Our founder, Christina Wing, sat down with Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor, on her podcast to talk about Unspeakable. Here are a few of the points that stood out to us.
Go to the person first
Christina’s first job after college was at an investment bank in New York. She didn’t know financial modeling yet, and the boss assigned to train her told her again and again how stupid she was. She’d been told never to go around your boss, so she went straight to him. She said he didn’t want to teach her, she wasn’t getting better, and they were both losing. Then she told him she’d ask to be reassigned the next day.
The other analysts were sure she’d be fired. Instead, the next morning she found a note on her chair: “I want to teach you.” He did, and he went on to teach the analysts who came after her the same way. Kim called it excellent radical candor. Christina gave him the respect of hearing it from her first.
A difficult moment isn’t a difficult conversation
Firing someone or ending a relationship is a difficult moment. Something is ending, and one person has already decided. A difficult conversation is different: the relationship continues and both people share a goal. Christina thinks that when we put all of these in one bucket, we end up avoiding every one of them.
In her house, the shared goal is clean dishes, even though she and her husband will never agree on forks up or forks down.
Don’t go in to win
Christina is careful about how people use the role-playing in her book. Practicing helps you choose better words. Too much practice backfires, though, because you start assuming you know what the other person will say and answer before they’ve finished. She also warned that if your first conversation about something feels like a win, you’ve probably already lost, since the other person may just be agreeing so it will end.
Talk about money
Kim asked about a story from the book. Christina once asked each member of a wealthy a family to write down anonymously what they thought they were worth, and the answers were ten times apart. It’s difficult to plan when nobody agrees on what’s possible. Families don’t need to announce who’s inheriting what, but Christina believes the next generation should know what’s there and what their responsibility is.
Why this matters to us
Near the end, Christina said there’s one thing she’d “die on the mat” for. As AI takes on more of the work, the people who do well will be the ones who can look someone in the eye, explain what the information means, and work it through with other people.
We see the same thing with the families and leadership teams we work with. The ones that can talk openly about succession, money, and roles before there’s a crisis are in a much stronger position.
The episode also covers race and religion, why it’s freeing to stop answering every text right away, and what Christina tells her students before they go home for Thanksgiving. Kim closed by saying she hoped listeners would read Unspeakable and then go out and speak it. We agree.
Listen to the full conversation on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or YouTube, and learn more about Christina’s book at christinawing.com/book.
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