I came across the book Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity, by Kim Scott, about two years ago and I have been implementing the ideas it contains ever since.

This book is a must-read for any current or aspiring ‘people leaders’ and it has had a fundamental impact on the way I lead my own teams. After adopting the principles and advice in the book, I have received a lot of positive feedback from my team, even after tough conversations.

The author, Kim Scott, explains clearly how to be candid with your teams whilst avoiding the traps of being arrogant or offensive. She also lays out the hugely detrimental impact you can have by not talking about hard truths with those who you manage. Often, it feels easier to avoid a hard conversation but by doing so you are ultimately damaging the other person and creating longer-term problems.

Kim’s team has a great blog on the subject here (https://www.radicalcandor.com/)

Key Concepts

Kim Scott starts by providing a useful visual framework, shown below, to help remember the fundamental ideas behind her techniques. If you want to hear more, you can see Kim’s explanation on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-Tcr0T9Tyw)

The feedback framework consists of two axes. The first is to ”care personally”, Kim describes it as the give-a-damn axis. This can be achieved with anyone and does not require that you take forever to build a relationship. It can even work in a 30-second interaction on the street with a stranger. She states this simply as: treat others with respect, meet them with a smile and care about their wellbeing.

This give-a-damn axis is easy to understand but there is a downside to this trait: it very often leads people to indifference or apathy. This is because we try to avoid a difficult conversation or topic in order not to upset people.

The second axis is ”challenge directly”, which Kim says can sometimes be thought of as the bravery to speak out.

This action of speaking out can be particularly hard especially because many of us were told from an early age ‘If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all’. But Kim points out that, unfortunately, this is not the path for a leader to take and she maintains that it is your job to say something and your moral obligation to be radically candid.

The four quadrants of the feedback framework are as follows:

Obnoxious Aggression

If your behaviour falls into this segment, Kim describes it as being an arsehole, plain and simple. You challenge directly and don’t care about the other person. All people behave this way from time-to-time when you make a snap comment or shout at another person from your car.

If you have a habit of saying what you think no matter what, sometimes you can land in this quadrant and Kim warns to be aware of how others might perceive you.

Manipulative Insincerity

In this quadrant of Kim’s framework, you give insincere feedback or stay silent and you don’t care about the other person. This type of behaviour can be perceived as ”political” or backstabbing. People know when you are being insincere and this, therefore, breaks trust. In a team environment, this type of behaviour can be very harmful.

Ruinous Empathy

This is the how Kim terms behaviour where you care but you don’t want to give feedback in case you hurt the other person’s feelings. Most of the time, though, she asserts that it is due to a lack of bravery to say what needs to be said. She uses the example of a situation where a colleague or friend has something visible stuck in their teeth. Is it better for you to say nothing to avoid embarrassing them or are you actually creating a worse problem by allowing them to walk around not knowing about it?

Put yourself in their shoes, would you rather you were told you at the time?

In a work environment I see this so often: when everyone likes someone but that person is not performing their job properly. You might hear people commenting ”This is a great start, good effort but perhaps you can make it better….” but inevitably these people will fail if their issue is not addressed. Even worse, this type of situation hurts the rest of the team because it lowers the work standard and can cause resentment.

Radical Candor

Having discussed the failures of the other 3 feedback techniques, Kim concludes that Radical Candor is therefore the optimum situation. This is the solution in which you challenge and give feedback directly but the recipient knows that you care personally. You will notice that she emphasises that the ”recipient knows” you care. If they don’t ”know” this then your feedback will appear to be Obnoxious Aggression. Feedback is not about how you say it but how the other person hears it.

Failure of candor

The feedback framework described in this book has changed how I communicate with my team. I saw the impact during one particular situation.

I was chatting to a new member of my team who asked me if I had recommended them for a particular award. The reality was that although they had been working hard I had not seen any real impact or standout work, therefore, when the nominations were sent to me I decided not to put them forward.

I was caught off guard when they asked me this question and my initial reaction was to not hurt their feelings so I gave a vague half-truth answer. Not only did I fall into Ruinous Empathy but potentially also Manipulative Insincerity. In reality, what happened was a lack of bravery on my behalf and by not giving direct feedback I was actually preventing this person from improving. As a manager this was unacceptable.

This event occurred at the time I was reading this book which provided me with some initiative to take action. A few days later I asked for a one-on-one with the individual and during this meeting, I apologised for not being transparent. I explained my thoughts on their work, provided some advice and mentoring, and explained that I would want to see more impact from this person.

What amazed me was their reaction.

they thanked me for the feedback and then said that they had suspected something was wrong. We then proceeded to have a very genuine and candid discussion about how they could make more impact.

From that day on I built a tremendously strong working relationship with this person and they became one of the top performers in my team as I help to coach them. Whenever I am feeling uncomfortable giving feedback, I always think back to that situation and what would have happened if I had not employed Radical Candor (even if a few days later than I should have!).

Tips and advice

In addition to the Radical Candor framework, I also picked up a few other tips from this book which have worked well and I would like to share.

One-on-ones

Kim advises that you engage with your team via regular one-on-ones. I implemented 30 minute recurring weekly meetings set up with all of my direct reports.

I find these meetings to be some of the most valuable in my calendar and a critical part of getting updates, aligning priorities and taking time to get to know the team better.

The meetings are a time where I ask the team members to set their own agenda on what to discuss. Recently I have provided a simple framework of categories that is helping to structure the conversations.

• Self
• Team
• Projects
• Process
• Environment / Other

Giving Feedback

Kim advises that it is critical to give feedback immediately or as soon as is appropriate – don’t save it for later. This allows the recipient to better recall the situation and it will have a stronger impact. Feedback is always better in person and individually.

She suggests that when giving feedback, elaborate on how addressing the specific issue will help that person. This shows that you are looking for positive outcomes and that you care. Make sure you also listen actively to better understand that person and not just to respond to them.

Kim recommends that if you are about to get into some tough feedback, it helps to say at the start: “This is going to be a hard conversation”. It prepares the recipient for what is to come and often makes them more receptive.

She also says you need to solicit radical candor by giving it and it is about praise as much as criticism. Attempt to gauge how your employee receives the feedback. It gets measured at the other person’s ear, so try to understand how they took the feedback. She suggests you ask them: ‘Do you know what I am talking about? Does it make sense?’

Now, think about your every member of your own team and ask yourself: would you fight to keep them in your team? Critically, do they know what your answer would be? This is a great measure of your candor with them.

Developing Radical Candor in your team

Kim advocates that when talking with your team, insist on a clean escalation of issues and don’t let people talk badly about others to you. If there is an issue between two team members, make them talk to each other and offer to mediate if necessary.

She also recommends that if you want to encourage feedback from others, use 6 seconds of silence…. this is uncomfortable so people will speak. This is particularly effective in team meetings and also helps to get the quieter members of the team to contribute.

Finally, Kim maintains that you should lead by example and reward the candor by acknowledging it when you see it.

Conclusion

Kim Scott’s Radical Candor book is an easy read with lots of practical advice and examples to elaborate on the framework. Remember that feedback is a gift and a moral obligation, especially if you are a manager of people.

And as Kim says: when giving feedback, don’t focus on your fear, focus on their need.