Oversharing at Work: When TMI Tanks Trust 6 | 45

Episode at a Glance: Oversharing at Work

Radical Candor Podcast Checklist: Oversharing at Work

1. Tip number one, pause and review. Before responding to messages or sending out emails. Take a moment to pause, review the content carefully. This helps ensure you fully understand any confidentiality requests or specific instructions.
2. Tip number two, clarify expectations. If you receive a message that seems ambiguous or doesn’t clearly state whether the information is confidential, don’t hesitate to ask for clarification. A simple, “Just to confirm, is this information okay to share with others?”, can prevent misunderstandings.And if you feel like it would be useful to share the information with others, clarifying that it actually must be kept confidential is useful, too. 
3. Tip number three, communicate your intentions. In situations where you need to share information, communicate your intentions clearly, and ask for feedback about what you intend to do. 
4. Tip number four, don’t be too fast to hit send. If it feels too good to hit send, don’t hit send. Listen to this episode for more tips: Use the GSD Wheel So No One Feels Sad, Bad or Left Out 4 | 2

The TLDR Radical Candor Podcast Transcript

[00:00:00] Kim Scott: Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Radical Candor podcast. I’m Kim Scott. 

[00:00:07] Jason Rosoff: I’m Jason Rosoff. 

[00:00:08] Amy Sandler: And I’m Amy Sandler. Before we jump in, I want to tell you about something really exciting. We now have an ad free podcast, this very podcast ad free as part of our new Radical Candor community. Go to radicalcandor.com/communitypodcast and join now. You’ll get a seven day free trial to the Radical Candor community as well as access to Radical Candor’s courses, this podcast you’re listening to right now early and ad free. You’ll get real time interactive learning opportunities, regular interaction with Radical Candor experts including Kim and Jason and so much more. So if you have ever struggled with communication at work you, this is your community. Again, that’s at radicalcandor.com/communitypodcast, one word. 

[00:01:02] So today we are answering a listener’s question about how to stop impulsively sharing information that they are supposed to keep private. This person writes, quote, I need advice on managing confidential information more carefully. I keep accidentally sharing things I shouldn’t. Let me explain two recent incidents. 

[00:01:26] Kim Scott: I’m going to read one of those incidents. This is not me, this is the listener. I received a message from a team leader about upcoming changes to department SOPs, which I guess is standard operating procedure, and my area of interest. Coincidentally, a colleague messaged me asking if I’d collaborate on proposing new SOPs for the exact same area.

[00:01:53] I had only quickly skimmed the team leaders message at this point. I responded to my colleagues saying I couldn’t help due to capacity, but mentioned that the department was already working on incorporating this into new SOPs. Only after that, that I fully read the TL’s message, which ended with this is still a work in progress, so please keep this between us for the time being. I immediately messaged my colleague back, asking them not to share that information. Fortunately, this slip up was relatively minor and I caught it quickly. 

[00:02:29] Jason Rosoff: Alright, incident number two. This person writes, following a recent reorganization, I’m working with my former team lead to wrap up a course project. This morning, I checked their team’s group chat to ask about any updates. The team lead informed us that the course was canceled. Since the subject matter experts were expecting to review the course next week, I offered to help communicate this, asking if anyone had a template email I could use. When no one replied, I went ahead and drafted my own email to the subject matter experts, including the phrase, due to a new department direction, the project is canceled. Three and a half hours later, the team lead responded, saying we shouldn’t inform the subject matter experts yet, and separately requested that I forward her my email. Oops! 

[00:03:08] Amy Sandler: The listener shares the concern, quote, I’m becoming increasingly worried that I might cause serious problems if I can’t get better at managing sensitive information. How can I develop better habits around information sharing? 

[00:03:24] So, I thought what we would start to do is look at these two incidents as part of a broader picture. And even before we get into the idea of sensitive information, seems to me, we might want to talk about just responding to information writ large and the importance of pausing and reflecting before sharing information. So I thought I would check first, Kim, as you read these questions, what popped up for you about some of the habits that this person might be aware or unaware that they are doing in jumping the gun a little bit here? 

[00:03:58] Kim Scott: Well, I mean, you know me. My first instinct was to blame the environment and not the person. Because I sort of feel like both, I mean, I don’t, two incidents doesn’t make a trend. But in both of these cases, if somebody’s working on standard operating procedures and someone else is also working on it, it seems like it ought to be okay for them to be talking to each other. It seems like that shouldn’t have been confidential information, that should have been shared information. 

[00:04:32] And in the second incident, the one that Jason read, where you had subject matter experts who are continuing to work on a course that has been canceled. Like, they should be told immediately that it had been canceled rather than being allowed to keep working on it. Like, it shouldn’t be a secret. 

