Baptist Health down in Miami. We’re both keynote speakers at an event they had. And, uh, I knew of Kim’s work ahead of time and I had sent her a note through our, one of our mutual agents. Um, and then we ended up having a nice conversation after we both stepped off stage.
[00:01:48] Kim Scott: And I think, you know, our, what we were saying worked really well together. Uh, but Heather, one of the things you and I were talking about is it might have been better if you went first, which I agreed with. So why don’t you, uh, why don’t you explain to folks why and kind of, I can give the TLDR, but I’ll let you give the do read version of your talk.
[00:02:12] Heather McGowan: So when I, didn’t know what you were going to speak at, uh, specifically, I knew your book, uh, your most recent, both of your books. But all your books, but most recent book, I knew you were going to be talking about, uh, Radical Respect. And that is, uh, a pillar of what I talk about, but I talk about it in a broader framework. So I, that’s why I thought maybe I should have gone first and explaining kind of how we got to this moment. And to me, I think there’s a lot of people who are nibbling at what I consider the symptoms and not the bigger issues and the bigger kind of tectonic shifts.
[00:02:41] So yes, social media is a problem. Yes, we’ve had a very polarized election with a very divisive candidate or candidates. Um, yes, that has caused an increase in incivility at work and an avoidance that I think is something that we need to address. I get no politics at work, but I don’t think that means we shouldn’t take on polarization. And where I think this comes from is I think it comes from my whole life, really. I’m fifty-three years old. We stopped spending as much time together about fifty years ago. Robert Putnam was on that with his seminal book, Bowling Alone. So when we stopped spending time together, we stopped having that sort of bridging capital, the looser tie connections, the general level of trust you have in institutions, the benefit of a doubt that you give somebody.
[00:03:28] When you become lonely, which has happened over the last five decades, it’s now an epidemic, your amygdala gets kind of out of whack and you get into fight or flight mode, you get into us versus them mode. So you take that, which has been a fifty year march. And then you add probably the last decade or so is really when the velocity and the vectors of change are really ramped up. We’re shifting into a new economic era. We’ve got changes in our demographics. We, we’re seeing, uh, the white population as the predominant majority, which it has been for two hundred and fifty years, will be replaced in the next decade or so by a population that’s less white.
[00:04:03] Kim Scott: Not replaced, but we won’t be the minor, the majority.
[00:04:07] Heather McGowan: Right, right. Yeah, no, we’re not going to be replaced. But the category, the majority, which was white is going to be something else.
[00:04:14] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yes.
[00:04:15] Heather McGowan: Um, changes in real changes in gender, more women have, uh, there’s ten million more degrees earned by women than men. Um, there’s a change in gender roles broadly. It used to be fixed and binary, you were male or female. That’s it. Um, now it’s, uh, much more of a continuum. Same with sexuality. I mean, I’m openly gay. I had to come out of the closet. Kids today they don’t have to declare a major. Um, there isn’t that. There’s, I’m this today and I’m something else tomorrow. And it’s, there’s a lot more fluidity. Um, we’ve got the same levels of income inequality we had in the 1920s. So where there’s really an us versus them, whether it’s on a social issue or on a have or have not issue. And we’re happen, this is all sort of happening in the backdog of massive technological change, which has got people completely freaked out that they’re going to be replaced by a piece of technology.
[00:05:03] So all this is happening. So loneliness epidemic, you’re in fight or flight, and then velocity, rapid, rapid, rapid change. And lots of vectors of change has got people entrenched into polarized camps. And that’s prime for politics. It’s really easy to control people with fear. And that’s what’s happened over the last decade or so. But where it’s left folks is in organizations saying, I’m only going to talk to people who think like I do. And so the analogy I use when I give my talks is, I’m originally from Boston. In Boston, if you’re a baseball fan, you root for two teams. You root for the Red Sox and whoever beats the Yankees. And that’s where we’ve gotten to in work.
[00:05:38] I can only work with people who root for the Red Sox. I can only work on projects with people who root for the Red Sox. I will leave a company if there are too many Yankees players, that’s happening in real time. Real failure to collaborate, you know, a drive towards more monolithic cultures when most organizations are never serving a monolith. So that’s some of the stuff that I think is happening at work. And I go through all of that, plus what technology is doing to us, how we need to lead differently. And then your work is perfect in there in terms of like, what are the things we can actually do? How can we get respect? What are the things, how do we handle when we have a moment of friction, whether it’s bias, bullying or prejudice?
[00:06:15] Kim Scott: Yes. No, that is a perfect summary. And you know, your question to me really has made me think, you had a big impact on me. And one of the things that I felt when I finished Radical Respect, because as you described the problem. You talked about sort of, I’m, you know me, I love a two by two, so I’m going to, I’m going to create a whole new two by two on the fly here.
[00:06:42] Heather McGowan: All right.
[00:06:42] Kim Scott: We talked a lot, and I wrote a lot in Radical Respect about sort of rights. Uh, and everybody has the right to have, to feel this basic regard for our shared humanity at work. But when I finished the book, after I turned it into my publisher, I realized I forgot about money and income any, like, I mentioned it in passing. And I think that, I feel that something similar happened in the last election. We were so focused or at least, uh, people on the left were so focused on rights we forgot, uh, to pay as much attention as we coulda, shoulda, woulda, uh, on the income inequality.
[00:07:28] And I think that if you boil it down to a two by two and the upper right hand quadrant is sort of, uh, the golden age of capitalism, uh, you know, the new deal, basically. The bottom right, which is kind of where we are now is neoliberalism. And I think what a bunch of us fear is that we’re going to the bottom left, which is authoritarian.
[00:07:52] Heather McGowan: Yep.
