How Ruinous Empathy Ruins Praise 6 | 36

Episode at a Glance: Ruinous Empathy Ruins Praise  

Are you unintentionally setting your team up for failure with well-intentioned but poorly executed praise? In the pursuit of being kind and supportive, managers often fall into the trap of Ruinous Empathy when offering praise.

This well-intentioned but misguided approach can actually hinder growth and development. Understanding how ruinous empathy affects praise is crucial for leaders aiming to practice Radical Candor effectively.

Listen to learn how to avoid the dangers of ruinously empathetic praise and provide feedback that truly helps your team grow.

Radical Candor Podcast Resources

Appreciation (That’s What The Money’s For!) | Radical Candor 5 | 16

Radical Candor Podcast: A Tale Of Ruinous Empathy

Beyond ‘Sorry’: How to Apologize and Mean It 6 | 22

DARVO | Wikipedia

Being ‘Nice’ Instead of Kind is One of the Biggest Mistakes Well-Intentioned Bosses Make

Praise & Ruinous Empathy | Radical Candor

Tips to Avoid Ruinously Empathetic Praise | Radical Candor

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Radical Candor Podcast Tips

• Make sure your praise is specific and sincere. Get your facts right so that people know what they did right and why it was good so they can repeat their success in the future.
• If something isn’t good and you say it is good because you don’t want to hurt the person’s feelings, you’re doing far more damage to the relationship and also to that person than if you’d given them kind and clear criticism.  Insincere praise is not nice. If people don’t know what didn’t work and why, they can’t apply that learning next time. And whether you intend it or not, you’re setting them up to fail. As my son’s baseball coach says, can’t do right if you don’t know what you’re doing wrong.
• Focus on the good stuff! The purpose of praise is to show the person what to do more of so they can repeat the success. It’s not so much about making them feel good. It’s about showing them what’s possible and showing the team what’s possible. You can think about praise as like putting your foot on the accelerator and criticism is like putting your foot on the brake. If you don’t mean it, don’t say it.

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. 

[00:00:09] Amy Sandler: I’m Amy Sandler. Today we are talking about something that a lot of you listeners have been going back to season one to explore. And that is ruinous empathy and praise. How can praise be ruinously empathetic? 

[00:00:25] Well, if you’re new to Radical Candor land, welcome, first of all. And second of all, ruinous empathy is when you fail to tell someone something they need to know. So when it comes to praise, this means you may just say something that you could say to your dog, like, good job. And Kim, you have said, even though we are all dog lovers on this podcast, if you can say it to a dog, it’s not really feedback. Tell us more. 

[00:00:53] Kim Scott: Well, you know, people, it turns out, they’re, they understand language better than dogs do. And they also, uh, they benefit more from specific and sincere details. And so when you’re offering someone praise, you don’t want it to be just a throwaway. 

[00:01:17] There was someone who I worked with at Apple and she would ask a question of people when we were teaching this class, managing at Apple. She would ask participants in the class to think about how much time they spent preparing to give criticism. And then to think about how much time they spent preparing to give praise. And it turned out that people spent a lot of time making sure they got the details right about criticism. But they didn’t spend any time on praise.

[00:01:51] They just kind of gave a, you know, oh, good job. And that wound up offering people praise either about the wrong thing, or praise about something they didn’t really care about, or praise about something they hadn’t even worked on. Or even offering them praise about something where in fact, they had done a bad job which really can be very terrible. 

[00:02:19] Amy Sandler: Kim, as you’re talking about praise and criticism, can you just give us a clear definition in your mind of what exactly praise is versus criticism and why you framed it that way? I know we’ve talked about appreciation and gratitude versus praise. We’ll put those episodes in the show notes, but what is your definition of praise to help us get started?

[00:02:41] Kim Scott: I mean, praise is the good stuff, like, uh, there’s the bad stuff and there’s the good stuff. And you want to make sure you’re noticing the good stuff, uh, and talking about the good stuff, uh, as much as you’re, or even more than you’re focusing on the bad stuff. You want to focus on the good stuff. I realize good stuff is maybe not a super precise, uh, definition, but I find it actually kind of helpful.

[00:03:06] A lot of things are going right all the time. And when you’re working with people, they’re doing things that you appreciate. They’re doing good things and taking that extra beat to notice the things that are genuinely good is really important. Uh, and also when you pretend things that are not good, when you pretend that the bad stuff is good or okay, you actually do a lot of damage.

[00:03:36] When we talked about this, when I was, uh, when I was at Apple, we would often start with an image of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And then we would talk about how um, uh, Bush said, you know, Brownie’s doing a heck of a job. And Brown said later that the worst thing that ever happened to him in his career was that phrase.

