Turning brutal honesty into radical candor, the art
Feedback, the Rubic’s cube of the business world: everyone wants it as a tool to become smarter until they realize the amount of work required to do it. This applies to delivering and receiving feedback as much as it does to acting on it.
Do you ever ‘umm’ when speaking? I certainly do. How would you react to the following feedback? “Saying ‘umm’ every three words makes you sound stupid!” In most situations, I would probably mentally block anything else I hear from that point on.
Kim Scott, the author of ‘Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss without Losing Your Humanity’ and guest speaker in Allison Kluger’s Reputation Management class at Stanford GSB, did not. She received that feedback from none other than Sheryl Sandberg, her then boss at Google, despite having delivered a very successful presentation to the company’s founder and CEO shortly before that. How did such a challenging, albeit direct, approach work for Kim? It was due to the personal relationship of trust and care the two of them had built beforehand.
This is the basis of Kim’s “two-by-two” for efficient feedback delivery: care personally and challenge directly. In other words, you must ‘give a damn’ and be ‘willing to piss people off.’
If you succeed, you’ve mastered the art of Radical Candor. If you are falling short on at least one of these dimensions, your feedback is doomed to fail. Depending on which dimension it is, your relationship with the receiver may be too (see ‘Obnoxious Aggression’ or ‘Manipulative Insincerity’ below).
These are Kim’s tips on how to adopt Radical Candor and become better at feedback:
Get it. Yes, taking our own medicine is crucial. Kim suggests 1:1 meetings in which we lead with a go to question, such as “What could I do/stop doing to make it easier to work with?” And when feedback comes, embrace the discomfort. As Kim puts it, “if you feel like responding, shut your mouth, count to 6, and continue to listen!”
Give it. We tend to have personal biases towards either praising or criticising too much. Push yourself to do both. Praise publicly, criticize privately! And don’t make it about something they can’t change, like their personality.
Gauge it. Once your feedback is out, pay attention to reactions. Good communication is defined by what people hear, not by what you (indend to) say. Most importantly, if you ever feel like using the “Don’t take it personally” card… that’s right — shut your mouth, count to 6, and reconsider.
Encourage it. Finally, infuse Radical Candor into your organization’s culture. Unlike relationships, culture scales. Don’t allow people to talk badly about each other and insist they solve their differences directly. If they fail, propose to intermediate their discussion and be fair.
Kim Scott has had a stellar career, has made good friends along the way, and has now joined the prestigious ranks of bestselling authors. While many things played into that, her ‘Radical Candor’ approach is one of them. The framework seems to be working, so let’s give it a try!
