The One Skill Leaders Need Today (from Radical Candor)

MURIEL WILKINS: Hey folks, it’s me, Muriel. Where I live in the US we are deep in the summer. I’m enjoying mine, and I hope you’re making the most of yours. We’re hard at work on a brand-new season of Coaching Real Leaders for you this fall. We’ve got some exciting episodes up our sleeves, and I can’t wait for you to hear them. But in the meantime, I want to share a fun conversation I had on one of my favorite podcasts, Radical Candor, a show that gives you the tips and tools you need to succeed at work without losing your humanity. In the episode, I joined hosts Amy Sandler and Kim Scott to offer my advice to listeners who wrote in with questions about the challenges they’re facing as leaders in today’s hybrid work world. We also debate the most important skill leaders need to be successful. Kim and I also share some funny stories about our first business ventures when we were kids. I really enjoyed this conversation, and I think you will too. Here’s more from our friends at Radical Candor.

KIM SCOTT: Hello everybody. Welcome to the Radical Candor Podcast. I’m Kim Scott, co-founder of Radical Candor and author of Radical Candor and Just Work. Think “justice,” not “working all the time.”

AMY SANDLER: Good clarification. I am Amy Sandler, your host for the Radical Candor Podcast, and today we’re really excited. We are welcoming Muriel Wilkins to our first radically candid conversation of 2023. So welcome, Muriel. We are so excited to welcome you and have you bring your voice into our podcast. For those of you who don’t know Muriel Wilkins, you are a C-Suite advisor and executive coach with a nearly 20-year track record of helping senior leaders and teams take their effectiveness to the next level. She’s the host of the Harvard Business Review podcast Coaching Real Leaders and the co-author of Own the Room: Discover Your Signature Voice to Master Your Leadership Presence. Muriel, when did that book, Own the Room come out?

MURIEL WILKINS: 10 years ago, which is hard to believe.

AMY SANDLER: Wow.

KIM SCOTT: Wow.

AMY SANDLER: That is amazing. Well, I’m excited to check that out. I think that’s more important than ever. As we get started, there are a couple of areas of commonality between us. First of all, I will say, and Jason Rosoff is not on our podcast, so just to make it clear that being on this podcast, attendance at Harvard Business School is not a requirement. But it turns out that we were all at Harvard Business School at the same time in the mid-90s. Kim and I did not know each other. We were in the same class and you were, it sounds like a year behind us.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yes.

AMY SANDLER: We also did not know each other.

MURIEL WILKINS: We did not.

KIM SCOTT: But now we do.

MURIEL WILKINS: Now we do.

AMY SANDLER: And now we do. And it sounds like your business partner was a classmate as well. Wonderful. The other thing that leapt out at me as a point of commonality between you and Kim, I was reading that you started your first business at age six.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yes.

AMY SANDLER: When you offered to save your family members change in a safe place in exchange for a penny a week.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yes.

AMY SANDLER: Although you were unaware this was called a bank. Is this true?

MURIEL WILKINS: This is very true. I had this little green jewelry box, and it’s funny you said I was unaware it was called a bank. Later on, people questioned me and said, “Are you sure it wasn’t a Ponzi scheme of some type?” There’s a thin line, right? But I was like, I would find change and I would save it in my little thing. And then I started telling people, “Well, if you’ve left change there, let me hold onto it for you.” You can just pay it. Who knows what would’ve happened to that bank these days?

AMY SANDLER: Yeah.

KIM SCOTT: And did you give interest to your family members?

MURIEL WILKINS: I don’t know what I did exactly.

KIM SCOTT: But you did safety, it was pure safety.

MURIEL WILKINS: I was just like just pure safety. And I think, oh my gosh, okay, I’m going to reveal a lot here. So I think underneath it all, I was just sort of hoping they’d forget that they gave me their change, and that was my plan.

KIM SCOTT: You know what? That’s a good plan. When I was at Google, Google got a billion dollars a year in revenue from people who had tried out AdWords. And as far as we could tell, never checked in again. So I think they forgot that they had set up some $5 a month-

MURIEL WILKINS: Right. I mean-

KIM SCOTT: … experiment.

MURIEL WILKINS: I mean, look-

KIM SCOTT: A billion dollars a year. That bank-

MURIEL WILKINS: The whole subscription model, right? When I think about how much I am contributing to the economic forces of this world we live in by the number of subscriptions that I have forgotten to cancel.

KIM SCOTT: Yes. Yeah.

AMY SANDLER: Maybe we might need to create a little recovery group with that, because I feel like I am the lead person of signing up for subscriptions as well as digital courses that I sort of forgot at the time.

MURIEL WILKINS: That’s right.

AMY SANDLER: Well, Kim, you had a, I don’t know how to characterize it. You had some experiences as a bank teller at an actual bank, if I’m not mistaken.