[00:04:07] When it was so obvious he was not doing a good job. Uh, and so that’s like a very specific example of why, uh, it’s important to notice the good stuff and point out the good stuff and not pretending the bad stuff is actually good or okay. 

[00:04:24] Amy Sandler: And for folks who are wondering, just to be clear, this is the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, uh, or FEMA, Mike Brown.

[00:04:33] Kim Scott: Yes. Mike Brown.

[00:04:33] Amy Sandler: Under President George Bush. 

[00:04:34] Kim Scott: Often called Brownie. Uh, and who really, his response was catastrophically bad. And it, you know, I’m sure he was under a lot of stress and I’m sure that Bush was just trying to be a good boss. But it did not do any good to say he was doing a good job when in fact he had done a disastrously bad job and everybody knew it.

[00:04:57] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. Sort of more shameful, it’s hard to judge the intent of an action like that. If your boss praises you when you’ve done something bad, it can seem like passive aggressive. You know, it could actually seem to be intentionally harmful. I know certainly that it would cross my mind, like, what is he getting at? You know what I’m saying? And my boss got up and was like, hey, this is catastrophically terrible thing you did. Great work on that. 

[00:05:23] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:05:23] Jason Rosoff: I would be like, what is the motivation for doing that? 

[00:05:28] Kim Scott: Yeah. I don’t, I, that wasn’t my read was, uh, of the situation, but who knows, was that there was a reluctance to acknowledge how bad it was from the whole administration. And that was, 

[00:05:45] Jason Rosoff: I’m not saying your read is wrong either. 

[00:05:46] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah, yeah. 

[00:05:46] Jason Rosoff: Just to be very clear. I’m just saying like my, like, I’m sort of suspicious of anything that seems like especially insincere praise. 

[00:05:54] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:05:55] Jason Rosoff: Um, and so like my mind would have immediately gone to the person who did that has some bad motive. 

[00:06:00] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:06:00] Jason Rosoff: So it wouldn’t have even worked as a way to reassure me. 

[00:06:03] Kim Scott: Yes. Yeah. I think that is a good point. 

[00:06:06] Amy Sandler: I’m really curious, like, what guidance would you have for a leader if somebody on their team has messed up? Everyone knows there’s been a big mistake. How would you recommend they be supportive publicly and privately? Like, what is the guidance that would have been more effective so that we didn’t land in either ruinously empathetic praise or manipulatively insincere praise? What would you recommend had been done there?

[00:06:32] Jason Rosoff: I mean, for just speaking for myself, I’ll just say I would have been happy if my boss had said, we haven’t done nearly a good enough job in responding to this and we’re aware of that. But I, uh, you know, Brownie has all of my support to do a good job, and we’re gonna, like, we’re gonna make sure that he has all the resources he needs in order to be successful, like, I’m behind him 100%.

[00:06:58] Because I think it’s hard, especially if you’re in charge of something that isn’t going well. It’s very easy for, like, the pocket veto to start to be used by people who think they know better than you. And in a disaster like that, where it’s so complex, that’s even worse, right? You’re likely to perpetuate harm.

[00:07:16] If people feel like, oh, the leader of this task, even though it hasn’t gone well so far, doesn’t have the support of the, you know what I’m saying? 

[00:07:23] Kim Scott: Yeah.

[00:07:24] Jason Rosoff: It doesn’t have the full throated support of the president in this case. It would be very easy for the sort of like chain of command to break down, and for things to go even worse.

[00:07:34] So I think that would have been helpful to me, to call me to the mat and say we haven’t done nearly a good enough job but you’ve got my support and we’re going to be giving the resources necessary to turn this ship around. 

[00:07:43] Kim Scott: I think that is, that would have been very, a much better response to just acknowledge that this is not going well would have been actually a more supportive thing. 

[00:07:52] Another thing, I mean, if I’m going to put myself in Brown’s shoes. What I think I would have wanted my boss to do would be to give me an opportunity to stand up and to say, look, I am sorry, this has gone badly, people are suffering and I know that, you know, first of all. So for me to criticize myself rather than, uh, having my boss kind of offer these, what I would have wanted.

[00:08:23] And then my boss can say, I, you know, I’ve got, I’ve got, I’m going to support these efforts, like, but for me to say, I know this is going catastrophically bad, I know people are suffering, uh, I, uh, and here’s what I’m going to do, here’s a couple of things I’m going to do to begin to, to, to fix this problem, I think is what I would have wanted to do.

[00:08:47] I think very often, there was another, there was another incident, uh, in, in my career where, uh, a leader launched a product and it did not work the way it was supposed to work. It was a very public thing. And this leader’s boss asked him to own the problem publicly and the leader refused to do it. And I think what that leader wanted was for the boss to own it.

