Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Radical Cander Podcast. I'm Kim Scott, co-founder of Radical Cander,

an author of Radical Cander and Just Work. I'm Jason Rooshoff, CEO and co-founder of Radical Cander.

And I'm Amy Sandler, your host for the Radical Cander podcast.

And today we're going to talk about an issue, Kim, you have written about extensively,

our dear friend, ruinous empathy.

If you're a long-time listener or have read Radical Cander, then you're likely familiar with Kim's Bob story.

And if you're not, we'll put a version of it in the show notes for you.

Ruinous empathy, which is being nice, that's in quotes, but ultimately unhelpful and unkind.

It's rampant among new managers. And by the way, not just new managers, I think it's just rampant.

It's just rampant. It's rampant.

Including a new manager who wrote to us asking for advice about how to break out of a ruinous empathy rut.

You might want to say that five times faster, ruinous empathy rut. We do edit these

submissions to remove any identifying characteristics. So all you need to know is that the person

whose letter we're going to read, all they ever dreamed about was being a boss. And now realizes

it's nothing like they imagined. So this person writes, quote,

when I recently transitioned to a dream job where I'm a manager, my obsession became

commitment to taking matters into my own hands to foster cultural change. But I've never

been the boss before and I feel like a teenager testing out my new voice

and observing it coming out awkwardly, and at times not aligned with the situation.

I feel their pain. They go on to explain, while I join this organization amidst massive changes,

I have experienced well-structured organization processes

and change management, and I'm also deeply committed to the people. Upon joining, I was quick

...