KIM SCOTT: Yeah, well, I was much older than six. My business career also began when I was six, except mine began less in a more, what shall we say, typical way. I had a lemonade stand, like a lot of six year olds. And I got in the paper with my lemonade stand, and then the lemonade stand got stolen. And so, that was an early lesson in the dangers of too much publicity. And my father was really proud of myself that I had made $5 one day, which seemed like a huge amount of money. And my father told me he was going to start charging me for amortization of the refrigerator. And I thought, “Oh my gosh, business is so hard, I can’t do it.”

AMY SANDLER: And that’s why you went to become a writer because you knew how to smell amortization at a young age.

KIM SCOTT: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: She also knew what a hostile takeover felt like.

KIM SCOTT: Yeah, exactly. Exactly. All kinds of early lessons. But my experience as a bank teller was not a good one. I don’t add well in my head and my mind tends to wander when faced with a boring task, which surely being a bank teller is a boring task. And I gave away-

AMY SANDLER: And just to be clear, Kim, a boring task for you. Some folks might find some-

KIM SCOTT: Yeah, you’re right. You’re right. I am not detail oriented and I mess up. And my way to protect myself from my screw-ups is to say it’s boring, but it’s probably not boring. It’s probably just that I was screwing up. Anyway, so I gave away a lot of the bank’s money that summer because the errors tended to get caught in one direction but not the other. And my boss at the time kept telling me, “You can do it if you just try.” And now all of a sudden her sort of cheerleading me and encouraging me was very discouraging. Because now not only was it like a math failure, it was a moral failure. I wasn’t trying.

AMY SANDLER: You weren’t trying.

KIM SCOTT: I didn’t care. Yes. And I always try to remember that when I’m coaching someone who’s not doing well in a job, maybe they just really should be doing a different job, which I should have been mean… It would’ve been much kinder for her to tell me, “Kim, why don’t you go mow some lawns or something. That might be a better job for you.”

MURIEL WILKINS: If you had not gone through the experience, maybe you would’ve never been convinced of that until this day.

KIM SCOTT: That’s true.

MURIEL WILKINS: Maybe you thought you should have had a career as a bank teller.

AMY SANDLER: A great unanswered.

KIM SCOTT: That’s true. That’s true.

MURIEL WILKINS: That the road not taken.

KIM SCOTT: That’s right.

MURIEL WILKINS: The road not taken.

KIM SCOTT: That’s right.

AMY SANDLER: Yeah. Well, Muriel, I am so excited to hear your perspective on some tough listener questions that we get. Since I know that on your podcast you really focus on guiding leaders through difficult, difficult situations facing. And I want to hear a little bit more about your approach to your podcast and coaching in general, but since you are today are guest on the Radical Candor podcast, what is your definition of radical candor, your relationship with radical candor? We’d love to hear, what does it mean to you?

MURIEL WILKINS: Boy, I feel as though I have experienced both receiving radical candor as well as not receiving radical candor for a long time and not really knowing the difference, just knowing that one felt right and the other didn’t feel right. And so, the way that I sort of think about it for myself as well as my clients, and I have shared a framework with them so many times as they’re looking to figure out a way to provide feedback and have honest conversations with folks that they work with, is really being able to communicate in a way that intersects the ability to drive to results while still respecting and honoring somebody’s humanity. And so, to me, it’s not taking the humanness out of the equation. While at the same time knowing that you have to deliver the message, right? So that’s the way that I think about it and how I relate to it, and the way that Kim has put it into words was a relief for me because for a long time I really couldn’t put my finger on what it felt like and why it felt the way it did. But now I understand that a whole lot better. It doesn’t come as easily as it can. It takes a lot of practice, but I find with practice it becomes a little bit more natural as you go.

KIM SCOTT: Yeah, it does. I mean, for me at least, it’s still hard. I still intend to not say the thing 10 times a day probably. But what helps me remember to say it is knowing how it feels when I haven’t heard it. To me, if I am working with someone and they’re not telling me what I’m doing wrong, they’re not giving me any kind of feedback. It feels to me like being a dead man walking, which is complicated since I’m not a man.

AMY SANDLER: And still among us.

KIM SCOTT: And yes, and still alive.

AMY SANDLER: Thankfully.

KIM SCOTT: It’s complicated. I don’t know. How does it feel to you when you’re not getting the feedback?

MURIEL WILKINS: It depends. I think there’s so much nuance in it. What I love about the model is that it’s very simple to understand. And then as you get into it, there are some nuances. And so, how do I feel when I’m not getting it? Sometimes I don’t feel good because I’m ready to receive it, but I got to tell you the times when I’m not ready to receive it, and I just want to stay in denial. And somebody practices radical candor on me, I’m like, “Why are you being radical and why are you being candid?” I don’t want-

KIM SCOTT: I don’t want either one of those things.

MURIEL WILKINS: No. Can you go to one of the other quadrants? Because I can deal with those. So-

AMY SANDLER: I’d love a little ruinous empathy right about now.

