Ever tried giving someone feedback about their tone…without sounding like the tone police? This episode was sparked by a listener wrestling with just that—and let’s be real, it’s something we’ve all tripped over. Join Kim and Jason as they dive into the messy, nuanced world of tone: why it matters, how to talk about it without getting judgmental, and what to do when someone’s words are technically fine but their delivery leaves the room on edge.
Listen to the episode:
Episode at a Glance: Navigating the Nuances of Tone in Feedback
Using the CORE framework—Context, Observation, Result, and Expected next steps—they break down how to be specific about what happened, how it landed, and how to move forward without sounding accusatory or vague. Tune in to hear Kim and Jason unpack real-life examples, share the coaching that worked (and what didn’t), and explore how bias, culture, and identity play into how tone is received.
Checklist: Navigating the Nuances of Tone in Feedback
- Describe, don’t judge. Replace labels with specific descriptions. Instead of using labels for tone, describe what actually happened. Name the vocal cues, the body language, and the impact those things had on others. Also, extend a little grace. Be open to the idea that the impact may not have been fair or may not have matched the person’s intent.
- Check for bias. Be aware of how identity, culture, communication styles, and cultural norms within a team can all shape how we perceive tone. Before reacting, ask yourself: If the situation were slightly different—if the person were a different gender, from another team, or if you weren’t leading the meeting—would you still feel the same way about it?
- Redirect, then follow up. In meetings, if a team member says something inappropriate or uses an unprofessional tone, use neutral redirection when appropriate. Think of it as a way to help them course-correct in the moment. If redirection isn’t possible or effective during the meeting, follow up privately afterward. Use the CORE framework to unpack what happened, explore how their words or tone may have been perceived, and help them get back on track.
Radical Candor Podcast Resources: Navigating Tone in Feedback
- Transcript
- The Evil Translator & The Fundamental Attribution Error | Radical Candor Podcast 7 | 21
- How To Measure Feedback | Radical Candor Podcast 6 | 41
- The Word Police | Radical Candor Podcast 6 | 25
- The Importance Of Communication In The Workplace | Radical Candor
- 8 Ways To Fix Communication Issues In The Workplace | Radical Candor
- Are You Giving Biased Feedback? 5 Ways To Overcome Protective Hesitation | Radical Candor
- How To Give Candid Feedback With the Radical Candor CORE Method
- Radical Candor Community: CORE Course
- Radical Respect Newsletter
- Textio
The TLDR Radical Candor Podcast Transcript: Navigating Tone in Feedback
[00:00:00] Kim Scott: Hello everybody and welcome to the Radical Candor Podcast. I’m Kim Scott.
[00:00:10] Jason Rosoff: I’m Jason Rosoff.
[00:00:12] Kim Scott: Today we’re gonna talk about a nuanced and really seriously challenging topic. How to give someone feedback about their tone without becoming the tone police or being biased in some way, especially when the words themselves are technically fine, but the way that they’re being delivered causes friction or annoyance or just unnecessary difficulty.
[00:00:40] Jason Rosoff: We received a really thoughtful question from a listener who’s been using CORE, context, observation, result, and expected next steps, but is struggling with how to apply it to tone because it can feel more subjective, and let’s just get into what the person writes. So they write, I love CORE and use it regularly. But I trip up when it comes time to use it for issues of tone, specifically, I’m referring to times when a person’s words are fine, but their tone is snippy and or off-putting.
[00:01:08] Kim Scott: Yes. I think like off-putting is actually a good word here, but let’s come back to that.
[00:01:14] Jason Rosoff: Okay. I have one direct report in particular who has good intentions, prioritizes efficiency, and is extremely direct. These are good things in my industry. Her words are never inappropriate, but her tone tends to sound curt and it comes across as rude or self-righteous to her colleagues. When I give her or anyone else feedback about tone, I find it hard to get specific because we’re in a more subjective area. Her response is usually that people need to stop being so sensitive and if people don’t like how she says things, she considers that their problem. This is a very common,
[00:01:45] Kim Scott: That’s hard.
[00:01:46] Jason Rosoff: This is a very common thing I think with people who tend to, toward having a tone that can be interpreted as more sort of aggressive is that they usually don’t see a problem with it.
[00:02:00] Kim Scott: Yeah, or they assume that someone else’s feelings are their problem, which in some senses is true. They are, it is their problem, but it also becomes,
[00:02:08] Jason Rosoff: It’s not entirely inaccurate. Yes. Uh, while I think tone is very important part of demonstrating you care personally, I’ve also seen this issue of tone weaponized against women, especially women of color, when they are direct and decidedly not submissive. Your tone was too sharp, snippy, aggressive, sometimes feels like another way of saying, I’m uncomfortable, so the problem must be you.