[00:09:21] Uh, for the CEO of the company to own it. And I think the CEO of the company was like, this is on you. You need to own it. And he refused to own it. And he, he wound up, he wound up getting fired. Uh, and so I would love to get your all thoughts about that, like, should the CEO have said, you know, we made a mistake and, and allowed the buck to stop with him? Or should he have insisted that the person who was in charge of the product stand up and say, I own this mistake? What do you all think? 

[00:09:55] Amy Sandler: I think it’s interesting you mentioned that because I noticed Jason, and when you were talking about the, the Brown FEMA episode that you said, we, you used the word we in the frame of how the leader would have spoken about that. So is that, was that intentional on your part? 

[00:10:11] Jason Rosoff: I think I was using the royal we there in that he, what I was imagining him saying is the administration is going to make sure that the head of FEMA has all the resources they need in order to be successful. Um, so I wasn’t using we to frame the mistake. I, and I, and when I said, when I described what had gone wrong, I said, this has not gone well.

[00:10:30] This is like, that our response has not gone well. I guess what I would say is I think it’s a, it’s a both and. I, I, I think it’s weird for either one of those two people to try to abdicate responsibility for a problem that has happened in the product. 

[00:10:45] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:10:45] Jason Rosoff: Uh, I do think it is reasonable for the CEO to expect from one of their senior lead, from another senior leader in the company to treat it as an obligation to take responsibility for the mistake. And also for the CEO to say, um, and ultimately it’s my responsibility to make sure these things go right. So here’s what, here’s what I’m going to do differently going forward. And here’s what, you know, the product person is going to do differently going forward. 

[00:11:17] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:11:18] Amy Sandler: It also seems like there’s the private conversation, you know, we talk about private criticism and public praise, so I’m assuming there’s also the private conversation and then there’s perhaps the unified front where, you know, both parties take responsibility.

[00:11:33] I mean, I, I agree with Jason, I see it as a, as a both and. And I, I also, if I were in the role of the product person, I, it would be very helpful for me to have, like Jason did in the FEMA example, that my boss has their support. They know I’m going to do a great job, etcetera. 

[00:11:51] Kim Scott: Yeah. But what if your boss doesn’t know you’re, I mean, you’d like in the FEMA case and in this other case, like these leaders screwed up terribly. Like, like catastrophic failure.

[00:12:05] Uh, uh, and so I think what the, what the boss in that case can say is I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna make sure that this person has the resources they need to fix this. But, but that doesn’t mean, I mean, the boss may not be able to stand up. That may be ruinously empathetic or even manipulatively insincere praise. This person has my full confidence. This person can’t have the leader’s full confidence if they just had a catastrophic failure. And so I think that, that offering praise in the face of catastrophic failure is highly risky. 

[00:12:43] Amy Sandler: Well, and that’s where, I mean, I guess just to get granular on, what is support and resources versus praise? We’re not praising, you know, you always talk about both criticism and praise. Being specific and sincere for praise, context, observation, result, next steps. Sounds to me like this, these kinds of larger issues are much more systemic, and they’re not just a one off piece of criticism and praise. These are a much bigger failure more than kind of one, one mistake.

[00:13:17] Kim Scott: I think that’s right. I think also, I mean, and we should talk about praise. What we’re really talking about now is, uh, a leader who gave, uh, praise in, in the story of FEMA when, when, there was a problem. So don’t do that. I mean the TLDR of this part or TL don’t listen is if somebody screwed up, public praise is not going to help them fix that screw up.

[00:13:42] That’s, that’s basically the point here. I think that if you are the person who screwed up rather than asking for your boss’s support, uh, you know, it’s so tempting in the face of a, especially a catastrophic screw up. It’s so, tempting to deny that you did anything wrong and then to play the victim, you know, reverse victim and offender, which is really what, you know, when, when Brown said the worst thing that ever happened to him was George Bush’s praise.

[00:14:14] Like, how about the worst thing that ever happened to you was that you left so many people in such dire situations. So I think it’s really important if, if you’re the person, if you’re, if you’re going to put yourself in Brown’s shoes. And we’ve all, I mean, maybe not had such public and catastrophic failures, but we’ve all had failures in our, in our lives.

[00:14:36] I think the first thing is, is to be aware of what you did wrong and then to acknowledge what you did wrong as publicly as possible. I think that’s, and then to, you know, and then to accept the consequences and make amends and then apologize for what you did wrong. Uh, that’s what I call AAAAAC in Radical Respect.

[00:14:57] If you, if you have caused harm in some way, shape or form. And I think that that is not most people’s instinct. Most people, when, when they have failed publicly and catastrophically in some way, tend to do what Jennifer Freyd calls DARVO, deny, uh, and then go on the attack and then play the victim, reverse victim and offender.

