Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum.

Erica: We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com.

Erica: Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone. Care deeply and challenge directly. That is what Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor believes, and she believes this deeply. Her idea is simple. You don't have to choose between being a pushover and being a jerk.

Erica: But here is why I am so excited. Kim Scott is a world famous author. She has been a coach to some of the most successful CEOs, including Dropbox, Qualtrics, and Twitter before Craigslist took over, but that's besides the point. She was a member at the faculty of Apple University and before that led AdSense and YouTube and DoubleClick teams at Google. So holy shit, y'all, this woman is successful.

Erica: Could she even have sticky floors? By now, you know the answer is hell yes, we all got them. So listen in because this radically candid woman gets radically transparent and she does not hold back.

Erica: Hey, friends. Today, we have Kim Scott, the brilliant author behind the book we all know and love, Radical Candor, be a kick ass boss without losing your humanity. Now she is also the author of a book that will be available preorder when you hear this called Radical Respect, which is how to root out bias, prejudice, and bullying to build a kick ass culture of inclusivity. So I cannot wait to get my hands on that when it drops. But the more intrigued I am, and I cannot wait to hear all about who she is, what she stands for, and what her sticky floors are.

Erica: So, Kim, thank you so much for being here. Welcome.

Kim: Thank you so much. I'm thrilled to be here and to talk about sticky floors. I've got a lot of them.

Erica: I love it. Well, let's dive in with,

Erica: like, the all encompassing question of who is Kim Scott?

Kim: Who am I? I'm a writer. I had a long career in business. I did three failed startups, and then I joined Google. That worked a lot better.

Kim: And then I joined Apple, which also worked out great. I did all those things as a way to subsidize my novel writing habit. So what I really am is a writer.

Erica: Oh, I love that, to subsidize the novel writing habit. Now question, because when I was doing my stalking work on you

Erica: Mhmm.

Erica: did you or did you not start a diamond cutting factory in Moscow?

Kim: I did indeed. I did that on behalf of a company called Lazara Kaplan. So not on my own recognizance, but yes.

Erica: How does one go from diamond cutting to

Kim: CEO

Erica: coach? Right. And you're a famous author. How? Walk me through this.

Kim: Yeah. So I studied Russian literature in college, and I studied Russian literature really because I was very worried about the possibility of nuclear war. And so I wound up getting a job in Moscow, working for Moscow Physical Technical Institute. It was kinda like the MIT of the Soviet Union, which it was still the Soviet Union back then. And the first email I ever received, back in nineteen eighty nine when I was trying to figure out what I was gonna do next, was from my new boss who said, you know, I'm giving you this offer. You're gonna get paid $6 a month, but don't worry. There's nothing to buy here anyway. So that was my first job out of college.

Kim: And then I wound up working for this financial management company called Battery March that was raising money from US pension funds to put into these converting Soviet defense factories. They called them enterprises that had made tanks, were starting to make tractors, that sort of thing. And that was really interesting. I enjoyed doing that. And then the coup happened, and Battery March decided to pull its money out of the Soviet Union and put it in China instead. But I wanted to stay there in Moscow, whatever country that was part of. And that was, through a friend of a friend, how I wound up starting this diamond cutting factory, which was actually my first job leading people, my first job managing people.

Kim: And when I started trying to hire people, I realized that what they wanted, what I had to offer that the state did not have to offer, was not money. It was a boss who gave a damn. That was actually my first realization that management was actually interesting, that it mattered. And as you can imagine, what they really wanted was to know that they had a boss who would get them out if things went sideways in Russia, which it always appeared likely that they would do. So as you can imagine, since Russia invaded Ukraine and things have gone very badly wrong in Russia, I have been thinking a lot about those people.

Kim: After about four years living in Moscow, I was exhausted. It felt like forty years. And so I left to go to business school, because I couldn't figure out what else to do. Management seemed like maybe it was more interesting than I had thought, but also really, business school was two years. That was its chief virtue. So I was just trying to figure out a way back home. So that seemed like a good path. And after business school, I wound up working for the federal government. But what I really wanted to do was join a startup, which was designed to move fast.