[00:07:52] Kim Scott: Um, so I’ll, we can drop that two by two into the. So how do you come to grip? And I feel like that’s really damaging to, we’re kind of killing the goose that lay the golden egg, even. Uh, it’s really damaging to human beings, but it’s also damaging to the economy and also to firms. Um, there’s a wonderful book called Loonshots by Safi Bahcall. And he talks about the return on politics. And at a company where there’s too big of a gap between what the CEO gets paid and what the most recent, uh, hire got gets paid. Um, there, there’s so much focus on, on getting a promotion because the money that comes with those promotions as opposed to on the work. And that is innovation killing, quality killing, and soul sucking as well.
[00:08:45] Heather McGowan: Yeah.
[00:08:46] Kim Scott: So what do we do, what do we do about this? About, you know, to get the rights side, um, taken care of and the money side taken care of? How do we break free of this Washington consensus?
[00:09:02] Heather McGowan: Well, I think that this is not a new idea. I mean, Roger Martin’s talked about it. Everybody’s talked about it. Is it just tying, especially public companies to stock performance makes for really short term decisions where workers are just fungible, disposable units of productivity. And that hasn’t helped either.
[00:09:18] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:09:19] Heather McGowan: You know, you juice the market by laying off ten percent of your people. And then, you know, there’s, um, I can’t remember the Stanford professor’s work who’s proven that when you do those kinds of layoffs, it actually costs you money in the longterm because,
[00:09:30] Kim Scott: Bob Sutton wrote about that. Yeah.
[00:09:32] Heather McGowan: Yeah. You got to backfill with people who cost more than the employees you let go. You got to employ those employees, the severance package.
[00:09:38] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:09:38] Heather McGowan: And inevitably you’re going to hire them back at a higher rate.
[00:09:40] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:09:41] Heather McGowan: And you’ve depressed the productivity of the entire organization because morale is low and they don’t trust anybody.
[00:09:47] Kim Scott: Yeah, they’re not going to come back liking you more, they might come back.
[00:09:53] Heather McGowan: The only person who’s ever done that I think is Brian Chesky, his May 5th letter during COVID when he said, we didn’t expect this. We didn’t have this anywhere on our map of possibilities.
[00:10:03] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:10:04] Heather McGowan: You built Airbnb. Everybody’s a shareholder at this moment. You get health insurance for a year or whatever it was, and we’re going to help you find a new job. You should be proud of what you did here. It was a masterclass in emotional intelligence.
[00:10:15] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:10:15] Heather McGowan: I’ve never seen anybody lay off twenty-five percent of the workforce and build so much brand equity at the same time.
[00:10:20] Kim Scott: Yeah. And I think that part of what I love about your work is that you point out why it’s so, why our humanity is more important than ever uh, in this economy. Which feels like it’s, uh, not just the economy, but the society, it feels like it’s kind of chipping away at our shared humanity.
[00:10:41] Heather McGowan: Yeah, I mean, I think people feel that if they felt disposable with the kind of layoff culture, they filled, they feel replaceable by technology. But I think that’s really, uh, it’s really short term thinking. Like if we used AI to replace everything humans do right now, it would be an utter failure.
[00:10:55] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:10:55] Heather McGowan: We shouldn’t be looking at automation as replacement. We should be working as transformation because anything we automate atrophies. So twenty years ago, I could remember seventy-five, a hundred ten digit phone numbers just in the back of my mind, I could dial them up on my little flip phone.
[00:11:09] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:11:09] Heather McGowan: Now that I have a different kind of phone and have for like fifteen, twenty years, whatever it is, I can’t remember four numbers without writing them down.
[00:11:16] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:11:16] Heather McGowan: My recall is atrophy because that’s automated.
[00:11:19] Kim Scott: True confession. I don’t know my children’s telephone numbers. It’s awful.
[00:11:23] Heather McGowan: Yeah.
[00:11:24] Kim Scott: What is that about? And I’ve sat down and tried to memorize them and I failed.
[00:11:29] Heather McGowan: I only know my wife’s because I had it before I had a smartphone.
[00:11:31] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:11:31] Heather McGowan: It hasn’t changed in like twenty-five years.
[00:11:33] Kim Scott: Exactly. I can still remember my high school friend’s telephone numbers, even though I haven’t talked to them.
[00:11:39] Heather McGowan: Exactly. Exactly. I always say to people, like yeah, give me your phone. Let me wipe out your contact list. Um, give it back to you. How many people could you call? And they all say my childhood home phone number and my best friend’s phone number. If they’re old enough, if they’re not old enough, they never, they can’t call anyone.
[00:11:53] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:12:03] Amy Sandler: So actually, as we’re having that conversation about, um, you know, where we focus, what has been automated, what we might be losing in the automation. I’d love to dig in, Heather, to if I’m listening to this podcast, I’m thinking of two, two listeners. One is a leader who can think about how can I bring more humanity in? Um, but I’m really curious just for someone feeling this polarization and this sense of, you know, us versus them, that you’re saying is really, you know, I think it’s how we’re wired as, as humans been enhanced by, uh, you know, the loneliness epidemic and certainly COVID enhanced that. How do we start to think about even just in a one on one way of out creating that tendency, that polarization that we might have with our colleagues at work?
[00:12:52] Heather McGowan: Yeah. The first is to try to start with a sense of intention. So I’m openly gay I’m a liberal. I voted for Kamala Harris. I’ll just let you know that, right? Does that mean I can’t ever be friends with a Trump supporter? There’s a lot of my friends who say they are, I’m morally opposed, they are voting against my marriage, my children. You know, there’s a lot of moral outrage and that’s absolutely valid and absolutely understandable. But there’s also, might be more to the story, there might be another reason they voted that way or they think that way. It could be the information they’re getting, it could be those factors aren’t interested in them at all.