[00:04:53] So, I think there’s a problem in the organization of excessive secrecy. And that’s my first, um, that, that’s my blank reaction to this. So, uh, so, but I want to make sure, I want to hear what you all think about that before I give advice about what I have done when there’s excessive secrecy.

[00:05:16] Jason Rosoff: Thematically similar but slightly different take. Uh, my reaction to it was, this, the person writing has a certain assumption about how freely information should be shared uh, and with whom, has a certain set of assumptions about that, like a bias toward sharing more, and the organization has a bias toward sharing less.

[00:05:37] Kim Scott: Yes. 

[00:05:38] Jason Rosoff: So if we take a value judgment out of which, 

[00:05:40] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:05:41] Jason Rosoff: Like which is better or worse, like it’s very clear that the, this person has a bias to sharing information and the organization has a bias to keeping information, let’s say, uh, guarded until it is like ready for public consumption. And I’ve worked in organizations that have operated reasonably well in both of those cases. I will say that your specific example, like the second one seems pretty damning. 

[00:06:06] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:06:07] Jason Rosoff: It’s like there’s a bunch of people working on something that has been canceled. That is a very like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic kind of feeling to me. Like there’s something very sort of disturbing about that like the image that that creates. 

[00:06:23] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. Something is canceled. Tell the people who are working on it to stop. Like, what’s going on? 

[00:06:30] Amy Sandler: Well, it’s so interesting hearing, cause we haven’t really checked in on this beforehand. I will say, you know, we’re all, well, I will put myself in here. Kim, I think you are writing yourself in a little bit too. I was aware as someone who has sometimes written things, feeling frustrated that the person didn’t read in the, in Kim, in your example, only after sharing, did they fully read the team leader’s message, which said, 

[00:06:54] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:06:54] Amy Sandler: This is still a work in progress so please keep this between us for the time being. So from my perspective, I think there’s a bunch of different things going on. One is, how are we communicating and are we committing to reading through everything? And so I think this listener, you know, with a lot of self awareness acknowledged, they only quickly skimmed it and, you know, they were able to deal with it. 

[00:07:18] I think, the second one is very interesting, not only in terms of people are working on something and not wasting their time on that. But I think there’s also another assumption here, which is, as a culture if you haven’t gotten a reply from someone, that they were just going to take the ball in their own hands and not do extra work. So I really appreciate that and it does make me wonder, like, does the culture encourage that or is, are they in a communications culture where people have to kind of sign off on different levels of communication?

[00:07:52] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s, I think that’s important. I mean, like, I have often gotten feedback that I move too fast. And so slowing down to read the whole email before I take an action on it, I think is, that is always good advice, uh, is before you, like, if you get an email informing you of something, before you inform others, like, reread the email before you take action.

[00:08:22] Amy Sandler: Yeah. And maybe also the stuff below the email as well. 

[00:08:27] Jason Rosoff: Because there was like, there was a really good action to take here, which is, was instead of telling the other person about it. Which was to tell the team lead, I’ve got this person who’s asking you about this thing. Can I put them in touch with you? 

[00:08:39] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:08:39] Jason Rosoff: Because I feel like you should be talking to each other. 

[00:08:42] Kim Scott: Yeah, that probably would have been a better, and I had a, when so I worked at Google for about six years before I went to work for Apple. And Google is notoriously open and Apple is really very secretive, uh, much more secretive culture. And there are some benefits to it. I will say that when I was at Google, I used to get, I don’t know, four hundred emails a day, maybe five hundred some days. And then when I got to Apple, I would get maybe like three or four emails a day. To the point that I kept checking to make sure the Wifi was working, you know, I was like, what is going on? And once I got used to it, it was really like, there, there was a lot of benefit to not everybody needed to know everything, and that was a huge relief, actually. 

[00:09:31] Jason Rosoff: Yup. 

[00:09:32] Kim Scott: And, uh, and it was just as likely at Google that two people would be working on the same thing, you know, because you couldn’t keep up with that volume of email. 

[00:09:43] Jason Rosoff: Yup. In the second incident, like, my, like, my reaction is there is the potential, like, sign off mistake, but if we, like, go into the actual communication, I think this person framing a decision they didn’t fully understand and like communicating that to a whole bunch of other people on behalf of somebody else.

[00:10:02] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:10:03] Jason Rosoff: That to me, seems like bad, that’s just bad form. Like, it doesn’t matter how much you think you’re helping. 