Kim: So I joined a startup company that was based in Jerusalem, in Israel. And then I had made enough money to write my first novel. So I quit for a year, wrote a novel in 1999, ran out of money, and then I wound up helping another friend do a startup. Anyway, so I did that for a while, and then I realized I had an idea for my own startup. So I started another company called Juice Software.

Kim: Juice was a great experience. And I think probably the most important thing I learned there was that part of the reason why I started it is because I imagined if I were in charge, if I were the CEO and the founder, everything would be much better. It was not actually. It's really hard to found a company, to be a CEO of a company. And that company eventually, well, we wound up selling, selling being a very generous term for what actually happened.

Kim: And I took a job at Google, and that worked out a lot better. I kind of realized after a few years at Google that what I really cared about at work was thinking about how do you build a great team and how do you create an environment in which people can do the best work of their lives and actually love working together. And meanwhile, a professor of mine from business school had left Harvard and joined Apple University. And he called me and he said, you know, Steve Jobs wants to throw away all the management training and start from a blank piece of paper. And he said, but I've never managed anyone, so maybe you could come help us do that.

Kim: And so I did. And I had a good experience. Managing people is managing people no matter what company or sector you're in. Human beings are human beings. And that was really fun, working with him on doing that.

Kim: And he said, you know, Kim, I've been looking for a coach, and I haven't really enjoyed the conversations I've had with other people as much as the conversations that you and I have about what it means to manage people. So why don't you come be my coach? And then he announced it. I had no ambition or intention of becoming a coach. One of the many things I realized was I couldn't coach as many people as I wanted to.

Kim: And I also realized that the people who would pay me the most to coach tended to be men, not women. And a lot of people who are not CEOs could use some help. So that was kinda what inspired me to sit down and write Radical Candor and how I came to be doing what I'm doing now. So that's the long answer to your short question.

Erica: Like a cat with nine lives here. You know? From diamond cutting in Moscow. And I know that only covers, like, actually a very small bit of, I'm sure, your entire life experiences.

Erica: But you are Yes. Nine lives.

Kim: Yes. Yes.

Erica: So sticky floors, with all these nine cat lives that we have, I call sticky floors the limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors that keep us stuck. And I do believe that they impact women a lot differently than they do for men. But when you think about sticky floors, what is your sticky floor story?

Kim: So my sticky floor story, as I said, my whole business career was like I was getting 100% of my external validation from my business career and 100% of my internal validation from writing these novels that I mentioned that I wrote. And when I tried to sell the novels, I got agents. I was lucky that I was able to get agents. But when the agents sent the novels out, publishers invariably replied with the same thing. And the response was, well, your main character, who was always me in my novels, is really not very likable.

Kim: So that was very hard. I mean, I'm all about listening to criticism, but I also am about, especially in Radical Respect, recognizing when the criticism that's coming at you is not useful feedback, but rather it's some kind of bias. And I think this sort of not likable thing for a woman is often a sign of bias. So anyway, I was insecure about my writing, but I still loved doing it, so I kept doing it.

Kim: And I started writing Radical Candor, as I mentioned, really in the context of being a coach. And at first, I thought about it as just a way to categorize everything I thought and bring it together in one place and share it with the people who I coached. And maybe some of the people who sent me a note saying, would you be my coach? If I didn't have time, I could send them this thing I had written. So I started writing it, and I thought I could write it in three months.

Kim: But four years later, I was finally finished. Took a lot longer than I thought, but I didn't think I would be able to get it published having had all these other bad experiences. And now my insecurities about myself as a writer were meeting my insecurities about myself as a business person, as an executive. Because when I was at Google, I was there for five and a half years, and I never got a promotion. And at Google, if you don't get a promotion in five and a half years, it's kind of a shameful thing, and I felt deeply ashamed about this.

Kim: And part of the reason that I didn't wanna try to get the book published is I sort of felt like people would say, you know, Kim Scott, she never even was able to get promoted at Google. Why would you listen to her? And so I didn't really try to get it published. And then a friend of mine's husband died, tragically.

Kim: And a bunch of my friends from business school came, and they all stayed with me because nobody wanted to be in a hotel. We kinda wanted to be together. And one of my friends, Kim Keating, said to me, they were asking kinda what I was up to, and I said, I have this book. I don't think I'll publish it, but it's useful in my coaching. And Kim said, you've got to send this to my friend, Howard Yoon.