[00:15:22] And so I think that, uh, that, and, and, you know, very often when somebody’s doing that, they’re, they’re, they seem sad, you know? And so it’s tempting to try to make everything better with praise. And that is ruinously empathetic praise. It does more harm than good.

[00:15:48] Amy Sandler: So to be clear, when we’re talking about ruinous empathy and praise, it sounds like there’s at least two possibilities here. One is where the actual praise itself was not specific and sincere. It was like, good job. You know, great use of fonts in the presentation. You’re sort of looking for something that’s, that’s good.

[00:16:09] And you’re, you’re not, you’re not finding it. Um, it also sounds like praise could also become manipulatively insincere when you’re trying to say something. And maybe this was, you know, we don’t know the intentions in the FEMA case, but we’re trying to be supportive and we’re ignoring sort of the elephants in the room.

[00:16:30] And so we’re, we’re dancing around it. So when we talk about ruinous empathy versus manipulative insincerity, for me, the biggest difference is about our own intentions. Am I not saying this because I don’t want to hurt their feelings? Ruinous empathy. Am I not saying the thing because I’m more focused on myself or I’m trying to game the system, etcetera, manipulative insincerity.

[00:16:50] So maybe Jason, I’ll turn it over to you. Like, where does praise fit into ruinous empathy versus manipulative insincerity? How have you thought about that? 

[00:16:59] Kim Scott: Sorry, before, before, I just want to, I want to add something to what you just said. 

[00:17:03] Amy Sandler: Yeah. 

[00:17:04] Kim Scott: Because what we’re talking about now, ruinous empathy and praise, is, is praise that is really criticism. So let’s maybe, maybe when you answer the question, Jason, uh, and in fact, let’s pause before we move on to manipulative insincerity, if you don’t mind. Let’s talk about ruinously empathetic praise that’s maybe not such a dramatic example like, like heck of a job, Brownie, but the kind of ruinous empathy praise where you really are saying the thing because you care about the person and you want them to feel good.

[00:17:35] And, uh, and it’s just kind of a throwaway, like, like good job. You know, somebody gets finished doing a presentation that they’ve worked really hard on and you want them to feel good. And you actually think it was good. And you go up and you say, great job. And then you walk away. Like that doesn’t really, like, do it..

[00:17:55] Jason Rosoff: The only thing I have to add to that is, I think that sometimes we think that saying something nice is just good. It’s a good thing to do. But I think the downside of that, and I had some experience with this, is if that’s sort of, if you’re sort of like drive, if it’s a drive-by insincere praise, what you don’t have in that case, is you don’t get a chance to see the person’s reaction, because even if you think it was actually a good job, even if it’s not ruinously empathetic, um, because 

[00:18:29] Kim Scott: It’s not manipulatively insincere. It may be ruinously empathetic. 

[00:18:32] Jason Rosoff: Right, right. If it’s not manipulatively insincere. If the person did not feel like they did a good job, let’s say their perception of the situation was that it went terribly wrong, or they made some awful mistake, and they’re sort of sweating that. And then you come by and you’re like, great job.

[00:18:49] And they’re feeling like something went really wrong. Now the praise again has, does not have the desired effect, right? Because the person is like, what do you mean? Like, you must’ve noticed that that thing, like, you can’t seriously mean what you’re saying. 

[00:19:04] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:19:04] Jason Rosoff: Because like, you must’ve noticed that thing that I did wrong. But if you had just said, not great job, but you did a really good job of keeping everybody’s attention during like, while you’re presenting statistics and that’s really difficult to do. And I noticed that everybody was in rapt attention. And you, in your mind, you’re like, oh, my mistake was, you know, that I called one of this, you know, one of the board members by the wrong name in the middle of the presentation.

[00:19:28] Like then at least you’re like, oh, relief, right? Like I did something right in the presentation. Something went specifically right. Um, and maybe, you know, my mistake went unnoticed, but at least you don’t feel like those two are like, they’re not at odds anymore because the specificity drives your understanding.

[00:19:46] Kim Scott: I mean, you wouldn’t walk up to someone after a presentation and say, terrible job, and walk away. Right? You just, I mean, that feels very instinctive that you wouldn’t do that right? And so for the same reason, I mean, it’s slightly different because it’s positive, it’s not negative valence. You wouldn’t, it doesn’t help someone to walk up to them and say, great job, and then walk away.

[00:20:11] Uh, but, but to say, I really loved the part in that presentation where you did this or that. Uh, that is that, so you want to be at, your specificity will make your praise feel much more sincere. Vague praise tends to feel insincere. 