[00:02:27] Kim Scott: Yes, totally.
[00:02:30] Jason Rosoff: This struggle also applies to how to give feedback about passive aggression, which often involves nuances in tone. I have a few colleagues who are doing the drive by passive aggressive comments in meetings, and I know I’m not quick enough to shut down these comments as they happen. How can I more effectively respond publicly in a meeting when someone uses a tone that threatens to shut down the conversation?
[00:02:51] Kim Scott: Such a good question. And you know, every time I do a Radical Candor talk or a keynote, I think of this. ‘Cause I always suggest to people, especially when they’re soliciting feedback to ask a follow up question or to repeat back what you think you heard. And immediately the, the tone of voice that is potentially a problem. And if you take my advice is, you know, you gimme some feedback and I’ll say, gimme an example, Jason. Tell me, you know, now I sound like I’m cross, I’m, I’m skeptical, but I mean, I’m doing what, you know, the advice is, or I’ll say, oh, do you mean like when I, blah, blah, blah. You know, and I, I say it back in some kind of sarcastic tone of voice and now all of a sudden I’m sort of saying the right thing, but I’m saying it in a way that indicates the wrong thing.
[00:03:54] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, and it’s interesting because tone is very observable, right? We’re very good at picking up tone in the way people deliver things. I actually think that this is directly related to some of the research that came out during the pandemic about how having a phone conversation sometimes is actually more informative about a person’s state of mind. Because while it’s really easy to misinterpret facial expressions and body language, and it’s also somewhat easier for people to mask those subtle changes in tone we’re very sensitive to. So this is like as human beings of like our radar is up.
[00:04:33] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:04:34] Jason Rosoff: For tone. Uh,
[00:04:36] Kim Scott: And so like an example might be, Amy and I have talked about this on the podcast before, but I often misinterpret her facial expressions. What I’ve learned to say is, rather than you look skeptical, which is not really a criticism, what I’ll say is, Amy, what does it mean when you’re frowning your brow? And she’ll usually say, it means, I’m thinking.
[00:05:01] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, and I think this sort of, an interesting point of departure for this conversation is, is, I wonder, the way that the person wrote their note, and this is edited for television, so it may have said it slightly differently in the original version, but the way that they wrote their note, like it’s not entirely clear to me that this person knows when what they’re saying is actually coming across this way,
[00:05:27] Kim Scott: Not the person about whom they’re talking.
[00:05:30] Jason Rosoff: Correct. Yes, that’s exactly what I mean. So, I actually wonder if it might, if one useful thing might be to ask the person, you know, I, I observed a change in your tone there. Like, what does that mean? Is that, are you communicating something with that or is it coincidental?
[00:05:49] Kim Scott: How do you feel about that word?
[00:05:53] Jason Rosoff: I feel like it’s a bit of a value judgment. Somehow, curt is less value judgmental than snippy to me, if I was gonna pick a word to describe. I think, I’m trying to put myself in the shoes of the person who wrote us this note, because I think their intention is very clearly to help this person. And I think the way that they framed it is more about how other people react to the way this person talks. But I wonder if a way in is, is to focus on, I know this is how I feel about it, but I wanna express, like when you said this in this particular way, I felt like there was an implied criticism. You know what I’m saying? Yeah, go ahead, Kim.
[00:06:39] Kim Scott: Yeah, I think where we’re moving towards is, rather than saying you or your tone was, I felt, or I think Jason felt, you know, when you said this, I think Jason felt that, or I felt that. So we talk about this all the time, that like the I statement, what you’re trying to do with an I statement is let one person know how you feel. It’s like holding up a mirror and, and you’re helping them understand the situation through your perspective. You’re not saying you’re right, or through someone else’s perspective, and you’re not saying, you are right, or that other person’s perspective is right. What you’re saying is this is what’s going on in the room. And let’s figure out how to make something happen in the room.
[00:07:30] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, and I think that’s why the non-judgmental language is really helpful, because one, I’m aware as we’re saying this, that if the person who wrote us the note is correct, the person who they’re trying to help, their reaction might be like, you’re annoying and you’re too sensitive. Why are you talk, why are you talking to me about your feelings? So like I, I’m aware that the impact statement might be really helpful. So we talked a little bit, when you said, this is how I reacted to that. And I think, again, by making it, by focusing on your own reaction or something very concrete that happened in a meeting or something like that, I think talking about the impact, the impact was, I felt like, you know, when you responded that way, I felt like you really didn’t wanna hear what I had to say.
[00:08:18] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah. So like instead of saying your tone was snippy.
[00:08:22] Jason Rosoff: Yeah.