[00:13:30] They voted for an entirely different reason. They, maybe they voted for what they perceive are going to be their gas and grocery paces. It might be what they perceive to be as our solution to our immigration problem, which across the boards, no matter which side you’re on, we do have an immigration challenge. It’s complicated. All this stuff. There’s no simple solution to any of these things. Um, it may be a number of things. So starting with the right intention, not the assumption that they are voting against or are against you as a person or your values or your respect or your rights. Instead start with there and try to focus on the things that you have in common.
[00:14:07] And I found that that I can find something in common with almost anybody. I mean, if you get people talking about things other than the thing that sparks the fight, you might find that you have much more in common. Like there’s an organization called Braver Angels and they try very hard to make neutral or dual party solutions. Um, Tom Friedman calls them complex adaptive solutions. Uh, Monica Guzman, I hope I’m saying her name correctly. Uh, she wrote a book, How Did You Come to Think of It That Way? I think that was her, How Did You Come to Believe That?
[00:14:37] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:14:37] Heather McGowan: And her take is not asking people what they believe because they respond with the defensive stance. But it’s, how did you come to believe that, and understanding the thinking below that. Um, so that you can understand, you’ll land on common ground eventually, in most instances, you will.
[00:14:52] Kim Scott: Yeah, I think that’s so, such a good question is not, why do you believe that? Which sounds aggressive.
[00:14:59] Heather McGowan: Correct.
[00:14:59] Kim Scott: But how, like, how did you come to believe, that sounds curious. Uh, and one of the things that I, you know, I like to categorize things. So there’s some, there are some people who I work with. And I don’t really care how they came to believe it. I don’t want to talk about, if I’m working with someone and we’re selling double click ad servers, for example. I don’t really, that’s what we’re doing together is selling double click ad servers. And I know this person, you know, feels differently about gun control or abortion than I do.
[00:15:34] But I don’t need to discuss it with, as long as they’re not imposing their belief on me and I’m not imposing their belief on them, then I don’t need to talk about it. There are other people who I’m also selling double click ad servers with, but I’m closer to for whatever reason. And with those people, I, you know, either because I care about them or I want to get to understand them, or I feel like it’s coming between us, that I am, you know, I’m sort of, I want to get rid of my silent judgment. So then I’ll have that how conversation.
[00:16:05] Heather McGowan: Sure. Yeah, that and that’s true. Like if you were a colleague, I mean, there’s some people you don’t need to know well. But the in the first instance the person that you said you don’t need to know what their issue, their opinions of gun safety or reproductive freedom is. That’s fine as long as you’re not avoiding working with that person.
[00:16:21] Kim Scott: Yes, yes.
[00:16:21] Heather McGowan: You know, that’s the point, that’s the point I think everybody’s missing is, people are leaving organizations. They’re avoiding conversations. They’re avoiding collaborating with people simply because of there’s a moral outrage. It’s understandable.
[00:16:35] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:16:35] Heather McGowan: But it’s getting to know them enough or finding something in common so you can collaborate with them. Even if you have differences, we’re always going to have differences.
[00:16:43] Kim Scott: So like the person who I work with, but not super closely who I know, you know, so let’s say voted for Trump and has different policy. What I’ll talk to that person about is something like we both have kids.
[00:16:57] Heather McGowan: Yes.
[00:16:57] Kim Scott: And we can have a great conversation about that.
[00:16:59] Heather McGowan: Exactly.
[00:17:00] Kim Scott: Or I’ll talk to them, we both love to be out in nature. Uh, and we can talk about that. Um, what are some of your favorite topics for people, you know, for those people, you don’t want to know how they came to believe, or you don’t need to know how they came to, but you want to bond with them a little bit.
[00:17:16] Heather McGowan: Oh, just the real simple ones. Sports teams. What kind of beer do you drink? Why do you like your coffee? What movies have you seen recently? What’s your favorite restaurant? What’s your favorite kind of food? So many safe categories you can bond over.
[00:17:28] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:17:28] Heather McGowan: Um, there’s plenty of, and if you have, I don’t have children or you have a dog, I have a dog.
[00:17:32] Kim Scott: Yeah. We both have dogs.
[00:17:34] Heather McGowan: Yeah. There’s plenty of safe areas to go into. I mean.
[00:17:37] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:17:38] Heather McGowan: Bud Light was unsafe for a little while. I think they really messed that one up. Most beer is safe.
[00:17:43] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:17:43] Heather McGowan: Most sports teams are safe, lots of movies are safe. Um, so yeah, there’s a ton of you talk about there.
[00:17:49] Kim Scott: And then when it comes to talking with people and you do know them well enough that you are genuinely curious to know how they came to believe what they, you want to have the conversation. Uh, one of the, one of the most helpful things that anybody ever told me was, it was a quote from their Rabbi. And the Rabbi said, your job, and this person was going in to talk with a white nationalist. And the Rabbi advised them, your job is not to move the boulder, but your job is to push against the bolder, like to just present another point of view. Like, how do you, how does that work with, how did you come to believe it? Like, how does that kind of engage, like, in other words, going in, not trying to change their mind or to change your mind, but to understand.
[00:18:37] Heather McGowan: I think one way to do it is to pick a third topic that doesn’t have anything to do with the boulder between you. And one I’ve been using late recently because it’s a big movie right now as many of us grew up with the Wizard of Oz. We watched the Wizard of Oz and from 1901 when the book was written and to 1939 or whatever, 30 whatever, when the movie came out to 1995 but really till a couple of weeks ago we all were absolutely certain that the Wicked Witch was wicked.
[00:19:06] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:19:06] Heather McGowan: And that she was evil to, rotten to the core and they should have thrown the bucket of water on her and it liberated everybody.
[00:19:12] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:19:13] Heather McGowan: Now we’re getting another story and we’re all becoming a little more curious and a little less certain.