MURIEL WILKINS: Exactly.

KIM SCOTT: There’s a song.

MURIEL WILKINS: That’s the one I mainly want.

KIM SCOTT: Yes, tell me lies, tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.

MURIEL WILKINS: Exactly. So I think for me, it is, even when I work with my clients and use the framework, just helping them understand that don’t use any model just for the sake of using a model, but think about what the impact is going to be on the other person and whether they even have the capacity to receive what it is that you’re trying to give them.

AMY SANDLER: Yeah. I think that’s a great way to tee it up. We’re going to get into a listener question in just a moment. But the last question I feel like I want to make sure I understand before we get into some specific stories. Muriel, we were chatting as we were connecting about how did we all end up as coaches? And it might not have been the path that was intended. So do you want to share how did you become embody executive coaching might not have been what you were intending?

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah, it definitely wasn’t what I was intending. I mean, my goal when I went to business school was to be a chief marketing officer somewhere, someday. And I think deep in my bones, given the story of starting a bank when I was six. I think deep in my bones, I knew I wanted to start or lead a business at some point. Right? What happened was, I climbed the ranks and I got to that executive level and I was like, “Ooh, this is a little tougher than I thought it would be.” And it wasn’t all the numbers. I could read financial statements, I could put a strategic plan together, but it was all what we call the “soft skills.” And so, I sought out something to help me. I went to training programs and I was like, “No, that’s not quite it.” And then I was like, somebody told me about getting a coach. So I was like, “Okay, let me find a coach.” And I couldn’t find a coach that resonated with me. And what I meant by that is back then there weren’t really that many coaches who had strong business acumen. And so, I wanted somebody who not only understood the leadership development side of things and the psychological side of things and all. I also wanted somebody who could do all of that in the context of me having to deliver some numbers by the end of the year. And having to hire and fire people, do all the leadership-y stuff that I was going to get rated on, and I couldn’t find it. And a mentor of mine who I think was just tired of hearing me complain about this said, “Well, why don’t you do it?” And I was like, “Do what?” And he was like, “Go be an executive coach. You’ve been talking about wanting to start your own business. It seems like you found a market need, isn’t this what businesses are based on?” He’s like, “Go do it.” And I was like, “Okay.” And that was almost 20 years ago and I haven’t looked back since. And so, fast-forward to now, I think I’ve probably always had fundamentally in me something around knowing that challenges never go away, even as a leader. However, we can all get through them with a little bit more ease. And so, that’s what I see as my purpose now with all of the folks that I work with, is it’s not about getting rid of the obstacles, it’s just so that you can lead with a little bit more ease. And if you can lead with a little bit more ease, man, will that have an impact on those that you lead?

KIM SCOTT: So well said. So well said. Your people are lucky that your mentoring gave you excellent advice, it sounds like.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah, I took it a little personally. I just thought he didn’t want to hire me for his VC firm. But yeah, he did say, “If it doesn’t work out, come back and I’ll hire you.” And I was like, “Okay, good.” Never went back.

AMY SANDLER: I love looking back and I think as listeners listen, knowing that often the thing that we want to have is often the thing that we’re meant to do and to create. So I think from when you look back on it 20 years later, you can see how you got here. But Kim, I know you and I have had some of those conversations, we wouldn’t have known the future, but looking back on it makes sense to follow some of those dots and invitations. So with that, I want the two of you to discuss a question from one of our listeners. This was about what a boss can do when an employee is too friendly at work. So this person writes, “How do you handle an employee who’s good at their job, delivers, is detailed, thorough, reliable, responsible, has good ideas, loves the job, the people, et cetera, but is also often emotionally driven, can be impulsive, nervous, sometimes overbearing, micromanages, creating conflicts, gets too familiar with others too soon, and sees the workplace as a family? For example, doling out hugs and kisses and gifts that can be perceived as extra.” I’m still quoting here. “I’m in conflict between skills and performance versus behavioral issues. If these are innate qualities that can’t really be changed.” And so, the question is, “Are these behaviors a core part of a personality that can’t be changed?” That was the question from the listener. And the question that I want, Kim, you and Muriel to talk about is how friendly is too friendly at work? Muriel, you’re covering up a smile there.

KIM SCOTT: You want me to go first or you want to go first, Muriel?

MURIEL WILKINS: I mean your choice. It’s your show.

KIM SCOTT: I think you have, it looked like you have some thought.

AMY SANDLER: I feel likes there’s something to say. There’s something-

KIM SCOTT: You have some thoughts-

MURIEL WILKINS: I have so many thoughts. I have so many thoughts.

KIM SCOTT: Okay, let’s hear your thoughts. Okay. Let’s hear it.

MURIEL WILKINS: I have so many thoughts and I have so many questions.

KIM SCOTT: Lay them on us.

MURIEL WILKINS: This is the hard part around just getting the email with the question and then you can’t ask the questions that might-

AMY SANDLER: So what’s the first question you would ask if this person was on your show?