[00:08:22] Kim Scott: Saying, and this is not much longer, but in the meeting when you said, we’ve already been over this, your volume went up and your voice sounded tight. You know, describe what your observation was and then share the result. John flinched and stopped speaking after that. And then what’s the next step? You know, let’s talk about how to express your frustration that we’ve already had this conversation without necessarily shutting down input from others.
[00:08:51] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. I certainly think that there’s value in an approach that focuses on the goal. So like I think that getting this out is gonna be really useful. But as someone who has previously suffered from, uh, and I feel like I’ve mostly outgrown this, but I feel like there was a period of time in my life where I tended to be a bit more arrogant in the way that I communicated things. And I think the kind of conversations, the coaching that helped me the most was where I had a really good boss who basically was like, what were you hoping to accomplish in that meeting? And the question is like, do you think your approach to that conversation got you closer to your goal, or do you think it helped? Or do you think it might have hurt your objective there? And that’s like appealing to enlighten self. This is not about feelings or anything else, right? It is just about like, what were you hoping to get out of that, and do you think that your approach is working? He was able to gimme very similar types of examples of like, you know, when you said this or like when you would often make the mistake of assuming other people understood something and if they didn’t understand it, I would be like, everybody should know that,
[00:10:10] Kim Scott: This isn’t that obvious.
[00:10:12] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. It was very obnoxious in retrospect, immature thing for me to do. But I feel like at that point in my life, an appeal to my emotions would not have worked. Like it wouldn’t have gotten through to me. I, I just wouldn’t have understood why that even matters. ‘Cause from my perspective, I didn’t appreciate how I was expressing an emotion by responding in this frustrated, sort of arrogant way. I thought I was being perfectly logical by saying everybody should understand this. So like my perception of myself was let, let’s say imperfect. And so it really, what focusing on the goals really helped unlock that conversation for me. Because I realized I was often not getting the kinds of outcomes that I was looking for. And, and my arrogance had put me in this position of being like, well, I haven’t tried anything and I’m all out of ideas.
[00:11:06] Kim Scott: Yeah, and it probably wasn’t arrogance because you’re really not an arrogant person. It was probably like frustration. I notice sometimes with my son, he’ll say things in a way that some would interpret as arrogant, but I come to understand, in his case, his mind works faster than his mouth.
[00:11:28] Jason Rosoff: Yeah.
[00:11:29] Kim Scott: And he’s so frustrated by that. He’s really frustrated by himself. But it can come across sometimes as arrogance.
[00:11:37] Jason Rosoff: And that’s why I think this, like approaching it with curiosity,
[00:11:39] Kim Scott: Not that I’m trying to cast you in the role of my son.
[00:11:42] Jason Rosoff: I feel like that’s a compliment. The idea here that I think is so valuable, it is like you want to, one of the reasons why you might be struggling with CORE is just the frame that you’re taking. So like CORE is really good for content structure, but it doesn’t tell you what point of view you should be using in order to present the feedback to somebody. And so maybe like one piece of advice is, think about changing the frame. So instead of focusing on the emotion that happened, or even the conversation being shut down, because maybe it was their goal to shut down the conversation because they were actually feeling quite frustrated with how it was going. Instead, focus on their goals and objectives, their results, and, and say like, because as their boss, you probably do have examples of times where it’s like, well, then we had to redo that conversation again because we didn’t actually hear from John during the discussion. We didn’t have his input, and as a result we made a decision that was, was not effective. That, and ultimately like that’s on you. Like your, your job is to get the best outcome possible. We didn’t get the best outcome in that situation.
[00:12:45] Kim Scott: Yeah. And I think the exact inverse can be, like, there was a time in my career where I tended to sound insecure, uh, probably reacting to having been given feedback that I sounded arrogant. But I would stop and I would say, maybe I’m wrong and, you know, all this stuff. And rather than telling me that my tone was insecure, which would not have helped the situation, my boss said to me in the meeting, so that’s the context. Observation, when you kept saying maybe you were wrong, the result was that, that people came away really unsure whether you cared about this, you know? And then the expected next step, what he, what he said in the end was, he said to me, Kim, you are really good at your job, but you are not so good at your job that you can afford to run yourself down this way. Stop doing that. And it was like really helpful for me to hear that. But if he had said, your tone is insecure, try to be more confident, unhelpful.
[00:13:57] Jason Rosoff: So we’ve been talking a little bit about like maybe some strategies or things that might be helpful, things to try, but I, I think it’s important to take a moment and just point out that there are some things people should definitely not do in a situation like this. And I, I say this because, we don’t necessarily appreciate how language can be coded. So like the words that we choose to describe something can be coded. ‘Cause to your point, like projecting confidence is often a piece of criticism. So like, seeming insecure or not projecting confidence is a piece of criticism that women often receive because the way that our, like socially we code confidence is, is male.