[00:10:10] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:10:10] Jason Rosoff: But like, I’ll put it to you this way. If I was working on something that I didn’t know was canceled. And I received a note that says due to a change in direction, this has been canceled and I had not been informed of that change in direction. I had no idea what this person was referring to, like that would be doubly upsetting because I’m now like my team lead didn’t inform me. There’s some change in direction and now like conspiracy theories are popping into my head. 

[00:10:38] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:10:38] Jason Rosoff: Where I’m like, well, what is happening here? So I think there’s like, there’s both the like how you react, like how or how carefully you sort of like try to absorb the information and then I think there’s a little bit of like thinking about the person on the other side. So both the persons who sent you the information as well as the person who’s receiving the information to make sure that. Like, think about how they might receive that. Because I can imagine based on how this is written that from this person’s perspective, he or she, or they, would much rather know bluntly and quickly, like, don’t work on this thing anymore because it’s been canceled. And so they’ve written themselves into the, you know what I’m saying? 

[00:11:18] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:11:18] Jason Rosoff: They’ve written themselves into the story a little bit in the way that they respond to it. 

[00:11:22] Amy Sandler: I really appreciate that, Jason, because it’s making me think of a recent communication from my, uh, my building, the apartment that I live in, where they sent out a text. There were all these fire, uh, trucks and I happened to be, I was home. So I was able to see what was happening and find out. But they sent a text that said, you know, there’s a, there’s been a fire emergency at the building, you know, just like a one line thing. So if you didn’t, if you didn’t know what the emergency was, you would sort of be in a bit of a lather, like my dogs, my cat. 

[00:11:55] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:11:55] Amy Sandler: You know, what’s happening there. And so just coming from communication, sort of 101 of, you know, this person is probably going to fill in the blanks and probably from a negativity bias, why is the project canceled? 

[00:12:08] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:12:09] Amy Sandler: Like what’s happening here. And I thought it might be interesting because we as a team, uh, these past few months have been having a bunch of conversations about internal communications. And one of the changes that bubbled up is that, as a result, was we started sharing our own individual updates and then reviewing them on a team call. And Jason, I just thought that might be a helpful story to share about like where that came from and what need was being met that maybe this listener might benefit from.

[00:12:40] Jason Rosoff: So I think where you’re, where we’re going with this is like, if you take a step back and you, if this person were to take a step back and try to assess, like, what do people actually need from me? Like, what is the team lead who sent me the information about the standard operating procedures, like, what do they need? What is the subject matter experts who are working on the course, like, what do they need? Like, it was helpful for our conversations, which started by soliciting feedback about how, like what was working or not working on the team. It was helpful to start from that point of view to say, like, what do I actually, what do people need? What are they frustrated by? What’s working and what’s not working? 

[00:13:17] Um, and that led us to the process that you described, which is like each week, we all, we call it, um, we borrowed the name from early days of Google, we call them snippets. Each person writes their snippets. And then on a team call, we actually read through the snippets together. So we use time synchronously to go through. And the goal of that is not just to read them, but to like ask questions. So like someone gives an update and you’re like, ooh, that sounds interesting. Can you tell me some more about what was going on with that particular project? 

[00:13:45] Now that may not work for this organization. I mean, that may not be the right, that may not be the right process. But my guess is that everybody in this situation is like, you know, fifty percent or more correct about what the right thing to do is. And what’s missing is there’s a reason that team lead was not sharing that information yet. That is not, it’s not clear that the person who wrote us this note knows what that reason was. And as a result, they, the decision that they made may or may not align with that. It’s also probably true that the person who contacted, the, this listener, um, who said I’m also working in the same area of these things. Like the team lead needed to know about that. So like the question is, how do you actually connect the dots?

[00:14:30] Like what’s a healthy way for that organization to connect the dots? Because it doesn’t sound like an email digest or a Slack channel where everything gets made public, that, that’s not going to that’s probably not going to work for this organization. And maybe even like a reading out of snippets is too, it is like too much. But maybe what you do have is, um, you know, maybe they have a staff meeting and there’s like an important, you know, uh, projects announcement or update or something that happened, some formalized channel for communicating these things synchronously so that people actually take note of them might help.

[00:15:06] Kim Scott: I think that’s really, uh, I think that’s really interesting. I mean, to sort of go back to the theme here about pausing and reflecting and making sure that information is being shared, but not overshared because it can be overly burdensome. If, I mean, if each of us needed to know everything else that the, each of the other, we, like, we couldn’t get anything done on it, you know. 

[00:15:30] Jason Rosoff: Yeah.

