Radical Candor is a book every boss should read.
I say boss – not leader, or manager, because Scott has clear opinions on the stereotypes associated with those terms. Since I started my own business, I no longer have people management responsibilities, but it’s been really interesting thinking back to my time as a manager, and to the managers I’ve had during my career.
Scott outlines a management style quadrant which underpins her book – with “radical candor” at the top right. According to Scott, radical candor is a style of management which perfectly combines the need to “care personally” with the imperative to “challenge directly”. Challenge without the empathy, you’re just obnoxiously aggressive – fail to challenge at all, and you’re either ruinously empathetic or manipulatively insincere. None of those sounds great – but how to end up in this sweet spot of being a great boss whose timely, frank feedback nurtures their team?
It’s actually very hard to do this. Even when you understand the theory, it’s easy to slip back into being insincere, especially if you’re a people pleaser. The need for people to like you – or at least not to dislike you – is strong in many of us and so we let the chance to be direct slip away. Often, we completely misread how others see us and how we come across. What we think is appreciated praise reads as patronising or insincere. When we think we’re being direct, we’re read as abrasive or rude (women especially struggle with this perception challenge, as Scott notes). So, how do you know, and how do you adjust? Feedback.
Scott is passionate about feedback as a mechanism to grow team members, and to grow as a boss. Her rule is – show you can take it before you dish it out. In her years spent in Silicon Valley firms (predominantly Google and Apple), she learned from some of the best leaders in the industry. Feedback should be concise, timely and direct, whilst demonstrating that in giving it you care about helping the recipient.
And if it doesn’t immediately come to mind, we should push for it. She recounts stories of executives counting out a number of seconds and enduring the awkwardness to force the issue. I remember attending a management session run by an ex-Googler a number of years ago and feeling fiercely enthused by it. The difficulty though is when your own organisation doesn’t necessarily promote a culture of feedback. How to share honestly with co-workers or – more tricky – your own boss, if that isn’t the organisational norm.
In businesses in general, feedback is normally given too gently or – worse – is given behind the person’s back rather than to their face. Why? Partly because we’re afraid of being disliked, partly because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, or damage the relationship. Perhaps it’s just an awkward conversation all round that we’d like to avoid. But as a boss, Scott argues that conversation is your duty – it’s literally your job.
Whilst part 1 of ‘Radical Candor’ documents Scott’s theory, part 2 provides practical tips and advice on how to actually go about implementing it. It’s written for bosses, but anybody can benefit from the techniques. And what if you can’t succeed in giving radically candid feedback – well you probably need a new job, says Scott. Better get reading!
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