[00:19:20] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:19:20] Heather McGowan: And I think about how many different things in your life have you been so certain for almost a century.
[00:19:25] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:19:26] Heather McGowan: And now you’re kind of curious and thinking maybe I didn’t have that right.
[00:19:29] Kim Scott: Yeah. And how do you get your, I mean, certainty is so comforting.
[00:19:35] Heather McGowan: Yeah.
[00:19:38] Kim Scott: How do you learn to love uncertainty? How does one learn to love uncertainty?
[00:19:44] Heather McGowan: I’m trying to do it right now in this moment. Like when the election happened, a lot of my friends were stressed and they were upset because it was unexpected. I think even though the poll said fifty fifty, nobody really thought it was going to come out this way. So there’s a lot of shock and there are people who are, you know, changing their Facebook photos.
[00:20:01] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:20:02] Heather McGowan: To look like, you know, and then there’s this big stance and don’t be friends with me anymore unless, I think that that is missing an opportunity to say, okay, what’s really going to happen next? And I look to like the historians, they’re really helpful, that they’re like, uh, Doris Kearns Goodwin’s.
[00:20:17] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:20:18] Heather McGowan: A beautiful example of that saying, well, you know, back when Lincoln, you know, this happened and then that actually became the spark of something even better that came out of it. So if you’re a belligerent optimist like me, you can be kind of curious, when you thought you were so certain about something that being a little curious as to why did all these people make, decide this was a good decision? Why did they think that? And then what is it they’re really looking for and what could happen next? So I think that you have to let go of your certainty in order to be curious about the possibilities. I mean, that’s true in innovation. That’s true in connecting with people. I think curiosity is the root of empathy, creativity, and innovation.
[00:20:58] Kim Scott: Totally agree.
[00:20:59] Amy Sandler: I am with you on the power of curiosity. And, you know, just to go a little further on this piece and tie it back even to Kim’s work with Radical Respect, I’m so curious, you know the quote from James Baldwin who said, you know, we can disagree and still love each other, unless your disagreement is rooted in my oppression and denial of my humanity and right to exist. And so what I’m curious about, especially in the workplace where we are working together. We do want to be collaborative, we do want to be creative and have sort of right intention. What do you say to those folks who might feel like, um, how do I get beyond this sense of maybe there’s not that intrinsic, uh, goodwill or respect being offered, um, in the workplace? Any thoughts on that?
[00:21:52] Heather McGowan: That’s why I think at companies, um, you know, clear values that, you know, we believe these things together. Um, can say, okay, we may disagree on how we do things, but we have this fundamental belief that everybody here should be seen and heard and respected on equal playing field. So I love the Baldwin quote. That is a beautiful example of what I mean by curiosity.
[00:22:12] Kim Scott: And I think what, Amy, correct me if I’m wrong. But I think maybe James Baldwin is hinting at this third category. So there’s some people I don’t need to know how you came to think what you think about. Because we don’t work closely enough together and it’s not relevant to what we’re doing together. So let’s focus on what we’re doing. Then there’s another category of people who you do get closer to at work and you do become curious about how they can. And so it’s worth having that conversation with the open mind, with the curiosity. And then I would say there’s a third category of people. There, there are, there have, it has happened.
[00:22:49] Like, for example, I worked with someone, someone at a company where I worked, um, had been violently attacked in the office. And, um, and they were drunk. And as was everybody else in the office. It was at the end of a drunken, uh, situation. And there were these, people were saying things that led me to believe that they didn’t, I assumed at first that they didn’t understand what assault was and what consent meant. So I was assuming good intent. And then I spoke to someone who I work with and he said, there’s no problem with assaulting someone who’s blackout drunk. Uh, the only problem was they did it in the office. If they had done it in a bar, it’s fine. So, uh, so this is now a belief that this person has, uh, that rape is okay. And, uh, and so they, I do not care how he came to believe that.
[00:23:58] Heather McGowan: Right.
[00:23:59] Kim Scott: Like now I’ve crossed over into this third category and I quit, I’m like, I’m not working with this person.
[00:24:04] Heather McGowan: Yeah.
[00:24:05] Kim Scott: I can’t work with this person. So how do you, like, and for me, it was important to have that line in order to remain open to the, like, in order to assume good, at like ninety-nine out of a hundred people, I really believe I can, I, you know, I want to work with. I want to get to know, maybe we think differently about stuff, but I can assume good intent. But part of my willingness to assume good intent, uh, also has to include the ability to acknowledge when there isn’t good intent.
[00:24:38] Heather McGowan: Right.
[00:24:38] Kim Scott: When this person is out, you know, when this person has crossed a line beyond which I don’t care how they came to believe that I’m not going to work with them anymore. So how do you think about that? I mean, and I think we go too fast, I think, I tend at least, I shouldn’t speak for we. But I, one of the flaws I have as a human being is that I, because certainty is, it’s so much easier to like swipe left, swipe left, swipe left.
[00:25:03] Amy Sandler: I think even Kim, your ability to already put a new framework together, you know, there’s a, the gift of the categorization, right? Is then also we start, even though we don’t want to put people in boxes, our brain is starting to do that, right?
[00:25:16] Kim Scott: Yes. So I’m trying not to put people in boxes. I’m trying to like stay open. But part of staying open, I need to know when I need to shut down.
[00:25:27] Heather McGowan: Well, we all, biases are just shortcuts. They’re just our brain trying to save energy and they’re not all terrible things, they’re just shortcuts. So, um, I think I’m really grateful for that. No Assholes book that came out.
[00:25:39] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:25:39] Heather McGowan: That basically said, you know, this person can get an outstanding sales figures. They could be the best engineer in the world, but we have a policy here.
[00:25:48] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah.
