Providing feedback & coaching

Radical Candor — The surprising secret to being a good boss

5 minutes

Key Takeaways

Guidance is both praise and criticism according to Kim Scott, co-founder of Candor. It’s important to give and get both.

When guidance is excellent, it’s described as radical candor.

Radical candor is when you care personally but are challenging directly. It’s humble, it’s immediate, it’s in person and in private. It’s not personalized e.g. “you sound stupid” not “you are stupid”.

If there is no personal care in your feedback, then it comes across offensively.

If you aren’t giving clear feedback because you want to be nice, you are failing your team.

Be careful if you are looking to implement radical candour in your team. You risk entering into 3 danger zones: obnoxious aggression, manipulative insincerity, and ruinous empathy.

Things you can do to be a good leader

Provide impromptu guidance.

Make backstabbing impossible – It is important to foster a culture of guidance. You can do this by not letting people talk badly about each other to you. Ask if they can work it out between them and if not, get them to come together. Be as fair as possible.

Make sure that the people working for you are good bosses. Skip-level meetings can be helpful. Get the team comfortable with skip-level meetings before you start.

Put your own oxygen mask on first – You can’t give a damn about others if you don’t give a damn about yourself.

Source

First Round Captial. (2016, April 14). Radical Candor — The Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss. [YouTube]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MIh_992Nfes

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