[00:14:35] Kim Scott: And also if you act too confident as a woman, you get criticized for that.
[00:14:40] Jason Rosoff: It’s the double bind.
[00:14:41] Kim Scott: Yes. All kinds of problems.
[00:14:43] Jason Rosoff: I just, because of this, as the writer noted, because this topic can easily veer into bias, we actually wanna check both our language and our intent, right? It’s not just what we say, but why we chose that language. So we wanna avoid coded language like saying, the person sounds aggressive or shrill or abrasive, or using the word asshole to describe them. This is both bad because of the sort of coding of the language, but also because it’s similar to not sounding confident, it’s just very unclear, like what are you supposed to do with that kind of feedback?
[00:15:15] Kim Scott: Yeah. So rather than saying, watch your tone of voice, you sounded like an asshole, you wanna be more specific rather than using that kind of coded language. And this is top of mind for me because, I’ve gotten feedback recently, I have gotten feedback that it sounds like I’m criticizing the men, but not the women in the room. One of the things I try to do is ask myself, if I’m gonna use a word to describe a tone, I’ll ask myself, would I use this, that same word if I was talking to someone of a different gender, a different race, a different age, whatever.
[00:15:49] Another thing that I’ve been doing recently if I’m, if I have time to prepare for the conversation, is, is to use AI. AI will tell you what the, what, you know, on average the world, it may not be right, it may be hallucinating, but it’s worth checking in and getting its perspective. And there’s some tools that are specifically designed for this, like Textio, but sometimes I’ll go to Gemini and then Claude and then ChatGPT and say, is this word, is this word coded in some way. And they’ll have an opinion.
[00:16:22] Jason Rosoff: There’s so much like cultural subtlety to like, you know, whether it’s age or physical location or sort of family of origin background, like, I feel like all these words that we use as sort of shorthand, that we think they, when I say asshole and you say asshole, like we mean the same thing. We, we often are probably, it’s imprecise, like the language is imprecise. We’re, we’re like trying to describe something. So like the advice you, you gave is exactly right, which is like be, be more specific. I think beyond being specific about what you’re observing, so tone, as you said before, Kim, it could be volume, it could be sort of like the tightness of somebody’s voice. Like we can get more specific as to what we’re describing. And combining that with impact, so saying, you know, I, this is what I observed, this is the impact that that thing had. And can we talk about, you know, maybe, if you do that in a nonjudgmental way, you’re not necessarily saying, oh, you used the wrong tone. You are saying, when you spoke in that particular way, this was the result that it had.
[00:17:30] Kim Scott: Yeah, it had this impact on this person.
[00:17:32] Jason Rosoff: Right, exactly.
[00:17:33] Kim Scott: The impact that it had on that person is gonna affect the work that you’re trying to do. The problem might be just that you hurt them, and that’s problem enough, but if you don’t care about that, there’s these other more practical impacts on your ability to deliver on this project or whatever.
[00:17:53] Jason Rosoff: Yep.
[00:17:54] Kim Scott: I wanna reassure the person who wrote us this note, we know that you never would say you sounded like an asshole.
[00:18:00] Jason Rosoff: I think this person clearly went out of their way to try to be as specific as they possibly could in the way that they described the situation. So they’re on the right track. And I think the hard part, especially about, going back to that word off-putting. When you have someone on the team who communicates in a way that seems to set other people on edge, like they, they, they tend to sort of tense up. It’s really easy, I think, to sort of fall victim to the fundamental attribution error and, and assume that the person means, you know what, I like that they mean it. That they intend for that result to happen. And it’s very clear that the person who wrote us this note is not in that position, but I just want to acknowledge and commiserate momentarily having been this person and worked with people who sort of fall into this pattern of behavior. It’s useful to take a step back and remember that, you know, there’s a high probability it’s not this person’s intent.
[00:18:55] Kim Scott: Yeah. Extend a little grace to the, which it seems like the person who wrote us a note is extending grace, but even if you extend grace, if they’re having this impact on others and they need and they can change it. I mean, another sort of nuance is that sometimes you might need to talk to the others, like the feedback I got that I was not likable and I was not doing anything that was necessarily unlikable. It was, other than showing up as a woman and being competent, you know?
[00:19:27] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. Yes. Here’s my guess, sort of reading between the lines a little bit. My guess is that this person has done a reasonably good job of assessing, like it’s not just the other people.
[00:19:38] Kim Scott: Yeah. It’s this person.
[00:19:40] Jason Rosoff: Yes. Like the this, this person’s behavior is, is having this impact. But I think that’s why I wanted just talk about the things we shouldn’t do. Because I think, not assume, like extending some grace, not assuming that it’s the person’s problem like that, that it is in fact this person’s communication style. Like checking our own, you know, our own biases and discomfort and being willing to at least explore the possibility that other people are not giving, are not doing the reverse, extending the person that, the grace that they’re due.