[00:25:49] Heather McGowan: If you violate our, you know, our basic moral standings, we don’t need you here. And I really admire the companies that stand up and do that, even when it’s not, they’re not publicly humiliated to do so.
[00:26:00] Kim Scott: Yes. Yes. Yeah.
[00:26:01] Heather McGowan: Which is usually the case, unfortunately.
[00:26:04] Amy Sandler: Uh, you know, Heather, one of the things that I was really struck with in your background as being a future of work strategist, what are the tools and the way of thinking that as a future of work strategist you have that, that might be helpful for all of us to sort of think about what’s that future that we want to create? I’m just wondering if there’s some tricks up your sleeve that you think could sort of scale to just each of us in our day to day.
[00:26:32] Heather McGowan: Yeah, I think one of the things we have to realize is that we’re always in yesterday’s mindset. We’re always solving yesterday’s problems, we’re always in yesterday’s work environment. And we’re, I mean, even our systems of education where I spent, you know, a decade in higher ed, we’re really codifying and transferring prediscriminate skills and existing knowledge with the false idea that we’re going to create a deployable workforce. As soon as you’re done doing that, most of what you’ve done, at least in content, is irrelevant. So, our whole idea of closing the skills gap is absurd, because if the skills gaps close, it means we stop making progress.
[00:27:09] Kim Scott: Right, we’ll never close it.
[00:27:10] Heather McGowan: Right? You know, so, skills gaps forms when a human demonstrates a skill and the market values that skill in excess of supply. So we should want an ever widening in pursuit of trying to close, but we’ll never close a skills gap. So that’s like just that shift in mindset in terms of how, and then we used to hire people ’cause they’d done the job before. Now, increasingly, we won’t be able to find people who’ve done the job before because we’re hiring people to do things that have never been done before.
[00:27:34] So we have to go from, you know, past experience. Then we looked at, you know, degrees where we could form a degree around something that not too many people had done before. Then we boil that down to skills, and we’ll just hire for the skills. I now think that we’re increasingly going to hire for the behaviors. What are the behaviors we need to have so that people can add and delete those skills?
[00:27:53] People who, um, know how to get things done. Their persistence. They have grit. They have adaptability. They have flexibility. They have social intelligence. They know how to motivate people and get things done together. So we’re going to be looking for a different profile. We’re probably a decade behind in having kind of more of this mindset. I’ve been talking about it for more than a decade.
[00:28:12] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:28:13] Heather McGowan: Um, so that’s kind of some of the stuff we have to realize that we’re just always driving looking in the rear view mirror and it’s time to gaze out over the head of the car because it’s going a whole lot faster now than it was a decade ago.
[00:28:24] Kim Scott: And Heather, do you think this has been true for a lot? This is, maybe this should have been true, for example, but at that same conference, I think where we, where you and I spoke, Keith Ferrazzi also spoke.
[00:28:36] Heather McGowan: Yep.
[00:28:37] Kim Scott: And he spoke about, uh, his father worked in a steel mill and how the CEO on down at the steel mill, where his father worked, did they, they quit listening to the frontline workers. And they said, oh, the whole name of the game is to decrease the cost. That they devalued work both in terms of money, but also in terms of like, meanwhile, the Japanese were, you know, pulling the con bond cord on the line and empowering workers to criticize what was happening because usually it’s even in industries that aren’t known to be sort of knowledge work. There is knowledge. It is knowledge work working on a line. And when you listen to the people who are doing the work, you figure out how to do it better. It’s not like managers know how to do the work. And so I think one of the things I love about your work is how important it is for leaders to listen to their people. But I think that, and I think that’s maybe more true now, but I think it was also true, you know, in the sixties and seventies and eighties.
[00:29:51] Heather McGowan: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I just did a prep call just before I got on with you folks for another health care group. This is a hospice group and, um, I, they came, they found me and then I shared with them that I had lost my, uh, brother in December, 2022 and my father this past June. Both went through hospice, one at home, another one in a facility. So I had both views on it.
[00:30:12] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:30:12] Heather McGowan: And my perspective on it, seeing a lot of healthcare workers. And actually my first job was as a nurse’s aide when I was thirteen years old. So I know the job from doing it a long time ago, is that front line, which you absolutely treat it like it’s disposable. It’s the biggest revolving door. It’s really hard to keep people. And the greatest chance of success is empowering the manager of those people.
[00:30:34] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:30:34] Heather McGowan: To listen to them and figure out what they need, and that is going to be, especially as we age, we’re gonna need more and more of them. That is a huge missed opportunity and I’ve tried to, like my father was in like three different facilities because they were all terrible. I wrote to the CEOs of the facilities and I said listen, this is what I do for a living you’re missing this and then they’d write back to me and tell me why they were compliant and I was like, great. Thanks.
[00:30:55] Kim Scott: Yes. Yeah. You know, it’s so I’m sorry that you had those experiences because what, my father, um, also had a, we had a hospice nurse coming to the house, not all the time, but right at the end.
[00:31:09] Heather McGowan: Yup.
[00:31:10] Kim Scott: And she was the most compassionate, wonderful human. Like I, every time I think about her, I am so grateful.
[00:31:21] Heather McGowan: Yeah.
[00:31:21] Kim Scott: You know, she was just, she made, she gave my father a good death and she helped us give him a good death. And that’s such a gift.
[00:31:30] Heather McGowan: Yeah, don’t get me wrong, there were lots of wonderful people, but at the time I’m there, I’m waiting, you know, it’s a lot of waiting.
[00:31:36] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah.
[00:31:36] Heather McGowan: I was looking at the system and I was like, this is so broken and so fixable.
[00:31:40] Kim Scott: Yes, yeah.
[00:31:40] Heather McGowan: And there were lots of bright spots and a lot of really wonderful people there.