[00:15:30] Kim Scott: Uh, and so one of the things that, that I found, and I was with a small team, I think what, you know, what’s going on makes a lot of sense. But once the team got bigger, what I would do with my team is I would have people, I would have an asynchronous moment in my, because I tried to do snippets outside of the meeting and then nobody did them. And then I tried to have the conversation in the meeting, but the team was big enough that it went on forever. And so I would say, okay, we’re going to have ten minutes and everybody’s going to write their snippets in five and read other people’s snippets in five. And if you want to have a conversation about somebody else’s snippets, it’s going to happen outside this meeting.

[00:16:12] We’re not going to, because what would happen once teams get bigger, what would invariably happen is that three people, there would be eight people in the room and three of them would be very interested in their conversation, and the other five are sitting there like this is wasting my time. And so having that, um, level of discourse was interesting. And then the other thing, this is, we’ve talked about big decisions a bunch. But the other thing that happens in meetings is that people feel excluded from decisions. And so that was why I would publish, we would decide at my staff meeting, like what the big decisions were. We would publish that out to the organization and then everybody would know what they were. And pretty soon people were like, oh, I don’t need to like, participate in this. Amen. I’ll, you know, and then it was sort of self correcting with a little bit more, um, you know, open, openness. Uh, but again, that doesn’t work for all organizations. 

[00:17:12] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, so if I was in this person’s shoes and like, they’ve already done some pausing and reflecting and said like that, I don’t, I’d like this not to, this not to happen again. I, think, uh, since they already copped to, they already admitted to making these mistakes. I think a really interesting like place to start would be to go to the team lead in each of these cases and solicit some feedback. 

[00:17:37] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:17:37] Jason Rosoff: And say, uh, and say, hey, I realized that I’m probably not your, this is, it’s always a good time to solicit feedback when you’re not the person’s favorite person.

[00:17:45] Kim Scott: Yes. 

[00:17:45] Jason Rosoff: I realize I’m not your favorite person right now. And I kind of like, you know, messed this up a bit. And I want to better understand from you, like, how it is that I can help make sure that communicate, like we’re communicating the right things to the right people at the right time. And I think by starting by soliciting that feedback, you create a channel where you could offer as a suggestion, like, or you could ask the question, like, you know, is there a way for me to connect people with you? Is there a good way for me to connect people with you when you’re working in the same area, for example. Like, what, how should I think about that? By getting advice from these people, uh, you have an opportunity to open a line of communication. 

[00:18:26] Because my guess is that implicit in here is, like this person is probably, whether intentionally or not, like pushed the organization to communicate a little bit, a bit more openly, uh, about things. And I think if you start by admitting mistakes and asking them how you can be most helpful, that gives you a basis to then go back to that person at some point in the future and say, I have a, I have an idea for how we could make this better, and now you understand their needs. So the idea that you propose to them can be framed in a way that is actually helpful to them as opposed to feeling threatening. 

[00:18:59] Kim Scott: Yeah. I think that’s really, I think that’s great. And I think also another thing that could happen when soliciting feedback, so now I’m going to try to take the side of the person who decided not to communicate to the SMEs. Like maybe this was a very, um, touchy, like a very delicate situation. And the person wanted to take the time to, to communicate this in person. Or maybe they wanted to spend the time crafting an email that explained all the rationale and they didn’t want to just say, I canceled it, you know. And tough shit, you know. Uh, and so maybe that was what was going on. 

[00:19:41] Or maybe, you know, the, and this happens all the time where you don’t want to tell people that you’ve canceled their project ’cause it’s a form of ruinous empathy. I didn’t want to tell them because I know they’d be upset, but like of course, they’re going to be more upset the longer you wait to tell them. But you can learn what’s going on, when you solicit feedback, you can learn, you know, maybe what you did wrong, or you give the person the opportunity to explain to you what was going on in their mind. 

[00:20:11] Amy Sandler: Yeah.

[00:20:12] Jason Rosoff: Because to your point Kim, you might, I think the implication of what you’re saying is you might actually agree with them. 

[00:20:16] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:20:16] Jason Rosoff: Like it might, like you might it might not just be that oh, I overstepped my bounds, but maybe you actually learned something about why the approach you took was wrong. 

[00:20:26] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:20:27] Jason Rosoff: And why the approach that they were going to take was more correct. 

[00:20:29] Kim Scott: Could’ve been better. Yeah. 

[00:20:31] Jason Rosoff: Yeah 

[00:20:31] Amy Sandler: What’s coming up for me is in the same way, Kim, that you have the get shit done wheel and really this process of how decisions are made. In many ways, it feels like around communication, it’s important as an organization, as a team to have an understanding of does this person need to be, you know, informed sort of after, are they part of the decision?