[00:20:29] Jason Rosoff: And specificity helps you avoid running afoul of a person feeling stressed about something and you not recognizing that. Because, like, your reaction, the reaction that you get to, like, you did a really good job at this part is, is not usually a thank you. It’s sort of, there’s like a reflection that happens after that. But, like, what do you even say to, to great job? You know, like, thanks? 

[00:20:54] Kim Scott: Yeah, thanks. Yeah, that’s, that is what you say, but it like doesn’t, it’s just, it’s just like word salad, word fluff, word cotton candy. Um, it’s not especially good for you. In fact, maybe it’s even bad for you. Cotton candy. 

[00:21:08] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, I, I think that’s right. I think that’s, that’s often how I, how I feel about it when it happens, when it’s happened to me. My, the other thing that I was reflecting on is just like, it’s useful, useful to reflect on the purpose of praise, right?

[00:21:22] The purpose of praise is to help someone do, do more of a thing that they did well. And it’s really, it’s insufficient to the task to say good job, because it’s really hard to know what to do, like, what, what actually to do more of in that situation. And I think like, if, if we rewind to the beginning of this, like, one of the reasons why people don’t think ruinous empathy and praise can go together, I think, belies the fact that people actually don’t think that praise is all that useful.

[00:21:54] You know what I’m saying? Like the perception that somehow praise is not about development or accelerating someone’s growth, or like the same reasons why we would criticize because we want someone to develop, we want them to grow, we want them to get better. We should have the same motivation for giving praise.

[00:22:11] Kim Scott: Yes, yeah, exactly. It’s not just a throwaway. Alright, so now we should answer the question that Amy asked, which is, what’s the difference between ruinously empathetic praise and manipulatively insincere praise? 

[00:22:27] Jason Rosoff: I mean, to my mind, the, you answered it really well already. But to restate what I think I, I heard you say is manipulatively in insincere praise is praise, giving someone praise when you don’t actually think they’ve done something good. 

[00:22:42] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah. 

[00:22:43] Jason Rosoff: You think they’ve done something wrong. Um, and you, you offer them praise instead. And I think the hope is, and maybe this is what you’re, what you were saying, your read of the, um, the, the FEMA situation was sometimes you, you might hope to manipulate that person into feeling better by doing this. 

[00:23:03] Kim Scott: Yeah. 

[00:23:03] Jason Rosoff: You know they feel bad, and you hope to manipulate them to feel, to feel, to feel better by offering them praise. But that so easily backfires. 

[00:23:13] Kim Scott: Absolutely. I mean, I would say, for me, the classic example of manipulatively insincere praise is, it is something that often gets, in fact, somebody I worked with once would tell this joke about a person who got sent to finishing school.

[00:23:35] Uh, and she got sent to finishing school because she tended to say, F you. She tended to, and that was offensive to people. And she learned at finishing school to say, oh, bless your heart. Or how nice, you know, and, and so someone afterwards, after this finishing school, came up to them and, to this person, and started saying these horrible things to her and she kept saying, how nice?

[00:24:10] And, uh, and, and so don’t like, that kind of, when, when, if you don’t think it’s nice, don’t say how nice. And if you are thinking you jerk, don’t say bless your heart, uh, you know, because that is, that is an example of manipulatively insincere praise. Or like another, uh, the, the kind of opposite example, I don’t know if this is the opposite example, but when I first moved from New York to California, somebody sent me a cartoon, and it was a map of the United States.

[00:24:43] And there was someone in New York saying F U and thinking, have a nice day. And someone in California saying, have a nice day, but thinking F U. And I was like, oh gosh, like California seems very dangerous to me. Uh, because I’d rather know what, you know, if they’re thinking F U, I’d rather know that they’re thinking F U so I can address it.

[00:25:08] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, I, I, it’s sort of funny as you’re saying that I was thinking of, um, there are, in California, there’s a highway that goes right down the coast. It’s called the Pacific Coastal Highway Route 1. And there’s like no guardrails. Yeah, absolutely gorgeous. But there’s no guardrails on this entire road.

[00:25:26] Kim Scott: It’s scary. 

[00:25:27] Jason Rosoff: And it feels like, and it feels like that map, it was like a metaphor for what you saw on that map. Which is like, it’s very dangerous and a little scary, but also kind of beautiful and wonderful in its own way. 

[00:25:38] Kim Scott: But it’s not beautiful. I mean, I think Route 1 really is beautiful and wonderful, but this, like, people, um, hiding from you what they’re really thinking is, is all, is scary.

[00:25:49] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, that’s not good. But I would also argue that the, the New York version isn’t great either, which is,

[00:25:54] Kim Scott: No, I agree. I agree. 