[00:31:44] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:31:44] Heather McGowan: And I got to know some of them and they were like, I’m hanging on by a thread.
[00:31:47] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:31:48] Heather McGowan: I’m only doing this because I care so much. But they are not listening to us. I’m like I hear you. I’m looking at the booking system. I’m right here with you
[00:31:55] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah.
[00:31:56] Heather McGowan: Yeah, there’s a lot of wonderful people in that industry.
[00:31:59] Amy Sandler: I think that it really ties to our conversation of finding the common ground. I also, um, at the end with my dad in hospice and this was at the end of 2020 when I wasn’t able to be in person. And I think there’s, there is you know, if you were to connect with someone at work, you know so many of us by the time we get to a certain age have lost parents or health issues, and that is universal.
[00:32:23] And I think, you know, for me, even just looking at just to loop it back into the frustration with the system, whether it’s health care, whether it’s education. All of these systems that have been built and not addressing this rapid pace of change. And so I think that is even just to go back to making connections that there is that sense of shared humanity. And I’m sorry for what you’ve been through. And also just those folks on the front lines, um, were indispensable. I just went to a funeral over the weekend and the caretakers were there and were literally the first ones thanked by the sons whose mom had just passed away.
[00:33:01] And so I think just to your point, you know, when you think about the importance of systems and leadership, of why is the CEO not training the manager so that they are talking to those frontline workers. So I would love to just bring it back to what leaders can do. And when you think about the loneliness epidemic, how that relates to feeling like these systems have, have cut us short, as well as technology. Heather, how do you see the loneliness epidemic playing out in a typical day in the workplace? Like I have my own idea of what that means. You know, we’re sitting connected by screens. We’re not necessarily in person. We’re doing a lot of work individually, even if it’s collaborating. But what is, what are you finding in your work and research and talking to companies on the loneliness piece?
[00:33:46] Heather McGowan: Well, there’s a lot of people who believe the only way we’re going to solve this is to get everybody back in the office. And I don’t know that that is necessarily true. Because one of the things I say is a counter to folks, um, is the majority, I would say the majority right now across the boards, but it’s maybe just below the board majority for heterosexuals. It’s definitely way over the majority for, uh, LGBT community, meet their mates online. So you meet your spouse, partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, whatever. You met them first online. You, of course, would then meet them in person, but there was enough of an emotional connection. You formed social capital before you met in person.
[00:34:23] So if we can do that, and that is now the prevailing trend on how we meet our mates, you can’t tell me that we can’t create culture, we can’t create social connection virtually. I think we, we need to get together in person. I mean, I don’t do all virtual talks anymore. I go, we met in person, I go out and do that for a reason. I get there’s a difference and I get there’s a difference for coming in the office. But that sort of assumption that we just, our loneliness epidemic is because of COVID and because there are too many people working remotely, I think is missing the point. I mean, we can ask each other meaningful questions. We can have deep conversations. We’re having one right now.
[00:34:59] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:34:59] Heather McGowan: I mean, that’s what a podcast is, right? So, I think it’s more about, um, you know, not asking people, how are you? And then waiting for them to finish so you can dive into something else, but actually listening to how they are. And on a social level, it’s talking to your neighbors. I mean, if you see your neighbor’s got a political sign and you will not put out their garbage until they’ve put out their garbage, so you don’t see them. I mean, we are really avoiding to each other. And you can look at this data that we’re moving into zip codes that make us even more and more polarized.
[00:35:27] We’ve got to start talking to each other. There’s been such a decline in, uh, shared social activities, whether it was, you know, rotary clubs and book clubs and churches and all the other ways we used to run into people that we didn’t necessarily have a ton in common with. We’ve got to force ourselves to have some of those. And starting at the local level in your community, look people in the eye, say hi to them when you’re walking your dog, in the grocery store. I’m doing a T-shirt campaign, which has got people starting to talk to me, which is a little weird as an introvert, but each T-shirt has a different expression on it. And every week I wear a different one. I wear it out in the world, I put it on social media and I tie it to some research that I’m working on. This week’s is, um, ask more questions, be more curious, what is it, I’m sorry.
[00:36:09] Amy Sandler: That’s why it’s on a T-shirt.
[00:36:11] Heather McGowan: Lead with questions not conclusions is, is this week’s. Because there’s a predominance around, there’s a lot of research that shows leaders who self select are often not the best leaders.
[00:36:21] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:36:21] Heather McGowan: And they’re leaders who lead with certainty and they lead with action and they have a certain profile, they tend to be more extroverted. They tend to be a little more masculine whether they’re male or female. They tend to be you know this profile. But the people who ask more questions who seem less certain who actually, um, listen to the people around them and elevate the people around them are far better leaders.
[00:36:41] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. I think that is really true. Uh, and yet we, you know, it’s hard to go back to this question we started with. Like, how do we get more comfortable with uncertainty? How do we create, uh, how do we create curiosity as a, as a better leadership attribute than, uh, then confidence? You know, that, that’s, uh,
[00:37:06] Heather McGowan: Well, rewarding it, socially,
[00:37:08] Kim Scott: Yes, yes.
[00:37:08] Heather McGowan: Socially rewarding it, and also rewarding that by elevating leaders who are a different profile.
[00:37:13] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. And I think also recognizing my favorite, uh, my favorite term is bloviating bullshit. Which, uh, which seems to be a bit on the rise these days. And I think that it is really important to make sure that, that as a leader, you can recognize and shut down bloviating bullshit, starting with your own, uh, you know, I’m guilty of being the bloviating bullshitter, uh, certainly. Um, but I think that it’s really important to recognise. ‘Cause I think it’s a form of bullying, that kind of just making stuff up with great confidence and charging along. And it silences, doesn’t get the best out of people. It silences people who maybe do have, um, the answers, uh, or more information that you don’t have.