[00:20:10] Kim Scott: Yeah. I think another thing that can help here is to look for times when the person is getting it right. Praise. Praise. Because very often this person, I mean, let’s assume, that very often this person who sometimes seems incredibly curt and is offending people with their brevity, but sometimes they get it just right. And so pointing out to this person when they get it, the context, observation, result, explore next step, when they get it right, it may be even more helpful than when they get it wrong. So in this morning’s meeting, that’s the context. When you said that you were very interested to learn more about why the person thought that, the result was that you could see the person’s shoulders relax and you had a brief conversation like 30 seconds, but you got to a shared understanding much more quickly. So that was the result. Do more of that.
[00:21:14] Jason Rosoff: I, I think that’s exactly where my head was going next.
[00:21:17] Kim Scott: Great minds, Jason.
[00:21:18] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. I think because when I think back on my own experience with this and, and getting coached on it, one of the things that I remember most clearly was walking out of a meeting and my boss turning to me going, that went much better, didn’t it?
[00:21:33] Kim Scott: Yeah. Yeah.
[00:21:34] Jason Rosoff: I remember it both because it was sort of like, feeling a feeling of pride of like, address, trying something new and having it succeed, but also because I felt intuitively that had it gone better. But if he had not pointed it out, if he had not verbalized that, that it had gone better, I think there would’ve been a doubt, you know, there would’ve been a question in my mind like, did, was it just me? Or did it actually go better? And, and so like the praise piece is, is I think is gonna be your best friend to get outta the hole.
[00:22:03] Kim Scott: Yes, absolutely. So what about private versus public? How do we deal with that?
[00:22:11] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, I think the end of our listeners’ note made mention of this idea that there’s a thing that’s happening in meetings, which is not just the person that they initially wrote in about, but other people on the team seem to have a habit of making passive aggressive comments in a discussion. And the person writing in said, you know, I feel like I’m not acting quickly enough to address those comments, and as a result, it’s creating an environment. We’ve all been in a meeting like that.
[00:22:45] Kim Scott: Somebody says something that offends someone else. The other person rolls their eyes. Everybody notices both things and you’re leading the meeting and it’s unclear how to deal with it.
[00:22:58] Jason Rosoff: Yes. And, or the, you know, like I, I, other things like, you have a discussion that is, you know, fruitful or impactful, but maybe someone makes a comment of like, oh, that, that, we could have gotten that done much quicker. And it’s clearly not intended to like actually help, there’s no helpfulness to it. But it is like clearly intended to, and so now you’ve got a situation where the people who are productively participating feel criticized, even though it was indirect.
[00:23:28] Kim Scott: Sarcasm can be deadly to relationships and to productivity in a meeting.
[00:23:35] Jason Rosoff: Yeah.
[00:23:35] Kim Scott: And it can be funny, also. That’s why it’s so hard.
[00:23:40] Jason Rosoff: I feel like maybe part of the reason why we work well together is that I think we can both appreciate the sarcastic wit. But like, I think it’s a really important, really good question, which is, can you address it in, in the moment or do you address it after the fact? Because it’s a little bit tough, I think, to your point, that someone insults somebody else or says something sort of critical or passive aggressive and the other person acknowledges it, but in a passive aggressive way.
[00:24:07] Kim Scott: Yeah.
[00:24:07] Jason Rosoff: It sets a, it creates a vibe, you know what I’m saying? Like it creates a feeling in the meeting of we are pretending that everything is okay.
[00:24:15] Kim Scott: Yeah. It’s false harmony.
[00:24:16] Jason Rosoff: I think the, I feel like when I have been in a situation like that where it got bad enough where I wanted to address it, I think I one time, this is back at at Khan Academy. I remember like we were in a meeting with Sal and the team was very frustrated with him because he is sort of, it was doing a little bit of seagull management. He was swooping and pooping on something that we were working on. And the team was like very, like very quietly frustrated. Sal was very quietly frustrated. And I remember saying something like, this feels really awkward. It feels like there’s something unsaid, you know, something that’s going unsaid here. I remember saying like, you know, turning to the person on my team and saying, you know, I know you well enough to know that you’re frustrated by this. Like, what’s on your mind? It was really interesting because I turned to Sal afterwards and I said the same thing, like, I know you’re not happy either. Like, you know, what are we missing? Like, what aren’t, what aren’t we saying here? And I remember the feeling of like the room had become pressurized.
[00:25:25] Kim Scott: Yeah. You provided a release valve.