MURIEL WILKINS: The first question I would probably ask is, what is your definition of friendly? People have often thought that I’m unfriendly and I think I’m friendly. So there is a relative subjective term to it. She did share some of the things like doling out hugs and gifts, and so there’s something around the actions and the behaviors. What I also don’t have is the context. This is all within a context. I don’t know culturally what the context in which this is happening. Clearly it is triggering something in this individual, but I don’t know if the holistic company culture, even geographic culture. I know when, you all do international work. Sometimes when I talk about certain things here in the US it’s like, “No, you can’t do this, you can’t do that.” But then I deal with folks who are coming from a different geographic region in the world and it’s like, “Well, of course this would be fine.” We always do that. So there is that part to it. That said, over and beyond the question, I would also have a very strong caveat, which is the facial expressions that you’re probably seeing from me as we’re talking, which is, as I coach somebody on an area like this, I have to caveat it very strongly that I don’t have any HR policy background, right? It sounds like this is veering on potentially an HR issue, and I’m not an HR advisor, so I would definitely say you have to check to see where does this fit into the code of conduct around what your company upholds. I think she has some really deep assumptions even in the way that she frames the question around, is this just personality behavior or is it performance? And so, one of the other questions I would have is, what is the difference between the two? Because your performance is driven by your behavior and your performance impacts your behavior. And so, it is very hard to differentiate and discern, particularly if this person is a leader who impact… Unless they are working, which it doesn’t sound like they are in a room by themselves where they don’t impact anybody. We have to understand that behavior is part of our responsibility in terms of how we perform. And so, one of the questions I would definitely ask her is, what’s the difference between performance and behavior and why are we creating a distance between the two? Is it time possibly for you to redefine what it means to be a high performer in this role? So let’s take it away from the individual, think about it in terms of what does it mean to be a high performer in this role? And then look at that vis-a-vis this individual to determine what the next steps are.

KIM SCOTT: Yeah, I think that is excellent advice. You know what? The thing that really, the word in this that really jumped out at me for some reason is extra. My daughter said to me, yeah, I was striving and talking to her and I was in a mood. I thought a good mood, but maybe she… And she just looked at me, the way only a 14-year old could do, and she said, “Mom, you are extra tonight.”

AMY SANDLER: Oh, yeah. Oh yeah, we say so team extra.

KIM SCOTT: Yeah. Yeah. I just didn’t know this. Somehow, anyway, I like this term extra. Anyway, so here’s what I think about hugs and kisses. So in just work, I thought a lot about hugs and kisses, as you can imagine. And my father helped me write that book. He read many, many, and he has a very different head. He passed away unfortunately a couple of years ago, but he was an older southern white man. So he had a different perspective often on the world than… And I was sort of, I don’t love getting hugged. I don’t love… And I find, one time I was on a board meeting and one person kissed me and then everybody wanted to kiss me, and I knew that one person really well and I didn’t want to kiss everybody on the board. And I was like, especially there’s some gender aspects to the hugging and kissing as well. And my father said, “I think it would be a sad and cold world without hugs.” Which is funny because my father was not a hugger. And so, I think that’s true. Some people really do want to hug and other people don’t. And so, the thing that I would say to this person, not to the person asking the question, but to the employee is that if you want to show you care, part of showing you care is understanding what other people’s boundaries are. And if a person doesn’t want to be hugged, it is not an act of caring to hug them and sort of talk… I would talk to them about that. And gifts. Not everybody is comfortable getting gifts. Sometimes it could feel almost like a bribe to someone or something. I’m sure that that’s not this person’s intention, but I would sort of explain these things to them. And then I would agree to advising the person who wrote in, that the way you behave is going to impact your performance and the way that you work with the people around you is going to impact your performance. So I don’t say these are innate, I believe there are very few innate qualities.

MURIEL WILKINS: I mean, look, I wouldn’t be in the line of work that I am in if I thought that there were things that could not be… I don’t even think about it in terms of change, to be honest. I never really think about changing my clients, even though they come in scared that’s what I’m going to do. And I’m like, I don’t have that type of power, trust me. I don’t think about change, I think about range. Which is, you have a number of different ways that you can behave and know that you have options in default. I think in this case, it’s also tricky just because of the time that we’re in, right? We’re talking a lot about psychological safety and making sure people feel safe at work. I think there’s a power dynamic. I don’t know this individual where I think they said it was a he, I’m not sure. But where this individual would lie in terms of perceived power dynamic within the organization. And so, taking that into context. So it really gets tricky. If this was one of my clients who came to me, and this is the feedback that they had received that, “Look you’re seeing it’s too friendly. You give out kisses and hugs and gifts.” I’d say, “Okay, let’s kind of talk about what’s going on in the bigger scheme of things, and let’s not even make this about you, right?” Let’s talk about the impact that this might have and whether that’s the impact that you want to have. And if it’s, great, I can sleep at night. If it’s not, then let’s figure out another way that you can show connection that’s not through kisses and hugs and gifts. And again, I would probably be a little nervous around, is there some overstepping of some lines that could put this person’s career at risk, quite frankly.

