How NDAs Protect Power Instead of People 7 | 15

Radical Candor: Communication at Work

Radical Candor

Business, Management, Careers

4.7 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 9 April 2025

⏱️ 43 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

When contracts hide misconduct, it’s not policy—it’s a cover-up.

What do NDAs, forced arbitration, and emotionally manipulating teenagers have in common? Sadly, more than you'd hope. Kim, Jason and Amy rip the lid off the corporate culture of hush-hush harm, legal gymnastics and why emotional manipulation is a feature—not a bug—in some marketing strategies. They dig into the story behind Careless People by Sara Wynn-Williams, the book someone definitely doesn’t want you to read, and expose how companies use contracts to silence the truth and protect power—not people. From creepy ad targeting to leaders who dodge accountability like it’s dodgeball, the crew gets real about why “just business” is a lazy excuse for bad behavior. Kim even owns up to the time she played the NDA game—and why she’ll never do it again. Because real leadership doesn’t mean covering your ass—it means doing the damn right thing, even when it costs you.

Get all of the show notes at RadicalCandor.com/podcast.

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Chapters:

(00:00:00) Introduction
Kim, Jason, and Amy introduce the topic of NDAs and forced arbitration.

(00:02:11) Why Careless People Matters
The impact of NDAs and the importance of supporting the author.

(00:03:17) Understanding Forced Arbitration
A breakdown of arbitration and its role in silencing workplace harm.

(00:06:20) Emotional Targeting at Facebook
A disturbing passage about targeting vulnerable teens.

(00:09:43) Harm, Silence, and Scapegoats
The role of toxic cultures and fear play in keeping employees silent.

(00:17:40) The Measurement Problem
How profit-driven metrics ignore the human harm they cause.

(00:22:14) Loyalty vs Integrity
Balancing between professional loyalty and moral responsibility.

(00:26:29) Kim’s NDA Regret
A candid story of using an NDA to silence an employee.

(00:32:40) Building Better Systems
Strategies for leaders to design accountability into workplace culture.

(00:34:42) A Better Way Forward
Why transparency and early action are more effective than silence.

(00:38:02) Culture Is Design
How treating culture like a product helps fix systemic issues.

(00:39:49) Radical Candor Tips
Tips for eliminating NDAs, ending forced arbitration, and building trust

(00:41:30) Conclusion

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Radical Canter Podcast. I'm Kim Scott. I'm Jason
0:08.9	Roseoff. I'm Amy Sandler, and today we're going to be tackling a critical issue that Kim,
0:14.6	you write about in radical respect. The question is, what happens when organizations silence employees instead of
0:24.0	removing the obstacles that hinder their success? What's bringing this up to mind is META's
0:30.8	recent arbitration case against former employees, Sarah Wynne Williams, whose new book,
0:36.6	Careless People, exposes misconduct within the
0:39.7	company and has prompted us to really explore the broader implications of non-disclosure agreements,
0:46.4	NDAs, and forced arbitration in the workplace. So let's get into it. Yes. This is such an important issue, I think. When, I mean,
0:59.0	non-disclosure agreements are supposed to prevent people from sharing technical secrets, you know, trade secrets.
1:12.4	They were not supposed to be used as a way to hide wrongdoing.
1:18.5	And yet that is how they're being used, as are non-discharagement agreements, which is a whole
1:24.4	other thing.
1:25.9	And so I think that this book, this book is really important.
1:31.2	And I think it's not just about this book or meta.
1:36.5	We have a systemic problem in the workplace and workplace culture that leads leaders
1:42.6	to try to dodge the checks and balances that our society
1:48.0	has put in place to prevent leaders from harming individual employees or even all of us.
1:54.6	And in the case of this book, I feel like we're all, the author was harmed, but we're all being harmed.
2:03.1	I'm excited.
2:04.4	I read the book, the whole book.
2:06.6	I know you all didn't necessarily read the whole book yet, but I'm excited to chat with you all about it.
2:11.7	Great.
	...

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