"How can you say what you mean without being mean?" asks CEO coach and author Kim Scott. Delving into the delicate balance between caring and challenging when leading in the workplace, she introduces "radical candor" as the way to give constructive criticism, compassionately.For a chance to give your own TED Talk, fill out the Idea Search Application: ted.com/ideasearch.Interested in learning more about upcoming TED events? Follow these links:TEDNext: ted.com/futureyouTEDSports: ted.com/sportsTEDAI Vienna: ted.com/ai-viennaTEDAI San Francisco: ted.com/ai-sf Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
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You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. There have been times in my life where I've been frustrated or angry and wanted to say something to a friend that I know will come off as maybe aggressive or even mean.
In this Archive Talk, CEO, coach, and author Kim Scott poses the question, how do we say what we mean without being mean? She shares why she thinks we must all be radically candid, as she calls it, and action steps that we can take to make it easier to say what we're feeling in the moment and build better relationships.
How can you all say what you mean without being mean? I started thinking about this back in 1999. I had started a software company and I came into the office one day and about half the people in the company had sent me the same article about how everyone would rather have a boss who is really mean but competent, a total jerk but competent, than one who is really nice but incompetent.
And I thought, gosh, are they sending me this because they think I'm a jerk or because they think I'm incompetent? And surely those are not my only two choices. Now, I went to business school, and there I learned exactly nothing about management. But I did learn one really important thing. All of life's hardest problems can be solved with a good two by two framework.
So that is how I started thinking about this problem. I was unwilling to let go of my desire to show that I cared personally. That is what, for me, gave work meaning, but I also had to learn how to challenge directly. And I had to learn how to do both at the same time. And over time, I came to think about caring and challenging at the same time as radical candor.
Now, the easiest way to understand what radical candor is, is to think about what happens when we mess up on one dimension or another, as we are all bound to do from time to time. Sometimes we remember to challenge directly, but we forget to show that we care personally. And this I call obnoxious aggression. Anybody ever seen any obnoxious aggression? And this is a problem.
Obnoxious aggression is a problem because it hurts people. Primarily it's a problem because it hurts people. But it's also a problem because it's inefficient. If I act like a total jerk to you, then you're likely to go into fight or flight mode in your brain and then you literally cannot hear what I'm saying. So I'm just wasting my breath.
And then there's a third more subtle problem with obnoxious aggression. I don't know about you, but for me, when I realize I've acted like a jerk, it is not my instinct to go the right way on care personally. Instead, it's my instinct to go the wrong way on challenge directly. Oh, it's no big deal, it doesn't really matter. And then I wind up in the worst place of all, manipulative insincerity.
If obnoxious aggression is front-stabbing, manipulative insincerity is back-stabbing. It's passive-aggressive behavior. This is where all the most toxic kinds of workplace behavior, or frankly, behavior at home, in any relationship that you have in any part of your life creep in.
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