[00:20:52] So even being clear, and I know Jason, this is something we’ve also talked about as a team, like where are people informed in the process. And you’ll often say like, okay, you know, I’d love to get your feedback on XYZ. I’m going to be responding. So it’s not necessary, but if you want to do it, do it by this time, or you will loop people in. And it’s a little bit like speak now or forever hold your peace. But there’s this idea of, are we in the, you know, sort of brainstorming, collaborating, decision making mode, or are we actually in the, we’ve made the decision and now we’re implementation mode.

[00:21:21] And so in some ways I feel like maybe, especially with this incident too, that might be part of the issue as well. Like maybe this person is actually still collecting some feedback or wanting to, you know, implement it by having one on one conversations. And we’re not actually clear on that. So to your point, Jason, I think by soliciting feedback we might actually help move this organization to get more clear on, these are the things you can take the ball and run with it. And these are actually more collaborative, um, decisions that we want to make sure we’re all agreed on before we start communicating outwards. 

[00:21:54] Kim Scott: Also in a secretive and for, uh, in a more, um, in a less open environment, an environment where there’s more secrets, uh, or more, you know, less prompt, secretive sounds like the wrong word. I can’t think of the right. 

[00:22:09] Jason Rosoff: It sounds like a judgment. 

[00:22:09] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:22:10] Jason Rosoff: But what you mean is like when the bias is to not share information.

[00:22:14] Kim Scott: Yeah, yes. Exactly. 

[00:22:15] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. 

[00:22:16] Kim Scott: Um, here was some advice that I got when I got to Apple, which was very different kind of, uh, there’s category one, category two, category three. Category one is your job, you get to make the decision. Nobody else gets to tell you what to do, including your boss. Category two are the things where there’s, where you need input from others and they need input for you. There, there’s, you know, more of a collaborative space. And category three are the things that are somebody else’s category one, where you are neither invited nor allowed to interfere.

[00:22:54] And, you know, I think at Google, there almost was no category three. Uh, and at Apple, there was a big category three and it was very helpful for me to think about, okay, what’s my category one? What’s my category two? And what’s my category three? And once you kind of figured that out, then it was liberating in some ways.

[00:23:16] Jason Rosoff: If I had to guess, I feel like that’s the key piece of advice that we could give this person. Is like, that’s a really helpful frame because it, it’s a nonjudgmental way to talk about, to frame a conversation about what information needs to be shared when without, you know, making about secrets and transparency and openness versus close.

[00:23:39] It’s more like, you know, we, there’s certain information that people absolutely need in order to be able to do their job, the category one information. There’s some information that a person needs or needs to share in order for other people to do their job. And then there’s this other category of information that people, you know, don’t have an expectation. Not only to give input into, but not, they don’t have an expectation to know about, right? 

[00:24:00] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:24:00] Jason Rosoff: Like it’s, you don’t need to know about everybody else. Like your category three, you may not know everything that’s going on there and that’s totally fine. Um, So I like that. I think that that’s a super helpful frame for this person. Yeah, because I think if I found myself in a situation at this point in my career, I would find it very frustrating. Like if I was in the person who wrote to us, if I was in their shoes, and I saw a bunch of people working on something that I knew had been canceled, like it would be very frustrating to, like I would be tempted to make the same mistake that this, the, that this person made. Um, so I just want to, 

[00:24:37] Kim Scott: Thinking you’re doing a favor, thinking you’re being a useful information router and instead you’re throwing, you’re throwing sand in the gears.

[00:24:46] Jason Rosoff: Yep, exactly.

[00:24:56] Amy Sandler: I really appreciate you mentioning that, Kim, because I just want to acknowledge for the listener, like my assumption, their intention is to be helpful to the people they’re trying to communicate. 

[00:25:06] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:25:06] Amy Sandler: They don’t want them wasting their time and all of that. And I can certainly say, and I won’t speak for all of you, but I’ve certainly been in situations where you think you’re doing something that’s helpful. But you might not have the full view and it actually doesn’t land as helpful for other people. And so I think just going back to that frame of category one, two, and three, at least that can give you some guardrails about like, is what I’m sharing helpful? ‘Cause it’s a category one and I have like full visibility into it. 

[00:25:35] Kim Scott: Yeah. Or it’s a legitimate category two. Like, but I think it probably wasn’t this person’s job to communicate this. So, um, you know, it’s awesome to have initiative, but make sure you know where your initiative is invited and where it’s not. 

[00:25:52] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. And I’m sort of like, the other thing is we don’t have the other side of the story here. Like it’s possible that from incident one, which is the standard operating procedure kerfuffle, um, that the team lead doesn’t, not only do they not mind, maybe they’re grateful that the person found out about this. 

[00:26:11] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah, another good reason to solicit feedback. You may think you’re going to get criticism and you may get praise. 