KIM SCOTT: Yeah. And I think the point that you made about power is so important. Deb Gruenfeld, who’s at GSB at Stanford, has… You know how every once in a while you read something and it’s like, “Oh, this explains everything.” She has this great article about how power impacts people’s behavior. And if a person has power, and it may be positional power or it may just be that they’re sort of overrepresented, shall we say, that’s its own sort of power. That they’re much more likely to approach others to get too close, to hug and not to pick up on the signals that people are sending. In fact, they explain, Kissinger famously said, “Power’s the greatest aphrodisiac.” But it turns out it’s just that the powerful people think they’re sexier, but they may not be. They probably are not, in fact. Yeah. And so they’re much more likely to approach in ways that are not welcome.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. And I wonder also, I don’t have any data to back this up, but I also wonder with power and privilege to a certain extent, do you sort of buy into your own story, right?

KIM SCOTT:

Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: Which is, well, it’s okay for me. I love getting kisses and hugs and gifts, therefore-

KIM SCOTT: Everybody does.

MURIEL WILKINS: … everybody should. And it’s like, I’m just being me, you know? Take it or leave it. And so, I’ve seen this. I had a client once where he got sort of the, you’re too comfortable feedback. And he was a senior level guy, C-suite level guy. And the way that it came about, what he was doing is he jokes a lot. So they would be in meetings and he would joke about somebody. He’d be like, “Oh my gosh, what did you not take a shower last night? You look the shovel.” But he was joking. For him, it was a way of level setting. Well to the person, two levels down. They were like, “Oh my God, he just said this in front of everybody. Maybe he doesn’t like me.” So it has a different affect and a different weight to it. But he wasn’t even thinking about it that way. He was just like, that’s just me getting along with everyone. And I’m like, “Well, you’re not.”

KIM SCOTT: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I think it’s so interesting that kind of joking around. Like my son, who’s all… I have twins. My son is 14.

MURIEL WILKINS: So do I?

KIM SCOTT: Oh, I read that… How old… Well, I shouldn’t ask how-

MURIEL WILKINS: 16. 16, I don’t care.

KIM SCOTT: Okay. So we’re in the same-

MURIEL WILKINS: I talk about my family.

KIM SCOTT: Yeah. Okay. So my son plays baseball. And when he gets back from… And that team, the culture on that team is they show each other affection by giving each other a shirt. And that’s fine if that’s how they want to. But then he comes back from a game and he’s like, “Give me…” And I don’t like to be talked, I don’t like the… And I have to say to him, “It’s fine if that’s how you want to interact with your teammates, but I feel like I’m getting bullied here.” And he gets it. But the first time he is like, “But that’s how I talk to my friends.” I’m like, “Well, I’m not on your baseball team.”

MURIEL WILKINS: Right. Right. Right.

KIM SCOTT: And even if I were, I would say to the guys on the team, “You can’t talk to me that way. I don’t like that.”

AMY SANDLER: I think it’s such an interesting line around Muriel, what you said of just, I’m just being me. And that fine line between what we would encourage of being your authentic self and bringing sort of the part that makes you human, and how do we discern? So one way we discern is the impact on the other person. Are there any other ways by which we balance just being me, my authentic self with being part of a team and a high performing team?

MURIEL WILKINS: There are so many layers on this, right? I mean, if you really want to go deep, I think when people say, I am just being me, they don’t even really know what me is. So they’re not even being me. They’re just being their learned version of me. And the way that they are trying to connect, whether it’s through the jokes or through the gifts or through the this, is actually a persona, their representative. So they haven’t even typically done the deep work. Because if they had, they wouldn’t feel compelled to have to act this way. They would be okay with saying, “In this situation, I’m okay not doing that. If it’s going to front you, I have plenty of other places where I can express myself in this way. But for the good of the team because I’m either part of the team or I’m leading the team. And because I care about the connection, I’m not going to impact you in that way.” So that’s one. I think secondly, if somebody isn’t, particularly if somebody is in a leadership role, it’s very hard to separate me from the culture of the organization because the leaders set the culture. Right? They are a steward to the culture. So if who you believe you are and who you feel you need to be does not reflect the values of the culture of the organization. Something’s going to suffer. Either the people who are being impacted or you. So you have to find that intersection. I think this is really what it means when we say somebody’s a culture carrier. It’s just a fancy way of saying it, but it’s look, “Here are our norms and are you good with them?” Can you embody them in a way where you being a representative of this organization also doesn’t go against who you are. So I think that that’s really another piece of it. And authenticity is only one side of it. It’s to me, it’s being authentic within the context that you’re in. And there was a skit, it’s a little controversial to state this comedian’s name these days, but his initials are dc. But there was a skit he did way back when, and it was hilarious. It was when keeping it real goes bad.