[00:25:27] Jason Rosoff: I opened the window and fresh air came in. So the reason I give that example is because this was clearly not one person. This is clearly like the whole meeting had taken on a, an unhelpful, unproductive tone. And I was just sort of like the, and I, I actually got a laugh when I was like, this is super awkward. Like this meeting is super awkward. Kind of got a chuckle. And I think that gave people a little, just like a second of coming back to themselves, you know, like being like, oh, we’re, this is real. We’re feeling this thing. We’re not ignoring that there’s,
[00:25:56] Kim Scott: We’re not ignoring the sarcasm. The thing about passive aggressive behaviors, it’s very hard to address it. Or the thing about tension is that nobody wants there to be tension, and so we tend to ignore it, and then it gets worse. It gets more tense, not less.
[00:26:20] Jason Rosoff: Going back to the beginning of like, this is all subjective, but I was like, I knew the people in the situation well enough. Like, Sal was doing a thing that he had a habit of doing, which was like asking kind of pointed questions about things. And like there’s like a thing
[00:26:33] Kim Scott: He, he was a dog with a bone.
[00:26:34] Jason Rosoff: Yes. And it was very polite, like, you know what I’m saying? Like on the surface it was very polite. And I could tell that the team was like, you know, asked and answered, you know, with no badgering the witness. That’s what it felt like. The team felt like they were being treated like hostile witnesses and being asked the same question 10 different ways. Um, it was not the words, it was just like, it, it was the, it was the way that it was being delivered.
[00:27:01] Kim Scott: Yeah. It’s just giving voice to the, what your interpretation of the tone. To me, this is awkward, you know?
[00:27:07] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, yeah. It is.
[00:27:08] Kim Scott: Really good.
[00:27:09] Jason Rosoff: So I think that’s, so I was gonna say if it’s like, if it’s a group thing, I think you might try and approach like that. I think if it’s one person who’s making an offhanded sarcastic comment like on the way out of a meeting or something, I would probably approach that person individually and say, you know, I’m not sure, I’m not exactly sure what you intended when you said that at the end of the meeting. But to me it came across as sort of sarcastic or passive aggressive and I, I think my goal is to understand what’s underneath that? Like, help me understand what you meant. Like why did you say it that way? Like what is actually going on? What are you feeling?
[00:27:43] Kim Scott: Yeah. Maybe it wasn’t passive aggressive. Maybe there was something else going on, but ask, doing that in a spirit of inquiry. You know, as you were talking, as you were telling the story, there was one time when I was at Google that I saw this done very well, publicly, but in a very supportive way. This was a big meeting. It was a TGIF meeting, so there were, I don’t know, a couple thousand people in the room. And Sergey, one of Google’s co-founders said something and he offended 30% of the people in the room. He didn’t mean to, but I remember the tension. I remember the feeling. And Eric, who was CEO at the time, stood right next to Sergey, put his arm around his shoulder and said, I think what Sergey meant to say was, and then he said it very differently, and everybody burst out laughing. Nobody was offended and Sergey said, thank you. And so sometimes it feels like ignoring it is doing someone a favor, but the real favor to them is to say it again for them, what you think they really meant.
[00:28:45] Jason Rosoff: So I think that there’s a couple of strategies here. One, is that sort of like address the room. Another one, is like help the person out. So like if it’s an individual who’s making a mistake, you can try, I wonder if what you meant to say was, I think something like that. But I, I do think that sometimes it’s not feasible or you’re unsure enough about what’s going on that it doesn’t feel appropriate to address in the moment. But I do think that it’s important, especially if it’s a repeated behavior, to address it privately at a minimum. Just to say, like, I’ve noticed this happening in meetings and I wanna understand where it’s coming from. Because it’s definitely leaving me feeling like there’s something going on here that I don’t understand.
[00:29:24] Kim Scott: Yes. Yeah. Yeah. That is, those are words to end on. Like there is something going on here that I don’t fully understand. That’s really what this is all about, what tone is all about. Is like, I don’t, you know, it made me feel a certain way, but I don’t understand what you were really trying to say.
[00:29:40] Jason Rosoff: Yeah.
[00:29:41] Kim Scott: So, are we ready for the checklist or do we have another?
[00:29:43] Jason Rosoff: Let’s do it.
[00:29:45] Kim Scott: Okay. Tip number one, describe, don’t judge. Replace labels for tones with as clear as possible a description of what exactly happened. So you can describe the vocal cue, the body language, and then the impact that those things had on others. And be open to the fact that maybe the impact wasn’t fair, like you want it to extend a little grace.
[00:30:12] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. Because tip number two is check for bias, which is, we need to be aware of how identity, culture, communication styles, cultural norms on a team can shape our perception of tone. And to ask ourselves if we change the situation slightly, like if the person was a different gender or a different team, a meeting where I wasn’t leading it, for example. Like if I was in the audience and this person said it, would I feel the same way about it?