Kim: He is a great agent, and he'll help you sell it. And I was reluctant to, she had to prod me several times. Thank goodness for the persistence of friends. And eventually, I sent it to Howard, and he read it in one day, which I had never seen an agent do. And he said, I can definitely sell this book.

Kim: And that was how Radical Candor came to be. So there were my sticky floors, my insecurities about my writing, and my insecurities about my own career.

Erica: Well, it's very interesting how they come together, but what is cracking me up is how you're like, well, everybody's gonna know I wasn't promoted at Google for something like that. The shame. And, yeah, meanwhile, everybody's like, damn.

Erica: I wish I could get a job at Google. Like

Kim: you know, I had a mentor once who said to me, when you are succeeding, never think you're as good as you feel. And when you are failing, never think you are as bad as you feel. And I think those are words of wisdom. And even though he said it to me, it's hard to put that advice into practice, I think.

Erica: It's one of those things where it is a very simple concept, but it is not easy.

Kim: Yes. Exactly.

Erica: But what I

Kim: also love, candor itself.

Erica: Yeah. What I also love is this persistence of friends, because so many people talk to me about their sticky floors, and they're like, I don't even know that I'm doing these things. I don't even know. And I'll tell them, number one, it takes a lot of self awareness. Number two, sometimes it takes somebody else telling us what we're doing or not doing that is keeping us stuck.

Erica: So the fact that you had this friend that's like, no, Kim. You gotta get this done.

Kim: Yeah.

Erica: Thank goodness for the persistence of friends. That's why we all now have this amazing book about Radical Candor. And now we have Radical Respect. Talk to me a little bit about Radical Respect.

Kim: So in some ways, I think Radical Respect is really the prequel to Radical Candor. You cannot, Radical Candor is about caring personally and challenging directly at the same time. And you're not going to care about someone you don't respect, and you also won't bother to challenge them if you don't respect them. If you think about the times when there have been people, and we all have people in our lives, who we realize it's just not worth challenging them, it's often because we don't respect them.

Kim: And so if we can learn to realize that the floor, the necessary condition for Radical Candor, is respect, and it's interesting, if you look in the dictionary, respect has two very different definitions. One is that respect is something that we owe to everyone. We owe it to them to respect who they are, to respect their feelings, to be respectful. And that is not something anyone has to earn.

Kim: That is something we all owe to each other. But then there's this other definition of respect, which is respecting someone's skills or someone's accomplishments, and that does have to be earned. And I think the fact that one word has two such different meanings can be confusing. So I just wanna be really clear. I'm talking about that first meaning.

Kim: Respect is something that we owe to everyone who we work with. We don't have to respect an action that they took, but we do have to respect them as a human being. We don't have to respect every opinion they have on every single thing. We can disagree with them. We can even disagree vehemently.

Kim: But when we disagree with someone vehemently, we have to offer them respect. And I think that when that kind of respect is not there, it often takes the form of bias, prejudice, and bullying. And those were things that I touched on very lightly in Radical Candor, but I didn't consider as deeply as I should have the extent to which bias, prejudice, and bullying make it really difficult for us to solicit radical candor and also to give it.

Erica: So why do you think now we're having this realization about how impactful it is?

Kim: Well, you know, if you write a book about feedback, you're gonna get a lot of it. And, indeed, I did. So shortly after Radical Candor came out, and Radical Candor came out in 2017. So shortly after it came out, I was giving a talk at a tech company in San Francisco. And again, thanks to the persistence of friends, the CEO of that company had been a colleague of mine for the better part of a decade.

Kim: She's a person who I like and respect enormously, and she's one of too few Black women CEOs in tech, or frankly, in any other sector. And when I finished explaining to her team what I meant by radical candor, she pulled me aside and she said, Kim, I'm really excited to roll out radical candor. I think it's gonna help me build the kind of culture that I want, but I gotta tell you, it's much harder for me to do it than it is for you. And she went on to explain to me that as soon as she would offer anyone even the most gentle, compassionate criticism, she would get tagged with the angry Black woman stereotype.