KIM SCOTT: Yeah. Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: And I see this all the time. It’s like, you can authenticate yourself right out of a job. You want to be authentic, but authentic is not also this armor, right? Yeah. Like let me do me. No, you work in an organization and you have a choice to work in this organization. And if you are not aligned with it or there is so much dissonance, because you’re never going to have a hundred percent alignment. But if there’s so much dissonance, you ought to think about whether that’s the right place for you. I know I have faced that in my career, and I’ve had either made the choice to stay or go based on that, but it is something that I think people need to be really realistic about.

KIM SCOTT: Yeah. I think that is so, such good advice and so important. I also think that it can be helpful to talk to people about maybe abstract up a level on authenticity. So for example, I cuss a lot. But there are certain audiences where I’m just not going to drop an F-bomb. Because the F-bomb is not the authentic Kim Scott. The authentic Kim Scott is a person who shares her emotion and connects with people. And if dropping the F-bomb is going to prevent me from connecting with someone, then I’m happy not to do it. That’s not inauthentic. What’s authentic is connecting with others in a way that is real for yourself, but also doesn’t hurt the other person. If the way you’re connecting hurts the other person, then it’s just bullying. That’s right. And hopefully that’s not your authentic self.

MURIEL WILKINS: That’s right. That’s right. And I think sometimes we use this term authenticity as people who are authentic as this veiled definition of being confident, right?

KIM SCOTT: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: I don’t see it that way. I actually think your ability to be so comfortable in your skin, which is another way that people feel authenticity. The ability to be so comfortable with who you are, that you are able to then move from you, who you are every now and then. Knowing that home base is not going anywhere is actually what it means to have confident authenticity. Right? But if you are so attached to who you are that you can never let it go, you can never flex, you can never have range. That’s not authenticity. That’s just you trying to figure, you trying not to lose yourself. Because not to get deeply philosophical, but because you really haven’t found yourself. Right. So there’s this whole-

AMY SANDLER: Muriel, when you say about range because you mentioned that range versus change. Can you kind of double click on that for us, what that looks like? Maybe an example too, of the difference between range and change.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. Yeah. So let me use one that comes up a lot. You have the folks who are given feedback that they don’t speak up enough in a meeting. And so changes all of a sudden all they do is speak up and now they don’t listen anymore. All they do is speak up, they go away to the other side. Range is you can do both. So we look at it from a notion even of, one of my kids, both my kids play tennis, one of them has played longer. But you can’t get through a tennis game just by, or a good tennis match and be a really great player by just knowing how to do a forehand. You’ve got to be able to do the forehand and the backhand. You can’t say, “Oh, my backhand sucks so now all I’m going to do is my backhand and practice it, practice it, practice it. And all of a sudden now I’m a backhand player.” No, you have to have range. You have to be able to… You might have strengths in one, but you have to be able to use both well enough. Right? So that’s what I mean by range, that there are a number of different avenues so that you have choice. Because with choice, that’s where your real power comes in. An agency comes in where for any given situation, you can decide what is going to best serve this situation right now? What is going to put me closer to the outcome that we’re looking to achieve? Is it for me to listen or is it for me to speak up? But I’m not going to default to one just because I can’t do the other. I’m going to be able to decide which one to use because I know how to do both well enough to get us closer to the end goal.

AMY SANDLER: Great. It sounds very aligned with radical candor that we can care personally and challenge directly.

MURIEL WILKINS: That’s right.

AMY SANDLER: We love an and here. I am really curious, given all of the different coaching sessions you’re leading both with your company as well as on your podcast. What would you say are maybe the one or two top challenges folks are dealing with right now, that leaders are dealing with right now as the world of work evolves? 2023, coming out of the pandemic hybrid, all of these issues around psychological safety. What would you say sort of one or two top issues that seem to keep popping up, that might not have popped up a few years ago?

MURIEL WILKINS: Sure. I mean, there’s always sort of the regular classic management challenges. Right? How do I keep people motivated? How do I lead change? None of that has gone away. It’s still here. It just looks a little bit different. I think what is coming up a lot, and interestingly, it’s not necessarily what my clients are coming to coaching for. All right. They come with like, “I want to be more strategic.” And I’m like, “Okay.” And then we get into it and lo and behold. So I think one of the big challenges is what folks are expecting from their leaders today is very different than what they were expecting 10, 15, 20 years ago. And yet the leaders, and I’m talking about the senior leaders that I work with, they were in their team members or staff’s shoes 10, 15, 20 years ago. So there is this notion what we were talking about before, well, if that’s what I expected, this is what they should be expecting from me. And so therefore their behaviors. And so how has it changed? I think there is a level of empathy that individuals teams are expecting from their leaders that was not expected in the past. And it has been, I think the pandemic and folks working from home, and then the number of different sort of crises that happened during that time, sort of increased the need for empathy. And at that time, leaders were willing to give it, right? Because they were like, “We’ve got to motivate, and people are around me so I have to be able to be empathetic.” And now as leaders are trying to go back to what normal was, whatever that means, they’re letting go of that a little bit but they don’t realize that their teams have not let go of it. And it is now, to me, what I’m seeing is it is a rules of engagement expectation. And so there’s a dissonance there and there’s a tension. And then I think in terms of just where we are economically, leaders are just, they just want to drive to results. And they’re sort of saying, “Well, it’s either drive the results or be empathetic. I can’t do both.”