[00:38:01] Heather McGowan: Yeah. And when you’re having meetings, um, letting there be silence for a little bit. Not just filling it with the people who talk over each other, but just letting there be silence. When I do Q&A, do any Q&A after, depending on the size of the audience. Um, I always reserve the right to say, I don’t know. I make the audience say, I don’t know with me. Because we have socialized our leaders to always have the answers.
[00:38:20] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:38:20] Heather McGowan: When most leaders are leading teams of people right now who have skills and knowledge that they lack. So the whole idea of relying just on your individual intelligence rather than harnessing collective intelligence is something that needs to change. So when I say, I don’t know, I say, I don’t know. I’d like to find out. And here’s my information. I’ll get back to you. What do you think?
[00:38:37] Kim Scott: Yeah, we need to put like, we need to have a dollar or a penny jar maybe. Uh, and every time somebody says, I don’t know, um, everybody else in the room puts a penny in. And you know, when it fills up, the next person who says, I don’t know, gets all the pennies or something. I mean, we just need to reward it in kind of funny ways. You said something else that I think is really profound. Uh, which is that, you know, there’s such a, there’s such a disparity, uh, between what I read in the media about how horrible people are and what I experience in real life in my various, and I’m traveling like lovely, like lovely people are everywhere.
[00:39:25] And, uh, and I want, I really wish that people would spend less time, my, my sister in law is a high school teacher and she made her, she asked her students. I guess she couldn’t make them, but she asked her students who are high school seniors to track their time for a week. And how much time they spent, uh, on sort of social media versus, uh, in person friendships. And, uh, and they were spending more time on social media than in person with their friends, and I think that’s really dangerous. Like, I’m all about remote work, uh, and I think you can create relationships, uh, remotely. But I think for your friends, it’s really important to be in person, for your family, it’s really important to be in person.
[00:40:15] Heather McGowan: Yeah.
[00:40:15] Kim Scott: But even if it’s remote like this is a real conversation. I know you’re really saying what you’re saying, there’s not like, I know you’re not a bot. Like I think it’s really important to, uh to talk to real people, uh, because the media is not doing us any favors.
[00:40:31] Heather McGowan: No, I mean, we’re, you don’t turn off the TV because you’re outraged, you turn off the TV because you’re bored. You don’t get off social media because you’re not outraged. I mean, it is designed to elicit a response.
[00:40:45] Kim Scott: Yes, yes.
[00:40:46] Heather McGowan: So if you’re texting with someone, that’s one form of asynchronous communication, you’re probably getting, right. It’s like, I just bought a house and the deal almost fell apart because we were texting each other. I finally said to Ray.
[00:40:56] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:40:56] Heather McGowan: We’re like, you know, two miles apart. I’m like, Ray, let’s go meet at the house. We get at the house, I just reiterated. We want to buy this house.
[00:41:02] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:41:02] Heather McGowan: You want to sell this house? Let’s focus on that intention that we both have.
[00:41:07] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:41:07] Heather McGowan: Because I think it’s getting misunderstood in these text messages. I’m just trying to resolve the issues, I know you are too. It was reiterating that we had shared purpose.
[00:41:15] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:41:15] Heather McGowan: Um, and I think that’s what gets lost in some of the social media. It certainly gets lost in the media because it’s designed to outrage us on both sides, the right and left.
[00:41:23] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:41:23] Heather McGowan: For sure.
[00:41:24] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. Totally. Totally agree with that.
[00:41:27] Amy Sandler: I think, you know, it’s what I was taking away from this too, is, is that what is required of us, I think in this moment is this ability to get a little more comfortable with, with discomfort. Whether it’s our human need for certainty, you know, I’m thinking of David Rock’s SCARF model, status, certainty, autonomy, relatedness, fairness. Like we are wired to want certainty whether it’s our desire to want leaders who, uh seemingly know everything versus us stepping up and kind of our own power. And so to me it feels like this moment is not just about curiosity. It’s also about, can I be a little more comfortable in that silence and in that not knowing. Um, but I’m curious Heather like as I talk about that discomfort, uh muscle, how does that show up with you before we wrap?
[00:42:20] Heather McGowan: Yeah, I found that to be true even like, I think I started talking about that like a decade ago. Because you were going to go into work and work is going to have changed and you can’t do it the way you’ve always done it .You’re going to have to learn something new and when you learn, when you know something it’s comfortable, it’s certain . When you don’t know something, it’s uncomfortable, it’s uncertain. You have to leap. You’re not sure it’s going to work out. And we have to be in that state in order for us to learn as much as we’re going to have to at work. We’re going to spend most of our time at work learning. Work’s going to be intertwined intrinsically with learning.
[00:42:53] So we have to do with that. But also I think if we don’t solve polarization and we don’t figure out how to get humans connected again, AI is not going to matter. I think it’s a bigger challenge than AI. And actually the potential of AI hinges on our ability to collaborate. We as a species leapt to the top of the food chain because of our ability to collaborate, our social intelligence, our ability to work together. Four other of our ancestors didn’t make it. We did because of this. And we’re on the crux of losing it. So I think it’s a much, much more important thing for us to address. Even if it is uncomfortable and I agree with you, it can be uncomfortable. But ultimately, I mean, a lot of research shows humans are hardwired to care about each other and to help each other.
[00:43:34] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah.
[00:43:35] Heather McGowan: And so that is our drive, most of us are good. There are some bad apples out there, sure, but that’s not most of us.
[00:43:41] Kim Scott: Yes, that, uh, that is the truth. I really, I believe that to my core. Uh, the, you know, it’s funny, you’re talking about AI, like you’re right. It’s not going to help us communicate. And the other day I opened my browser and it serves up, I keep trying to get it to stop doing this, but it serves up articles, uh, underneath the search bar now. And the first article that was served up was about how AI had helped us have, for the very first time, a conversation with a whale. And it’s like, okay, so now we can talk to whales, but we cannot talk to each other. Like, what is that about? So funny.