[00:25:55] Jason Rosoff: When we don’t say, when we’re dishonest in our communication, or we’re trying to hide how we really feel in our communication in some way, whether it’s intentional or not. It makes things a lot harder than they have to be. I feel like a lot of my life, uh, can be summed up by, we made that a lot harder than it needed to be. 

[00:26:15] Kim Scott: Yes. Yes, that is true. It is, I do appreciate, I do appreciate, you know, when I, when I go home to the South where I was raised, I do appreciate that people are really nice to each other, uh, in, in public, uh. And, uh, because I was raised there, I often, often wonder whether they mean it and that’s tiring. So I think the more we can focus on the good stuff and, and genuinely mean it, the better. All right, Amy, did we answer, did we answer your question? I’m sorry, I took us on a little bit of a detour there. 

[00:26:49] Amy Sandler: Oh, well, I was, uh, I was not, um, connected to the internet, so I trust it was a lovely detour. Um, so I am blissfully unaware. I think there, there’s a couple of things I want to make sure are clear, um, that I, that I understand, especially since I missed a few sentences. So thank you, Nick. First of all, that radically candid praise is specific and sincere. So praise that is not specific and sincere, like good job on the presentation.

[00:27:18] Like somebody might mean good job, but it may land as manipulative insincerity if they feel like they didn’t do a good job. That said, a lot of times people will be like, hey, that was great. And they really mean it. And so I think it’s just important to name that that might help someone feel good, but that’s not the purpose of praise, which is to show them sort of what good looks like or why that was good. I just want to make sure that we’re clear on that. 

[00:27:43] Kim Scott: Yeah, and just to double click on that point. If you really mean it was a good job and you say, good job, that’s an example of ruinously empathetic praise. If you actually think they did a terrible job and you say, good job, that’s an example of manipulatively insincere praise.

[00:28:01] Jason Rosoff: And you say, bless your heart.

[00:28:03] Kim Scott: Bless your heart, I could tell you really tried on. One example of that, one time, so, as I’ve talked about before on this show, I, I’m obsessed with California wildflowers. And, and, um, and just, I love to spend time outside in the yard. And when, when the kids were very little, they were like one, uh, and I was just embarking on this journey.

[00:28:30] I had a yard that was just chock full of weeds, chock chock full of weeds. Uh, and, and I had invited these, uh, these people from the California Native Plant Society to come by and give me some advice on how to, how to start up reducing the weeds and growing more California poppies. And I was sitting in the backyard with the two kids in my field of weeds.

[00:28:59] And I was kind of watching the kids and picking the weeds at the same time. And these two people came in and they were just horrified at the state of my backyard. You could see it on their faces. And they were like, what are you doing? And I was like, well, I’m watching the kids and picking some weeds. Like, what does it look like I’m doing? And, and one of the people looked at me and said, well, I guess your priorities are in the right place. You need to focus on your kids. 

[00:29:27] It was, they were trying to pray, they were trying, but it was so mean. I would have rather said, gosh, you know, this is a catastrophic field of weeds and it’s going to be hard to get rid of. You’re not gonna, you’re not gonna get it sitting there doing what you’re doing, picking weeds, you know, while you’re watching your kids. 

[00:29:47] Amy Sandler: Well, it’s so interesting, Kim, because as you’re sharing that, it’s making me wonder, like, when we talk about Radical Candor isn’t nitpicking, like, I don’t know the context, were they there to advise you on how to make more beautiful wildflowers?

[00:29:58] Kim Scott: Yes, they were there to tell me how to get rid of these weeds. And I mean, what I was doing was not going to work. Uh, and that was what I needed to hear, actually. So somebody else came in and was like, you are, you are boiling the ocean sitting there picking weeds, while you, uh. 

[00:30:18] Amy Sandler: So it was like they were praising your commitment to your kids, but missing the, the field of weeds, which was really the point of.

[00:30:25] Kim Scott: Well, and it was so obvious what they were really thinking. Like this is a, this is a shit show here. And I would have, I would have much rather they just said, wow, this is, this is really. 

[00:30:37] Amy Sandler: We got a lot of work here. Are your kids ready to start weeding at age one? 

[00:30:40] Kim Scott: Yeah, they were not, you know, like, like, you know, you’re, what, you’re kind of wasting your time, so it just, you know, rather than trying to find the, I mean, they were trying to be nice, which I appreciated. But, but it’s not not like when it’s, when there’s an obvious problem, like it’s not nice to like, try to, like, help the person say. 

[00:31:04] Amy Sandler: So, I, what you’re saying is bringing up a couple of stories. First of all, I want to make sure we talk about our good friend, Bob, because no episode would be a Radical Candor episode without coming back to Bob, good old Bob.

[00:31:17] When you talk about the origin story of Radical Candor and the guy in the street says, I can see you really love that dog. 

