It’s Not Mean, It’s Clear: Radical Candor
In the culture of the GSB, where feedback is a gift, telling others how their behaviors left an impact on you is nothing new. It’s the language we’ve all agreed to speak, it’s the norms we’ve all agreed to adhere. But many of us are about to leave this Twilight Zone we’ve co-created where everyone tells the truth, and return to the ‘real’ world where the motto is slightly different: “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all.”
Since we can’t put everyone else we meet through ‘Touchy Feely’, what’s a GSB grad to do?
Enter the new zone — the Radical Candor Zone.
Proudly standing in front of the room, Kim Scott smiles at us in a bright orange cardigan and her favorite jeans (her candor uniform) and enlightens us to a bold truth: honesty, done in a productive way, is the kindest thing you can do for another person.
She gives us some great guidelines to start: care personally and challenge directly. When these are done in an even way, you get Radical Candor. Doing too much of each without the other ends in being overly sensitive and not productive (i.e. ruinous empathy) or challenging too much without showing care and intent (i.e. obnoxious aggression). She even kicks us with a new one: manipulative insincerity — where you neither want to care nor helpfully challenge. You’re just a jerk…and she even gives us a helpful 2x2 to get through our days.
What’s missing from the conversation is a reminder of trust and choice. The trust that the person giving us feedback is doing it with good intent and trust that the person receiving it will act on it if they can, if they choose to. Because what frees feedback from being mean, is that it is not setting new norms or rules for how the other person should behave (the should-ies).
Instead it’s a measure of the effectiveness of their behavior — and based on what he or she wants to accomplish — she or he can indulge and/or refrain from any number of tactical behaviors. None of those behaviors tell him who he is — only what he is doing at the time. If what you are doing at the time isn’t working, you can change it. If who you are at the time isn’t working, well, it’s no longer feedback, it’s judgment.
“Candor: the quality of being open and honest in expression; frankness.” (Good ole Dictionary.com)
How do you navigate the post-GSB world?
By bringing quality to the conversation, enhancing it with the richness of caring personally, while challenging the other person to use the tools at her disposal to make her most effective. Practice this and you offer others the choice to behave in a way that will get them their greater, desired results because you want them to succeed. Practice this and you offer others dignity that they are creative, resourceful, and whole — and that your feedback for them is another stepping stone to crossing the river called growth.
Practice this and enjoy the realization that the only thing radical is that we used to think this was mean.
“It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the [Radical Candor Zone].” (Twilight Zone Intro, Rod Sterling)