[00:26:17] Jason Rosoff: Right. So I think that’s why it’s so important to have this conversation. Because the way they describe it, it sounds like they talked to the person that they let the beans slip to and said, hey, don’t tell anybody that I told you this. As opposed to telling the team lead, hey, I, you know, I screwed up and I accidentally shared this information. 

[00:26:36] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:26:36] Jason Rosoff: Um, with, without realizing it should have been, uh, you know, kept private for the time being. 

[00:26:41] Kim Scott: But I think in the second case, the listener who wrote in did exactly the right thing. They communicated, they gave bad news early. 

[00:26:49] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. 

[00:26:49] Kim Scott: They went right to the TL and they said, the team leader and they said what they had done. And, uh, that has got to earn, I hope, that earned some appreciation for them. ‘Cause, because I think one of the most important things you can do when you realize you’ve made a mistake is to be open about it, to tell people.

[00:27:11] Jason Rosoff: In some ways, like, I’ll admit that, like, there, I had this biased thought as I was reading this. Which is, there’s a tendency for two things to go hand in hand, guard, closely guarding information and hiding mistakes. 

[00:27:27] Kim Scott: Yes. 

[00:27:30] Jason Rosoff: There’s a, it’s not true in every organization, right? ‘Cause there’s sometimes like the, sometimes guarding information, there’s a, there’s an actual part, like a, uh, it’s fit to purpose. Like it actually solves a problem. 

[00:27:41] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:27:41] Jason Rosoff: Like guarding information and keeping information separated, solves a real problem that the organization has. I can think of like certain research organizations where they don’t actually want some teams to talk to each other because the whole idea is that they’re operating independently from one another and developing ideas on their own. They’re not influenced by each other. So that’s like a concrete example of where that it like it solves a particular problem. And by crossing that boundary, you actually, to your point, Kim, you throw sand in the gears, you cause a problem. 

[00:28:14] But I also think like, it’s not necessarily the case that in an organization that has reasons for keeping information separate that they’re not also forthright about mistakes. But I had like, I’ll just admit that like I was imagining, like I was developing a picture of the organization that this person was describing in my mind. And I was like, oh, I they might get punished for admitting to, you know what I’m saying, for admitting to the mistake that they made. 

[00:28:38] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:28:38] Jason Rosoff: But they didn’t say that they didn’t say they got, that they got punished. 

[00:28:41] Amy Sandler: Yeah.

[00:28:41] Jason Rosoff: So I think you’re exactly right. Like it’s the right thing to do, you shared the mistake , hopefully you’re offered, you get some credit for being transparent about it and you know, maybe it’s a really, has a potential to be a relationship building moment.

[00:28:55] Amy Sandler: The last thing I’ll bring in a nuance that leapt out at me on that same incident too. I just want to go back, roll back the tape a little bit. And this person is working with their former TL wrapping up a course project. They checked the chat, they found out the course was canceled from the team lead. And since the SMEs were expecting to review it next week, they offered to help communicate this. No one replied. So they drafted their own email. Three and a half hours later, the TL responded saying we shouldn’t inform. And so, I feel like what’s missing in this is that they, this person actually sent the email.

[00:29:33] Like, they didn’t say that they sent it, but I think the email was sent. Uh, they said, you know, drafted my own email, including the phrase that was the, due to a new department direction this project is canceled. Three and a half hours later, the TL responded saying we shouldn’t inform them and separately requested that I forward her my email. So it’s not a hundred percent clear to me from the writing, that the email was sent. But that’s the assumption that I made. 

[00:29:58] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:29:58] Amy Sandler: And the reason I want to get granular on that is that sometimes, you know, again, we had a podcast and we can put this in the show notes, where we talked about kind of communication norms, and is it email, and is it Slack, and is it twenty-four hours, and is it 48 hours, and we know how much Brandi doesn’t like email, etcetera.

[00:30:15] But I mention it because Jason, sometimes I will put in Slack, like, this is what I’m sending to X. I’m going to send it by Y, you know, a little bit speak now forever hold your piece. And so, like, that has seemed to work for us. I’d love to get your perspective on that. But I think that’s the part that is a little bit unclear from the note. 

[00:30:35] Jason Rosoff: Yes.

[00:30:36] Amy Sandler: Giving that person the chance to kind of weigh in.

[00:30:39] Jason Rosoff: Since we don’t know everything that’s going on in this organization, maybe it’d be helpful just to talk about what something we do know about, which what happens in our company. 

[00:30:46] Amy Sandler: Yeah. 

[00:30:47] Jason Rosoff: And I actually think that like, it is important. We have had conversations about this and we have established as a norm that each individual in this organization is empowered to do their job and to the extent that they need input from somebody else, that they seek that input.

