Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Radical Canter Podcast. I'm Kim Scott. I'm Jason Rosoff.

And I'm Amy Sandler. You've got questions. We've got answers. Today we've got Kim and Jason

answering some of our most frequently asked questions about radical candor. We've got a bunch of questions, so let's jump

right in. And one of the questions that we often get asked, I'm going to start with Kim, so put your

thinking cap on, does radical candor work differently in different cultures or with teams in

different countries?

Yes, and it also works differently with individuals.

We say often that radical candor gets measured, not at the speaker's mouth, but at the listener's ear.

So it's really important to be aware of the culture where you're operating of the team

within that culture and of the individual.

So, for example, I at one point in my career was managing teams in, I think, 20 different

countries.

And believe me, radical candor sounded very different in the Netherlands than it did in Japan.

In fact, with a team in Japan, I called it polite persistence because polite was the way that

that team liked to think about showing that they cared personally, and persistence was an easier

way for that team in Japan to think about challenging directly.

But if I had gone to the Netherlands and said, we're going to be politely persistent,

they would have thought I was talking about manipulative and sincerity.

Because the culture in the Netherlands is very direct.

But even within the team in the Netherlands, the norms of communication were very

different amongst the engineers than in the sales team, for example. And so radical canters

sounded differently. And it's not only across countries that radical candor sounds very different.

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