[00:30:41] Kim Scott: Yes. And then tip number three is redirect, then follow up. So if, if, if what happens is in a public meeting, don’t think of this as public criticism of the person you’re throwing the person a lifeline. I think what they really meant, if that’s comfortable, if that feels like the right thing to do, it’s not always the right thing to do. And then afterwards, after the meeting privately, you can use CORE to unpack what happened and how it landed and how to, how to get things back on track. Those are our tips. I, before we end, I’d love to talk about something that happened over the past week. Do we have, do you have another couple of minutes, Jason?
[00:31:25] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, let’s do that.
[00:31:27] Kim Scott: So this is not about this episode, but I feel like there are things happening in the world that must be talked about, and this is one of those things. So one of the things that I love about having written Radical Candor and doing this podcast with you and Amy, Jason, is that it gets to talk to all different kinds of entrepreneurs and managers. And you know, I’m in Silicon Valley, so a lot of the entrepreneurs I talk to happen to be in tech, but not all of them. In fact, one of the people who I have most enjoyed speaking with over the last, really 17 years, is a guy who helps restore like church courtyards and parks to, to plants that are, that work well with our environment. So plants that are, you know, don’t take up too much water, aren’t gonna create fire hazards, but also will protect from mudslides.
[00:32:26] All of the, all of the things. And I really admire this guy, I was walking by him and his team as they were doing some work in the neighborhood and they were laughing and I said, why don’t we work like that more often? They’re just wonderful human beings. And about nine days ago at 7:30 in the morning, ICE showed up at his house and took him away. Uh, and wouldn’t tell him where they were taking him, wouldn’t tell his family where they were taking him, wouldn’t allow him to call his family. And so for seven days, his family had no idea where he was. He has a life-threatening illness and didn’t have his medicine. And, and we were all in a panic about whether he was gonna survive this ordeal.
[00:33:24] He had working papers, but he was taken back to the country where he was born. He was deported. And he could fight it, he could probably, but he’d, why bother? Like he’s built a successful business. Like why is he gonna come back here and pay taxes here when he can build a great business there and pay taxes there. And him, I don’t blame him. I, I wouldn’t want to come back either if I were him. But I am, I’m just, I’m so ashamed of the way he was treated by this country. And, and I just wanna hold some space for him and his family. I was there, I went to visit his family over the weekend. He has a beautiful five-year-old granddaughter and 7-year-old grandson. He called while I was there and he is so close to his grandchildren, and I could see the tears in his eyes. He doesn’t know when he is gonna get to see them again. I think it needs to be discussed a little bit.
[00:34:25] Jason Rosoff: I think what you just did is maybe the most important thing, which is to bear witness to, to recount the story. I feel, something that I’ve noticed is that there’s a lot of bad stuff that happens in the world. And when the bad stuff is happening to you, it’s very easy to feel ashamed and alone. Because there’s a part of us that always questions like, what did I do to deserve this? Like, why is this thing happening to me? And when someone else just bears witness to your story and is able to put words to it and say, this is the thing that happened to this person that I know, and they’re, they have, they’re of value. This person is of value. They mean something to me. They mean something to their community. When we do that, I feel like it helps to make real the abstract badness, and maybe most importantly, it can really, you know, it, even if indirectly help this person and their family feel like that their, their suffering has not gone unnoticed. Because the way that this person was treated was incredibly dehumanizing.
[00:35:37] Kim Scott: Yeah. Deliberately cruel.
[00:35:39] Jason Rosoff: Yes. And the ultimate humiliation is that it’s all done in secret.
[00:35:45] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:35:46] Jason Rosoff: I feel like that’s like the knife through the heart of the person who’s already suffering, is to have their suffering be secret.
[00:35:53] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:35:53] Jason Rosoff: Especially when it, it’s so clearly like, it’s clearly unfair.
[00:35:59] Kim Scott: It’s obviously unjust.
[00:36:01] Jason Rosoff: Yes. Exactly.
[00:36:02] Kim Scott: You know, what happened was so obviously bad and, and it’s, you know, unfortunately it’s all, I mean, it’s just, it’s gonna get, it’s gonna get a lot worse. This, the tax bill, you know, spending a lot of money to do a lot more of this. And I think it’s really important that we all, that we don’t just ignore it.
[00:36:26] Jason Rosoff: That we don’t become sort of try to inure ourselves to the, to, to like the actual depravity of, of, of, it’s like, the phrase banal, the banality of evil comes to mind. Because it’s like the individual things you, you sort of feel like, you know, the, like, the intent to deport criminals and, and, and all this other stuff.
[00:36:48] Kim Scott: This man is not a criminal. Like that’s the, the problem with that language is that it gets, that’s part of where the shame comes from. And this, this is, this is a good family man who built a good business. He’s an entrepreneur. He works really hard. He is totally honest.
