Fusion of Radical Candor and Fearless Feedback

Implications on what it means to care. In the business world, the fast paced approach to driving past obstacles and leaving them in the dust can often times break a companies momentum, safety and culture.

Lets begin with a very structured approach seen in the oil and gas “plant” industry. When problems occur (often times hazardous) out in the field, many reactive steps are taken to make sure that the same problem doesn’t happen again. But this is generally a very expensive way for plants to deal with issues due to lost of expensive assets, time and people.

So what did the plants do? They became proactive. Building firm processes around what to do when an near miss happens has helped protect from massive future problems in the companies. By building this process into the core of industrial companies, massive gains have been seen from both a revenue and cultural standpoint.

So how do these companies enforce this “near miss” practice? By demanding it! Job scores, raises, promotions are all built off of performance and value given to the organization. Putting employees in a position where they can ether hope that nothing goes wrong, or structure the business for future success has been branded in the lives of industrial/contract workers.

So how can this be implemented into every other market and industry? There are two main visionaries (companies) building defined strategies, Apple, Inc. and Candor (Kim Scott). Both of these companies have great ideas on building constructive criticism within the work place and are complementary to each other.

Lets start with Apple. Over the last 7+ years Apple has been training their employees on what they call “Fearless Feedback”. What is fearless feedback you may ask? Well…It’s the act of giving feedback to someone…fearlessly. When Apple built this program, their goal was to break down any discomfort around giving a co-worker feedback on their performance. Apple saw that especially in American culture, feedback was thought of as a slap in the face. Someone telling someone else that they are doing something wrong was just…uncomfortable.

So what did Apple do? They gutted the mindset of their employees. Weeks of training prior to even entering the field was given to each new employee to go over company products, processes and the benefits of fearless feedback. It doesn’t matter if you had been working their for a month or 6 years, Apple saw that once you get past the discomfort of the first few feedback sessions, it becomes more of a conversation between two friends.

But this is only half of the equation. Having great peer to peer communication is vital for a company, but it all starts with leadership. This is where Kim Scott’s idea’s which she branded as Radical Candor come into play. After years of consulting with C-Level executives about communication with their employees, what Kim found was that most leaders were afraid of HR disasters in the work place if you communicate certain levels of feedback to employees. Constructive feedback needs to be represented by leadership in a company and demanded by it’s employees.

Kim says that radical candor is a function of managers “caring personally” and “challenging directly.” Ultimately what this means is if you don’t challenge your employees with constructive and quick feedback, you don’t truly care about them and your effectiveness as a leader with begin to decrease.

Illustration from Kim Scott’s Radical Candor

“Impromptu feedback is the most important thing that managers do for the people who work for them … but it’s really, really hard to do it. That’s why I call it ‘radical candor’, because it’s so rare that it happens.”So how do we structure these conversations to be as impactful and easy to digest as possible? Structuring feedback in a positive way is vital in building a process for both leadership and employees. Constructive feedback should always start with a positive. “ — Kim Scott, Radical Candor

So lets dive into how to construct a conversation in a way that doesn’t give bad vibes or become an HR disaster. The goal in these conversations to cut though the tension is to say at least two positive things prior to giving your feedback. For example, if I were to see someone give a discount to a customer that was not correct and I wanted to talk to them about it, I would say something like “ You are a great at reading customers and are always out to help/benefit the people you service. It is people like you that make our company great. However, even though I know your intentions were good, we can’t discount our products anymore than is listed”.

Conversations like this can not only take away from the stress and pain of feedback, but also build relationships and ultimately grow a company’s brand and culture. Openness between peers and leadership is amazing when done right.

I want to add one more nugget of advice and it is probably the most uncomfortable and hardest relationship to instill in feedback. You got it! The ability for employees to give feedback to leadership. This will ultimately be the biggest step for most companies to take…but also the most rewarding. Remember leaders, you hired these people because they were the best of the best. Out of the thousands of people you may have interviewed…you chose them. Listen and who knows…maybe you will learn something.