[00:31:05] But if that input will not arrive by the time that the person is required to do the task, that that person is empowered to move forward. Um, that is incumbent on us to the people whose input is being requested to like make the time and to object. And so if the person, it’s not like Amy, if you sent that and I said, uh, I said, hey, I don’t have time to review this can we hold off on sending it for two days? Because I, need time to actually think about what, what’s being written here. Like that’s totally fine. 

[00:31:36] But what’s not, I think what, in our organization, what we’ve said is we’re not going to hold, we’re not going to throw sort of sand in the gears. Um, uh, we’re not going to hold things up based for approval, but that’s like, that is what works for us. Like, that’s a conscious choice. That’s something that works for our organization. Not every organization is comfortable with that because there is risk inherent in that, right? There’s a risk that I disagree and I just didn’t have, you know, I didn’t have a chance to look at it. Uh, but I disagree with what was done there. 

[00:32:04] And the question is like, what do you do about that? And so, some organizations, are unwilling to take that kind of risk. I tend to believe that when you build a team of people who you trust, those kinds of risks are often worth taking. And they’re worth taking for a very particular reason, which is, when you have the opposite bias, when everything needs to be approved by somebody else, by a manager or somebody else, by definition, narrow the solution set, to the things that that person thinks is good. And that to me negates, 

[00:32:38] Kim Scott: Or that that person has time to look at. 

[00:32:40] Jason Rosoff: To review. 

[00:32:41] Kim Scott: You create bottlenecks. 

[00:32:43] Jason Rosoff: Exactly. And you negate creativity. You negate the, it directly undermines the fact that, at least in my mind, a fact, which is that, people who are thinking deeply about a problem are likely to come up with interesting and novel solutions that you may not have ever thought of. And so you may never have approved because you’d be like, well, that’s not the way that I would approach it. And so therefore, I’m going to squash that particular idea. But that, that’s our bias as an organization. I think what’s missing here is this person doesn’t understand those guidelines for this company. 

[00:33:18] Uh, they can’t articulate or they didn’t articulate in this note this is the, this is the way that we think, think about information sharing, or this is the way we think about decision making, or this is the way we think about autonomous, doing work autonomously. And because that’s unclear, it’s really hard for them to choose the right thing to do. 

[00:33:36] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:33:36] Jason Rosoff: Even though I would say, even absent that, there are maybe some opportunities to slow down and choose a different course.

[00:33:45] Kim Scott: I think that when I have made mistakes, I have a bias to yes and a bias to action. And a bias to tell everybody everything all the time, you know, so those are my. And when I have made really big mistakes, what happens for me is I send someone an email and I need some information and they don’t happen to send me the answer I need right away. And I’m afraid I’ll forget to do the thing if I don’t do it right away. So I just go ahead and do it. It’s like, it’s a way of scratching it off my list. 

[00:34:21] Uh, and that has gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years. Also, it’s worth examining, like part of the reason why I have a bias to yes is because I, I don’t want to remember. I want to take it off my list. And that can be a problem for the people around me. That can be very, that can make me a frustrating person. I see some laughter in that. You all have observed this. Uh, and I really have tried not to do that to the people around me. ‘Cause I don’t want to, I don’t want to create stress for folks.

[00:34:52] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, I think that’s true. I think the reason why I was describing our biases is because, not because they’re perfect and because they don’t cause problems. But because they cause the problems that I’d prefer to have. 

[00:35:05] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:35:06] Jason Rosoff: That, that’s really what it boils down to. I don’t think there’s any set of norms around communication that solve communication. Because if there was, we would know what that is. 

[00:35:14] Kim Scott: Yeah, we would be doing them. 

[00:35:17] Jason Rosoff: Uh, and so instead you have to decide, like, what, which, what are your preferred problems? If you can explain that to people, it allows them to make good choices that help push the organization and their work in a direction that is likely to cause, you know, hopefully minimally disruptive. But also likely to cause problems in the direction that you want to deal with. And the reason why that matters is because I feel like as an organization, like another way to frame this is like some organizations want to be very proactive, meaning they want to plan out every single step that they’re going to take, and they want to have a plan for every contingency. And that’s just that, that’s the way that they think about their work, and that’s the way they’ve structured the organization. 

[00:35:58] So they’ve, like, built the team around this ability to, like, proactively see around corners and plan everything out. And if they got into reactive mode, the whole thing would come crashing down. The whole house of cards would come tumbling down because they haven’t built the team to like respond agilely to problems that they hadn’t anticipated but instead they built a team to anticipate all the problems and work around them. And so it is hard, like it’s not just about communication preferences, it’s like how have you structured the organization to solve the kinds of problems that your organizational structure causes.