Kim: And I knew this was true. As soon as she said it to me, I had four realizations at the same time. The first was that I had not been the kind of colleague that I imagined myself to be, that I aspire to be. I had failed even to notice the extent to which she always had to show up to every meeting we were in together, unfailingly cheerful and pleasant, even though she had things to be ticked off about at work as we all do. I just hadn't even considered the toll that must take on her. So I had failed to be an upstander.

Kim: The second thing that I realized was that not only had I been in denial about the kinds of things that were happening to her as a Black woman in the workplace, I'd also been in denial about the kinds of things that were happening to me as a white woman in the workplace. Kind of hard for the author of a book called Radical Candor to admit, but there it was. I had been in denial. And I think part of the reason why I was in denial is that I never wanted to think of myself as a victim. That felt like it was gonna hurt my sense of agency.

Kim: But what really hurt my sense of agency was the denial. I had pretended that a whole host of things were not happening that were in fact happening. Now the third thing that I realized was that even less than wanting to think of myself as a victim, I didn't want to think of myself as the culprit. So I'd been even more deeply in denial about the times and the ways that I had caused harm in the workplace, when it was me who had said or done the bias or the prejudice or the bullying thing.

Kim: And then the fourth thing that I realized was that I imagined, as a leader, I was creating these bullshit-free zones where everyone could do the best work of their lives and enjoy working together, but I had failed to prevent bias, prejudice, and bullying from getting in the way of that goal. And so that was what prompted me to sit down and write Radical Respect. And then when I started writing, the world changed a lot. As I was writing it, Me Too happened. And then the second evolution of Black Lives Matter happened, and COVID happened. There was a lot to consider.

Erica: I was gonna say, how did that change the trajectory of the book?

Erica: Hey there, listeners. If you have ever felt like you're stuck in a place, held back by self doubt, perfectionism, or that pesky inner critic, you're not alone. We all face those sticky floors that keep us from reaching the heights we dream of. But guess what? It's time to shatter those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities.

Erica: My book, Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, is your ultimate guide to smashing through barriers, overcoming limiting beliefs, and stepping into your full potential. This book has been endorsed by none other than the great Mel Robbins, best selling author and motivational powerhouse. It's also been featured in Success Magazine, so you know it's packed with insights that work. Inside, you'll find real life sticky floor stories, practical strategies to help you navigate your own sticky floor moments, and a whole lot of inspiration to keep you climbing. This isn't just a book.

Erica: It's your roadmap to success, confidence, and freedom. Grab your copy of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors today at www.ericaandersonrooney.com. Whether you're in the boardroom, the classroom, or just starting out, this book is for you, because no one, and I mean no one, deserves to stay stuck, no one deserves to feel small, and you have glass ceilings to shatter. Let's do this.

Kim: Well, one of the things that's tricky for me, at least when I'm writing, is to find a balance between making sense of my own personal experience and also reading about others. There was a lot to read. It was hard to find the time to write because the news was coming at me so fast. In fact, at one point, my therapist said, you've got to put yourself on a media diet or you're never gonna finish this book.

Kim: You get five minutes reading the paper and five minutes on Twitter, and that is it. And I think it was thanks to that advice that I was able to get the book written. There was a lot to think about.

Erica: I was gonna say you probably wanted to dive in and research, research, research, but, I mean, I remember that time. Things were coming out every single day. To see a way that you could take all of that, stay on top of it, and get it into a book.

Kim: Whenever it came out, I would say the title just didn't work, because people thought I was telling them to return to office, which was not the point of the book at all. And I think the double entendre just didn't come through to a lot of folks. And then the other reason why it didn't work is it was too long. I put too much of what was happening in the world into it. And so in Radical Respect, the paperback, it's like 40,000 words shorter and more organized.

Kim: And I think also it's more in my voice. I think that as a white woman writing this book, I sort of felt two different ways at the same time, and they were in complete contradiction with one another. One was that I had no right to write the book. I had not really experienced the kind of injustice that so many people have experienced, which doesn't mean that I didn't experience bias, prejudice, bullying, discrimination, harassment, and sexual assault at work. I did.

Kim: I experienced all of those things. One of the things that somebody said to me is, this is not a suffering Olympics. We all suffer in our different ways.

Kim: So I didn't have a right to write it. And then on the other hand, I also felt at the same time that because I had so many privileges, I had a greater obligation to write the book. The important thing, and kind of the resolution to me, is that the important thing is that we build solidarity with one another in order to come together and solve these problems.