[00:31:24] Kim Scott: I can tell. 

[00:31:25] Amy Sandler: Purple flag. Thank you. I can tell you really love that dog. That was how you’ve described they showed care personally for you. So like, what would you have wanted the wildflower people to say to you to establish care?

[00:31:41] Kim Scott: I think, uh, you know, we are thrilled that you’re committed to, to growing California poppies here. And it’s clear there’s a lot of work to be done and we’re here to help you do that work, to give you some advice, you know. 

[00:31:56] Amy Sandler: That’s really clear. 

[00:31:57] Kim Scott: I was not, I had not invited them over to give me parenting advice. Uh, and so, and it left me feeling like, oh my gosh, I just, I can’t be a good parent and grow poppies at the same time. And I wanted to do both, you know. 

[00:32:17] Amy Sandler: I mean, I find that story really touching and it just, it just shows how our worry about saying something or, actually ends up causing even more harm, you know, which is what you talk about, the peril of ruinous empathy.

[00:32:33] Kim Scott: Yeah. I mean, I think it’s really, it’s great to try to get on the same side of the table with a person. Uh, but, and I like the guy that said, I can tell you really love your dog. Like I can tell you really love your kids, but man, you got a lot of work to do in your yard would have been for me much, much, much better than, well, you know, your priorities are in the right place. It left, it just left me feeling kind of hopeless about the task at hand. 

[00:33:01] Amy Sandler: Yeah. So can we go back to Bob? 

[00:33:03] Kim Scott: Yes. Let’s do it. 

[00:33:05] Jason Rosoff: What about Bob? 

[00:33:07] Amy Sandler: Bob, there was a lot of, this is good work, Bob. Good job, Bob. Would you call, so that was in fact, ruinously empathetic. You’ve described that as ruinous empathy, but that was really, was that ruinously empathetic praise or was it really more manipulative insincerity when you reflect on it? 

[00:33:24] Kim Scott: So if we go back to the Bob story, and for those of you who, who’ve heard it, feel free to fast forward 30 seconds. And for those of you who haven’t, I’ll give the short version. Bob was doing, he was introducing a lot of sloppy errors in his work.

[00:33:40] And, and I liked Bob. He was smart, charming, funny, and he was also kind of sensitive. And so I would say, he would hand stuff in to me, there was shame in his eyes. And I would say something to him along the lines of, oh, Bob, you’re so smart. You’re so awesome. This is a great start. Maybe you can make it just a little bit better.

[00:34:01] So I would, I would, and I usually tell that story in the context of ruinous empathy, because I really did like Bob and I really didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but I really did not think he was doing great work. So that, so, but I was trying, like, my intentions partly were good. I, I liked him and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings.

[00:34:23] That’s why I, I give that part of what was going on for me ruinous empathy. But if I’m honest with myself, there was also something more insidious going on, because Bob was popular and Bob was sensitive. And so there was part of me that was afraid if I told Bob in no uncertain terms that his work wasn’t nearly good enough, that Bob would get upset and maybe he would even start to cry and then everybody would think I was a big you know what.

[00:34:52] And that was the manipulative insincerity part of my praise. And these motivations often go hand in hand. Partly I really did like Bob, I really didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but also partly I was worried about my reputation as a leader and I didn’t want people to think I was mean. And that was not about Bob, that was about me.

[00:35:12] And that’s why that was the manipulative insincerity part of that sort of feedback, I don’t know what you would call it, fail with Bob. Both the praise was insincere and a little bit manipulative. Uh, and maybe you can make it just a little bit better was, you know, not really, that was unclear criticism, which is not kind in the end.

[00:35:40] And then that result was that Bob, I wound up having to fire Bob. So I thought I was being so nice, you know, not so nice after all. And it wasn’t, I mean, it was bad for Bob, it was terrible for Bob, but it was bad for the whole team. Because they were frustrated, because they weren’t able to do their best work, because he, he was turning his stuff in late, and they were having to spend so much time redoing his work, so they were getting more and more frustrated.

[00:36:08] It was bad for their relationship with Bob, and it was bad for our results. We didn’t get stuff done. Uh, and so that is, you know, a lesson in the story of the, the dangers of ruinously empathetic praise slash manipulatively insincere praise, uh, and the failure to deliver the kind, clear criticism.

[00:36:33] Amy Sandler: Jason, anything more to add on manipulative insincerity and praise? 

[00:36:37] Jason Rosoff: I just want to say that if you look into your heart, everybody can find an example of a time that they behaved like you for their, for their version of Bob. So maybe some tips that can help you avoid falling into that trap. 