KIM SCOTT: Yeah. And you have to do both.

MURIEL WILKINS: And you have to. You have to. They’re not seeing it as part of the equation. You’re not going to get your people to do more if you don’t come with that gene. So, this notion of like, how do you treat people as humans is huge right now. And I see it from anywhere from the way layoffs are happening to even just singular decisions that some of my clients have to make. Right? Do I not approve that receipt, that expense receipt that they turned in? And I’m like, “Okay, so what’s the human thing to do right now?” So that is a big one, and that is very behavioral. You can’t tell somebody all of a sudden be empathetic. It takes some inner work to do it in an authentic way and not feel like you’re putting things at risk. I think the other piece, macro level that that’s a challenge that I’m seeing is all this work, and I’m not a DEI expert. I just have DEI lived experience. But with my leaders, I definitely see the impact of, what does equity mean within an organization. And what I see is a lot of them fail to see the connection between the work that they’re trying to do in their organization around equity and power. Right?

KIM SCOTT: Yeah. Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: They don’t see the connect and they are the people in power. And I’m like, okay. So you realize by saying that strategically you are committed to DEI in your organization, you are in fact questioning the very structure and construct that your whole career is based on. Do you understand that? And that’s a big sort of identity work that they have to do. So again, this never comes up. I have yet to have a client, I have had maybe one who came to coaching and said, “I just told my whole organization that I stand behind equity and I have no idea what that means. We need to do this and we need to do it behind closed doors because I don’t know what it means.” But most of them don’t… It doesn’t even cross their mind until something happens. And they’re like, “I said the wrong thing. I got these emails because I said this at a town hall and I have no idea what I said wrong.” Right? And so doing that work around what does it mean to be a person of power in this day and age. It’s not seen as great from the people who need to be led as it was in the past, is a real question of identity where I’m finding a lot of my leaders are just tired and fatigued and feeling like they can’t do anything right.

KIM SCOTT: Yeah. And I think that’s such an important point. I wonder, I was thinking about this. I wonder, here’s my question that I was asking myself, maybe you have an answer. It seems to me that increasingly today, people in positions of power don’t feel safe. In a way that 20 or 30 years ago, they did feel safe. And overall, I think that’s a good thing actually. But they’re not always responding well to that. It’s in a way, there’s more checks and balances on power. I think there’s a wonderful book called The End of Power about how power degrades more quickly in this environment. And so, you can’t afford to rely on command and control. You actually have to build relationships and show empathy/compassion for people if you want to remain in a position of authority. For example, I was recently talking to a group of CEOs and someone said, “I’m not going to give feedback to underrepresented people on my team because then I’ll be in trouble with HR.” And it was very hard for me to respond. I wonder how I should have responded. Because my instinct, what I thought was, “HR reports to you, what’s wrong with you? Man up.” Which was not. I did not say that even in the moment, but I was mad. I was sort of mad about-

AMY SANDLER: Kim, would you have in your mind if it was a woman who said that have said, “Woman up?”

KIM SCOTT: I would’ve said, man up again. Even worse. Even worse. I know. Bias on top of bias on top of bias, unfair to everybody. Unfair to men, unfair to women, unfair to non-binary people. But I get it. So on the one hand, I found the question irritating. On the other hand, I understand the question. If somebody says the wrong thing, they can wind up in a lawsuit. And so, I want to respond with empathy to these people, but at the same time I want to challenge them directly. I don’t want to respond with ruinous empathy. I want to respond with… So what’s the right, what would you have said to that CEO?

MURIEL WILKINS: And I know my clients hate me for this. Well, they don’t hate me. Because they have hired back.

KIM SCOTT: They love you. They hire you.

MURIEL WILKINS: But in a way, I’m like, “Is this uncomfortable for you?” And they’re like, “Yeah.” I’m like, “Good.”

KIM SCOTT: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: Because that means I don’t know what the answer is.

KIM SCOTT: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: And that’s what, I’m like, I don’t know what the answer is, but the fact that it feels uncomfortable means that there’s an answer up ahead at some point. But you’re processing.

KIM SCOTT: And that you’re growing.