[00:44:19] Heather McGowan: Yes. Yes. We’re headed in the wrong direction. I think we need to focus that lens a little more on each other.
[00:44:24] Kim Scott: I mean, don’t get me wrong. I think it’s really cool to talk to whale. I would love to be able to talk to whales, but not at the expense of being able to talk to each other.
[00:44:33] Amy Sandler: We’ll get a yes and. So Heather, what is one next step that you would encourage our listeners to take to focus more on connection and move away from polarization?
[00:44:46] Heather McGowan: You know, if you feel safe to do so, I just did a post, my T-shirt last week for Thanksgiving was, don’t fight to win fight to understand. Um, and then I tied it to the, having seen Wicked and we were so certain that, you know, Wicked, the Wicked Witch of the West was evil. Um, if it’s safe to do through and it’s not a threat to your person, make the call to whomever you’re estranged to. Right now, uh, one out of four adults are estranged from at least one person in their family. So we have high levels of estrangement. And um, I think we need to start by breaking down those, uh, walls, having conversations. Whether it be with family members, again, if you feel safe to do so, talking to your neighbors, talking to people around you, talking to people at work about something other than work, just rekindling some of that. The number of people who are just flat out lonely, who may feel better just having a conversation about what movie they saw, what beer they drink, what their, where their kids go to school, uh, what kind of dog food their dog eats, whatever it may be, just break the ice. And start talking to each other because we need to develop that bridging social capital for our society.
[00:45:53] Amy Sandler: All right. Now it’s time for our tips. Let’s start putting Radical Candor and tips from Heather McGowan in practice.
[00:46:00] Heather McGowan: All right. Ask how did you become to believe that, not why do you believe that.
[00:46:04] Kim Scott: Tip number two. Listen to frontline workers, they will help you succeed.
[00:46:10] Amy Sandler: Tip number three. Talk to actual people in your community and in person would be great.
[00:46:17] Kim Scott: Tip number four. We didn’t say this during the podcast, but I have to say it. More books, less media. And Heather, you want to wrap us up with tip number five?
[00:46:27] Heather McGowan: Tip number five. Listen to what’s not being said. Give the silence so that somebody can say something that they’re just on the cusp of sharing with you that might be real important.
[00:46:35] Amy Sandler: Wonderful. And how can folks find you, Heather?
[00:46:38] Heather McGowan: I’m on LinkedIn, always wearing a different pair of glasses, so I can’t tell you which pair that might be. But I’m on LinkedIn and I’m @Heathermcgowan.com, M C G O W A N.
[00:46:48] Amy Sandler: Well, thank you so much for dropping in. Oh, actually I had, I have to have one more question for Heather. Heather, what has been your top, uh, conversation starting, uh, T-shirt so far?
[00:47:01] Heather McGowan: So I had one, uh, actually it has the word radical in it, um, that I made before the election. I made it, uh, actually a year ago. Um, the future is radical empathy. And I wear it and I’ve had it for a while. So I’ve worn it in a lot of instances. There was one time I was wearing it where someone pulled into my parking space and I got out and I was going to be all mad. And then I was like, oh, I can’t, I can’t be a jerk today. Damn these T-shirts.
[00:47:29] Kim Scott: That is so good.
[00:47:32] Heather McGowan: Uh, then also like a couple weeks ago I had um, only we can cure loneliness. And I started a silent book club in town. Uh, so we meet at a brewery, beer and a book for an hour, and then we socialize afterwards. So you bring any book, it just makes you sit down and read for an hour. Um, except, nobody showed up that day. So I was wearing a T-shirt about loneliness reading a book by myself and I got a lot of pitiful looks. So there’s been a lot of T-shirt backfire.
[00:47:59] Kim Scott: That’s funny. Those are good stories.
[00:48:01] Amy Sandler: Changing the world one, one T-shirt at a time.
[00:48:04] Heather McGowan: Yeah.
[00:48:04] Amy Sandler: Even if you’re the only one.
[00:48:05] Kim Scott: What were you reading?
[00:48:07] Heather McGowan: Uh, I was reading, uh, I just bought, um, Doris Kearns book, uh, Kearns Goodwin’s kids, it’s not really a kid’s book. I think it’s like a middle school book about, um, four guys who became leaders. So it’s Roosevelt, Kennedy, um, Johnson, and I can’t remember who the fourth one is because I’m still on the Kennedy chapter. But it’s like to teach kids how do you, because she went out to an audience once.
[00:48:29] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:48:29] Heather McGowan: And a middle school kid to her said, what do I need to do now if I want to be a president in the future? And so she decided to write a book about the four guys, she calls them her four guys that she’s been studying her whole life, like to think about it from a kid’s perspective.
[00:48:41] Kim Scott: Ah, that’s cool.
[00:48:41] Heather McGowan: Yeah, it’s a cool book.
[00:48:44] Amy Sandler: That’s great. We’ll have to put that in the show notes. Thanks, Heather.
[00:48:46] Heather McGowan: All right.
[00:48:47] Kim Scott: Thank you so much, Heather. Uh, we, I totally agree with what you’re saying. We’ve got to talk to each other. Talk to the people, talk to someone who you’re estranged from, but, um, buck yourself up for doing that by calling three people you love. Make sure you’re talking to them too, and that are, who are easy to talk to.
[00:49:04] Heather McGowan: There you go. Love it. Thanks so much for your time. Thanks for having me on.
[00:49:07] Kim Scott: Thank you.
[00:49:08] Amy Sandler: Thanks for joining us, Heather. It was wonderful.
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