[00:36:53] Amy Sandler: One quick tip I would love to hear. What do you say to people who feel like, I just don’t have time to think about everything that went so well, like why that presentation was good. Can I just send them a quick Slack and say, hey Kim, I really liked your Radical Candor talk, it made me think, is that enough? Like, like, I guess I’m wondering, like, what’s beyond good job is, does it always have to follow context, observation, result, next steps? Or can there be some bridge of, you know, a quick, uh, chat or a Slack, even though we typically recommend not putting our, our comments into, uh, asynchronous land. 

[00:37:31] Kim Scott: So I think one thing I would say is just be specific, like, think of a detail, show don’t tell. If you can’t think of anything else, like, don’t say great job, show one thing you liked about, uh, about whatever it is that you saw.

[00:37:46] I think also, in general, uh, public praise is really, is, uh, again, there’s exceptions, but in general, it’s a great idea to praise in public. And if you’re worried about, oh, it takes up too much time, like, the, the, one of the benefits of public praise is that it shows everyone what great looks like. And it helps everyone improve. And so you get more of the good stuff. And you know what? That is efficient. Praise is super efficient.

[00:38:17] Uh, and, and, uh, so I think that, uh, don’t tell me you don’t have time to praise if it, like, the point is you want, your job as a leader is to paint a picture of what is possible. And by leader, that doesn’t mean you have to be the boss of the team But if you want to show some leadership, paint a picture of what’s possible and a great way to paint a picture of what’s possible is to point out the things that the people around you are doing that are really great, We can all do these things that way. So that’s what I would say about making, a specific tip on praise, like make sure that you’re praising the right thing and that you’re, you’re doing it as publicly as possible.

[00:39:02] I think in addition to that, it’s fine to go by and have a conversation, um, you know, one on one conversation with someone in private or in public. Uh, and if you want to add writing, doing something in writing, awesome. Like, uh, but, but again, I think making sure that you touch base with the person and that you’re praising the right thing.

[00:39:27] One of my favorite stories comes from Dick Costolo, who, uh, and this is, this is in Radical Candor. He, there was a big launch at Twitter. And he stopped by an engineer’s desk late at night and the, uh, and the engineer was explaining some feature of the launch. And Dick was really excited about this feature of the launch.

[00:39:53] And so the next morning after the launch, they were having a whole company all hands and Dick mentioned this engineer by name, and said he worked on this feature and it’s so awesome, and I love it. And he was trying to offer public praise. Like he was trying, uh, to, to express gratitude and appreciation to this engineer and he was trying to show the whole company like what good looked like. There was one problem.

[00:40:20] That engineer hadn’t actually built that feature, and Dick didn’t know it, and so he was trying to, like, throw this guy a bone, and instead he threw him under the bus. Because now all the engineers who did work on that feature thought this guy claimed credit for it. Now this guy has to send an email out to the whole company. Actually, I didn’t work on that. And, and Dick used to tell this story when he taught, uh, managing at Twitter. And it was such a good example of make sure you’ve got your facts straight when you offer praise. 

[00:40:55] Jason Rosoff: Love it. 

[00:40:56] Amy Sandler: So let’s get into our checklist tips to start putting Radical Candor into practice. 

[00:41:02] Jason Rosoff: All right, tip number one, make sure your praise is specific and sincere. Get your facts right, and that you spend time, uh, getting those details right so that people know what they did right and why it was good so they can repeat their success in the future. 

[00:41:17] Kim Scott: Tip number two. If something isn’t good and you say it is good because you don’t want to hurt the person’s feelings, you’re doing far more damage to the relationship and also to that person than if you’d given them kind and clear criticism.

[00:41:33] Insincere praise is not nice. If people don’t know what didn’t work and why, they can’t apply that learning next time. And whether you intend it or not, you’re setting them up to fail. As my son’s baseball coach says, can’t do right if you don’t know what you’re doing wrong. 

[00:41:54] Amy Sandler: Tip number three, focus on the good stuff. The purpose of praise is to show the person what to do more of so they can repeat the success. It’s not so much about making them feel good. It’s about showing them what’s possible and showing the team what’s possible. You can think about praise as like putting your foot on the accelerator and criticism is like putting your foot on the brake. If you don’t mean it, don’t say it. 

[00:42:18] Kim Scott: For more tips, check out our YouTube channel, where you can not only listen to this podcast, but also watch dozens of other Radical Candor videos. To read the show notes for this episode, head to RadicalCandor.com/podcast. Praise in public, criticize in private. If you like what you hear, please rate and review us wherever you listen to your podcasts.

[00:42:42] If you have criticism for us, email it to podcast@RadicalCandor.Com. We are the exception to criticize synchronously. We are excited for your asynchronous criticism. Take care, everybody. 

[00:42:56] Amy Sandler: Bye for now.

[00:42:57] 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.

[00:43:18] 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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