MURIEL WILKINS: And that you’re growing. And that there’s some tension. And guess what? That’s what leadership is all about is holding the tension. And this is a tension that you haven’t held yet. And this is one that we actually don’t, we haven’t quite figured out. Nobody has figured it out. That’s why even the whole like, how do we get people back out of being on Zoom and back into physical space. Nobody knew, everybody wants an answer because that’s what makes us feel safe. But is it really safe? Not really. There’s just going to be something else that’s coming up. Now AI’s making people feel unsafe. There’s always something that makes… So I think we need to get rid… I think we have to yes, create a culture where people feel like they can bring their selves to work. And that’s the way I think about psychological safety. I think as leaders, just like I don’t like to use too much of family metaphors. But as a parent, it is not my responsibility… My kids are not responsible to make me feel safe. They’re just not.

They’re not responsible to make me feel good about myself. They’re not responsible to make me happy. They’re not responsible to, I have a responsibility to them up to a certain point. And so, I’m not saying that it’s a parental relationship, but as a leader you do have to be a steward to the people that you lead.

AMY SANDLER: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: And so, my question back to that leader would be, okay, so let’s imagine for a bit that you were going to hypothetically give this person who comes from an underrepresented group, some feedback. Let’s hypothetically play that out. What might that sound like in a way where you feel like you have delivered the message and they can hear it in a way that they don’t feel offended or whatever you want to use as an adjective. I guarantee you the part of the formula that this person doesn’t know, that he didn’t know is, “Well, I don’t know what makes him feel offended?” Well, bingo. Let’s do the homework then.

KIM SCOTT: Let’s find out.

MURIEL WILKINS: Right. Let’s find out.

KIM SCOTT: Yeah. And I think part of it, I’ve been thinking about safety and freedom. I think we need to… It’s never going to feel comfortable to make a mistake, but we need to know that sometimes we will say the wrong thing. But if we are operating in a culture where someone will tell us if we say the wrong thing, and then we do the right thing and fix it and apologize. Because we’re all bound to mess up from time to time.

MURIEL WILKINS: Yeah. I mean, this happened to a client of mine where it’s somebody who is not from an underrepresented group and they said something in a town hall, and then they got a barrage of emails and they were like, “I didn’t even know I’m not supposed to say that.” And I said, “Yeah, I didn’t know either. Who knew? That’s interesting. Wow.”

KIM SCOTT: Now we know.

MURIEL WILKINS: Okay, now I know. And she felt like, “I can never say the right thing.” I said, you’re focusing too much on being able to say the right thing. The whole point of this is more about how you respond to when you don’t get things right.

KIM SCOTT: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: If you are going to stay in this false sense of, I’m so superior and I’m so powerful and I’m so this, that I can never do anything wrong. There goes the whole equity agenda out the window.

KIM SCOTT: Yes. Totally.

MURIEL WILKINS: The whole point is to level set, right?

KIM SCOTT: Yeah.

MURIEL WILKINS: And I think what’s happened, right, is for years equity was around bringing the underrepresented groups up in “to our level.” And I think what’s happening now that’s uncomfortable it’s like, “No, no, no, no. You, the people who are in power need to meet everyone else where they are versus everyone else meeting you where you are. And that’s a real just shift in thinking in perspective. So there’s a lot more to unpack than should I say something or should I not?

KIM SCOTT: Yes.

MURIEL WILKINS: Particularly in this type of context and where we are now.

AMY SANDLER: I love that framing. And Muriel, just to amplify what you said, that this is a tension we haven’t held yet. At Radical Candor, we’re all about the tension of caring personally and challenging directly, and just kind of giving people permission to mess up but still keep trying to hold that tension. One of the things that we like to do at the close of our podcast is to offer some tips. And the other thing that you were mentioning was around being more human at work, which is something we talk about all the time. For someone who is struggling with their empathy muscle, with developing more care personally, what’s one tip that you like to give your clients how they can start to move up on care personally or build more empathy?

MURIEL WILKINS: Listen with curiosity. It’s really not that hard. Like stop talking and listen and ask questions that are about the other person. Right? I say, what is the… Not that I’ve been on a date for a very, very long time. But in my imaginary mind, I still remember show interest in the other person. Right? And how do you do that? By listening and asking questions, right? So, I think listening is the biggest and the most underused skill that helps drive empathy, and a lot of other things as well.

KIM SCOTT: So well said.

AMY SANDLER: I couldn’t agree more. Yeah. So well said. Well, we’re going to wrap up. Kim, any final words or okay to move us on?

KIM SCOTT: Muriel, thank you. Loved the conversation, learned so much about how to coach properly from you. So, thank you.

MURIEL WILKINS: Thank you. This was really great. Thank you. I hope you enjoyed that conversation. It was such a pleasure being a guest on Radical Candor with Amy and Kim. If you like this episode and you want more of their content, check out their website, radicalcandor.com. Or you can subscribe to the Radical Candor Podcast wherever you get your podcast. And stay tuned for another special treat in the feed later this summer, before our new season of Coaching Real Leaders this fall. Until then, I’m Muriel Wilkins. Be well.