Erica: So I've got a question. You talked earlier about the internal validation that you got from writing.

Kim: Mhmm.

Erica: Did you struggle with putting out work that just didn't work, and the internal validation because of this feeling like it didn't work?

Kim: Yeah. I mean, I have been lucky in that I've had a lot of experience with failure. I failed kindergarten, so I started early.

Erica: Oh, okay. We go all the way back. Yeah.

Kim: We go all the way back. I started a couple of companies that didn't work out. And I have all these novels that I loved writing that never, well, I'm not gonna say never, they still haven't been published. They will be published.

Kim: So at one point, in fact, when one of the startups that I cofounded was failing, I was talking to a mentor of mine, and he taught me a Dutch expression. And the expression is van der Heelerholen. And what it means is, I'm sure I'm not pronouncing that correctly, but anyway, whatever, it's fun to say. And what it means is from my best efforts, nothing. And that happens sometimes in life.

Kim: And somehow just accepting that and being proud of your best efforts and recognizing that it's not always gonna work out, it's okay, you learn something. So much of what I wrote about in both Radical Candor and in Radical Respect comes from experiences I had, from different failures that I've had in life. Our failures can really enrich our lives, and I think that is important. And that's why you write. You don't write to sell a million books. You write to touch a few people.

Erica: My therapist always tells me everyone loves a comeback story. Is our next book going to be Radical Failure?

Kim: That book has been written, and it's written by Amy Edmondson, and it is a wonderful book called The Right Kind of Wrong. So I recommend it to folks. Now my next book is gonna be a novel. I'm going back to my roots, my novel writing roots.

Erica: Well, Kim, one of the things that I always ask everyone on my podcast is if you could go back to this Kim who's failed kindergarten, the Kim who had three failed startups, the diamond cutting business, all of that, and you could give her one piece of advice, what would that piece of advice be today?

Kim: I think the piece of advice that I would give my younger self is that you will do better work if you're figuring out what the right work rhythm for you is. Early in my career, I worked myself way too hard in a way that was not productive. It didn't help me succeed. Part of my failure was working too many hours and too long. But I think learning the rhythm of your own ability to work, ability to concentrate, and figuring out what works for you is really important and something I wish I had done sooner.

Kim: I mean, I will tell you, when I wrote my first novel, I tried to apply these work habits that I had developed in my management career, working at these startups, to the writing. And I started to hate the writing. And I realized, I don't need to set aside three, four hour chunks of time, working twelve hours a day. What I needed was three, hour and a half long chunks of time, and I needed to take long walks and get a lot of sleep and have dinner with friends or people who I loved. The thing that I realized was that I would get further faster by being gentler with myself.

Kim: And I wish I had learned that sooner.

Erica: Yeah. You're speaking to my heart. Well, Kim, where can people find you? How can they work with you?

Erica: Buy your book?

Kim: Well, you can buy Radical Candor anywhere, anywhere you buy books. Radical Respect, you can preorder anywhere you like to preorder books. And if you go to radicalcandor.com, you will see links to all the different places you can buy both books, and you will find our podcast. So we'd love to keep in touch with people.

Kim: I'm not so much on Twitter these days. I'm not even gonna call it its new name because it's dumb. But I am on LinkedIn all the time.

Erica: Cool. That's where I live, is LinkedIn. So I'm putting all of this in the show notes. Everybody will be able to get it there. But, Kim, thank you.

Kim: Thank you so much. I think you're offering such a gift to the world to let people talk about these sticky floor moments, because we all have them.

Erica: Thank you. Wow. What an awesome interview. I can tell you how pumped I was to have Kim Scott on the show. If y'all have not read the book Radical Respect, it is a must read.

Erica: She talks about the framework in this book. You can either be an obnoxious aggressor, ruinous empathy, manipulative insincerity, or you can have radical candor. And it is so interesting to read through all of those. So head out, grab it today. But as usual, I wanted to pop in here and say thank you for listening.

Erica: Thank you for joining in. And if you liked this episode, please do rate, review, and subscribe, as it really helps the message land in the person's hands who needs to hear it most.

Kim: I'll see

Erica: you next time.