[00:37:04] Jason Rosoff: Yep.
[00:37:04] Kim Scott: Like, what the fuck?
[00:37:05] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, and I, I think the reason why I was saying that is like the, the ideals mask, the banal, like the true banality of the actual evil that is being done. Because like, you know, first thing in the morning, dragging them out of the, this person out of their house, not telling their family where they’re going. The actual implementation, it matters, it really matters. But it’s very easy, I, I think it is too easy when we don’t tell these stories, when we don’t share our own personal experiences of running into the actual implementation part of policies like this, we allow for the mythology of the, sort of like the intent to be louder than the actual reality of what is happening.
[00:37:48] Kim Scott: Yeah, yeah. And the banality, I mean, there, this, I had that same thought, the reason why I responded. So one of the things, you know, ICE has a website and, and you can go and locate, supposedly, somebody that’s been, but of course it returned, you know, there’s nobody, so call this number, you call that number and it hangs up on you. It’s like, it is enraging. And then you go to the center and the door’s locked and they won’t talk to you. Like it’s, it is, it’s so enraging. I can’t even, I couldn’t even, I think I just told you about this today, now that I know he is, at least he is arrived and he is okay. Like I was really afraid he was gonna die in detention. And I was talking to a friend of mine who’s an immigration lawyer and he said that the, the other thing that’s sick about this is that now you feel glad, you know, you, he, he’s, he’s now not in this country anymore, but you, you get a phone call from him and you feel, like it’s so sick.
[00:38:53] Jason Rosoff: Yeah, and I, I think paying attention to that, it is just so important because when we don’t focus on those details, it’s just very easy, it would be very easy to imagine that the story is a one-off, and this isn’t like, you know, like this is just a couple of, but one of the things that I noticed in you’re telling of the story is I’ve heard a dozen other stories just like this.
[00:39:15] Kim Scott: Yes. Just, this is happening every hour, every day.
[00:39:18] Jason Rosoff: Yes. Like, almost exactly the same, like dragged out of bed. No one knows what’s going on. They can’t find any information. None of the phone lines work. The website doesn’t work. Like the same exact thing. This story is happening over and over again, and so at some point we have to come to grips with the fact that this is by design.
[00:39:39] Kim Scott: This is the banality of evil. They’re trying to make it feel this way.
[00:39:43] Jason Rosoff: I think that a part of me that is a patriot, disgusted.
[00:39:48] Kim Scott: Yes.
[00:39:48] Jason Rosoff: Like, like what?
[00:39:49] Kim Scott: Yes. And the part of me that is a patriot, I wanna try, and I wanna also end on at least an attempted note of we can do better and people are doing better. There was a great story in the Times about an immigrant named Carol who was detained by ICE in Missouri. And when her colleagues at work learned what had happened to her, and they printed T-shirts, Bring Carol Home. They raised $20,000 to cover her legal expenses. So people can do the right thing. People can absolutely do the right thing, and I think a lot of the people who this man worked for will help him get on his feet. But I sure wish he were still here, laughing in the neighborhood so that I could, you know, I miss him. That’s all. I wish you were here.
[00:40:44] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. Well, on that note, our encouragement to everybody is to find a way, whether,
[00:40:52] Kim Scott: To help someone who needs it.
[00:40:53] Jason Rosoff: Yeah. To help some, to do the right thing. I think the, the audience of this podcast, like one of the reasons why people listen is because we talk a lot about like, in whatever small way, trying to do the right thing, to do right by people. So go out and do the thing that you wanna do anyway, which is to do the right thing.
[00:41:10] Kim Scott: Thanks so much, and I hope everybody has a great day.
[00:41:16] Jason Rosoff: If you would like to see show notes for this episode, head over to RadicalCandor.com/podcast. We really appreciate your feedback, praise and public and criticize and private. If you like what you hear, please rate and review us wherever you’re listening to your podcast, and subscribe to the podcast if you haven’t already. And if you do have feedback for us or a question for a future episode, you can always email us at podcast@RadicalCandor.com. We read every one.
[00:41:45] Kim Scott: Thanks so much, everybody.
[00:41:46] Jason Rosoff: Take care.
[00:41:48] Amy Sandler: The Radical Candor Podcast is based on the book, Radical Candor: Be a Kick Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, by Kim Scott. Episodes are written and produced by Brandi Neal, with script editing by me, Amy Sandler. The show features Radical Candor co-founders Kim Scott and Jason Rosoff, and is hosted by me, still Amy Sandler. Nick Carissimi is our audio engineer. The Radical Candor podcasting music was composed by Cliff Goldmacher. Follow us on LinkedIn, Radical Candor the company, and visit us RadicalCandor.com.
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