[00:36:33] Kim Scott: Well, yeah, and it also depends on like what you’re working on. Like we are not managing a nuclear power plant. If we were, I would not have, then I would have all kinds of checklists and approvals. And I would want, like, it would be totally terrifying to operate the way we operate if we were flying an airplane or upper, you know, doing something like that. 

[00:36:58] Amy Sandler: And I think I just want to name, because I think this is something that people can do and teams can do, Jason, what you were saying about, you know, being really clear that we have a bias for these are the kinds of problems we’d prefer to solve for. I think that’s another thing that came up out of our speak truth to power conversations that we were having, where we’re looking at how things can improve. And at least for me coming from organizations where, A, I’ve overseen communications in much more hierarchical bureaucratic, where the stakes were quite high with communication. It was very helpful for me to hear that because that goes against some of the ways in which I’ve been in organizations or sort of raised up in different organizations. So I think being really clear about this is our bias or this is how we think about things can give people permission and just make it much, much clearer for people. Brandi, you said, if you say yes, how do you remember you said yes, I didn’t know if you wanted to. 

[00:37:51] Brandi Neal: Oh yeah, no, but I was just going to say, I think I don’t want to, I don’t know what this person’s background is. But I have ADHD and impulsivity and oversharing are two symptoms, um, especially of the kind that I have.

[00:38:08] So, like, my bias is also to tell everybody everything and also to impulsively do the thing right away. So I think just knowing that about yourself and like how you can rein yourself in. And then when I feel very disorganized, I want more structure because like Kim, what you said, like, I’ll just forget about the thing, or, um, I don’t have an organization list. It’s called like leaving my email unread. So, it’s um, knowing what works best for the individual people, like you yourself, knowing what kind of organization you’re going to be able to function in is important as well. 

[00:38:45] Jason Rosoff: I think that’s great. 

[00:38:45] Kim Scott: Totally agree. Yeah. 

[00:38:47] Amy Sandler: All right. Now it’s time for our Radical Candor checklist, tips to start putting Radical Candor into practice now.

[00:38:55] Tip number one, pause and review. Before responding to messages or sending out emails. Take a moment to pause review the content carefully. This helps ensure you fully understand any confidentiality requests or specific instructions. Something I often do as well as I will put a message, I will get rid of the to / from and I will write my draft and I will have it there just so that I can read it through again. And I really try to think about how is it going to land for these different people. So both pausing and reviewing on reading what’s being sent to me, but then also reviewing before I send it out. 

[00:39:33] Kim Scott: Tip number two, clarify expectations. If you receive a message that seems ambiguous or doesn’t clearly state whether the information is confidential, don’t hesitate to ask for clarification. A simple, just to confirm, is this information okay to share with others, can prevent misunderstandings.

[00:39:53] Jason Rosoff: I feel like building on that, and if you feel like it would be useful to share the information with others, clarifying that it actually must be kept confidential is useful, too. To say, I have someone who might benefit from hearing this information or reading this information. Would it be okay to share with them, is another great way to clarify.

[00:40:11] Kim Scott: Yes, absolutely. 

[00:40:12] Jason Rosoff: Tip number three, communicate your intentions. In situations where you need to share information, communicate your intentions clearly, and ask for feedback about what you intend to do. For example, something like, I plan to inform the subject matter experts about the course cancellation. Is there anything, is there anything specific I should or shouldn’t mention? And, you know, giving the person who you’re asking for feedback some time to respond to that before you, uh, before you get overeager and hit the send button. So give them time to actually give you the feedback that you’re asking for. 

[00:40:44] Kim Scott: Tip number four, don’t be too fast to hit send. This was one of the best bits of feedback I ever got, is if it feels too good to hit send, don’t hit send. 

[00:41:01] Amy Sandler: We might have to put that one on repeat for you, Kim. Thank you. Awesome. 

[00:41:05] Well, for more tips, check out our YouTube channel. You can not only listen to this podcast, but also watch dozens of other Radical Candor videos. Show notes for this episode are at radicalcandor.com/podcast. Praise in public, criticize in private. So if you like what you hear, we hope you do, please follow, rate, review us wherever you listen to podcasts. It really does help. If you have criticism for us or stories you’d like to share, email it podcast@radicalcandor.com. We read every one. Thank you again for this listener for sharing their desires to grow, already so much self awareness there. Thank you again for helping all of us get better. Bye for now. 

[00:41:48] Kim Scott: Take care. 

[00:41:50] 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 podcast theme music was composed by Cliff Goldmacher. Follow us on LinkedIn, Radical Candor, the company, and visit us at radicalcandor.com.

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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.

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