What is Radical Candor?

Happy Thursday! 

Hard to believe we are entering the last week of June.  Soon it will be July with summer fully upon us.  Glad to see all using their PTO and vacationing with family and friends.  I can’t tell you enough about the importance of disconnecting, refreshing, and returning! 

Radical Candor by Kim Scott

What is Radical Candor? The whole point of Radical Candor is that it really is possible to Care Personally and Challenge Directly at the same time.  Author Kim Scott, explains it in this YouTube video:  What is Radical Candor? | Kim Scott - YouTube

Below are pieces of information that I picked out of several articles to give you a sense of what Radical Candor is.   Most are modified from an article found online by Kim Scott, the author of the New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss without Losing your Humanity and the co-founder of Radical Candor LLC, appeared on the Radical Candor blog.  Anywhere you find the blue underline, you should find the hyperlink. 

What I like about Radical Candor is that it is not brutal honesty, it’s being kind, clear, specific, and sincere. We can break free of a false dichotomy that leaves too many people feeling they have to choose between being a jerk and being incompetent. That’s a terrible choice, and nobody has to make it. In fact, if you really care personally about somebody, you will tell them if you think they are making a mistake — and when they are doing something great.

What is Radical Candor?

There is a world of difference between Radical Candor and brutal honesty, or as we call it, Obnoxious Aggression. It’s bad, but "Ruinous Empathy" can be even worse, and Manipulative Insincerity is the worst of all.

Radical Candor is kind and helpful.

Obnoxious Aggression is praise that doesn’t feel sincere or criticism and feedback that isn’t delivered kindly. Obnoxious Aggression is also called “brutal honesty” or “front stabbing.”

Ruinous Empathy is “nice” but ultimately unhelpful or even damaging. It’s seeing somebody with their fly down, but not wanting to embarrass them, saying nothing, with the result that 15 more people see them with their fly down — more embarrassing for them.

Manipulative Insincerity is a stab in the back.

Learn More about these four quadrants?  Take a look at this YouTube video ( Kim Scott - Care personally. Challenge directly. - Insights for Entrepreneurs - Amazon - YouTube) to learn more straight from the author’s mouth!

Radical Candor happens at the intersection of Care Personally and Challenge Directly:

Care Personally means that you care about the other person, not about whether you are winning a popularity contest.

What Caring Personally IS

Caring Personally is at its core common human decency. You don’t have to have a deep personal relationship to have this as your point of departure. But if you work closely with somebody — if for example you are somebody’s boss — you need to begin to develop a positive human relationship with that person.

Caring Personally is inherently about thinking of others, putting their success and needs ahead of your own. At its best, it is not about being loved; it is about loving.

To Care Personally, one must move at a pace that doesn’t make the other person uncomfortable.

What Caring Personally is NOT

Caring Personally does NOT mean getting all personal with somebody who wants privacy. I once worked with a man who had a terminal illness. Work was the only place where nobody had to know about that or ask about that. The best way I could Care Personally about this man was to protect his secret, and never once ask him about his health. We focused on the work.

Caring Personally also does NOT mean over-sharing personal details of your life with those around you who may not want to hear them, and who may be made uncomfortable by them.

Challenge Directly means that you share your perspective and invite the other person to do the same.

What Challenging Directly IS

Challenging Directly is giving people the kind of heads-up that underlies basic human decency. Imagine that you were working on a construction site, and you looked up and saw a man cutting an iron beam — but sitting on the wrong end. When he finishes cutting, he will plummet eight stories to his death. Challenging Directly is sort of like saying, perhaps yelling even, “Hey, you’re on the wrong end of that beam, you’ll plunge to your death if you keep cutting!” Of course, you’d do that, and right away, right??

But there is no reason that moving quickly must mean moving disrespectfully. It’s not going to help the guy to preface your warning with a “Hey, dummy!” And it could be that you don’t understand what he’s doing, and he’s actually not about to plummet to his death…. Challenging Directly is first and foremost humble. It’s tempting to say that “Caring Personally” is about love and Challenging Directly is about truth. But there is a problem with the word “truth….” This gets me to why we call it Radical Candor, not “brutal honesty.”

What Challenging Directly is NOT

Challenging Directly does NOT mean you can assume that whatever you think is “the truth” and therefore should be shoved down people’s throats.

Challenging Directly does NOT mean you are right. You may be wrong. In fact, you should expect and welcome a reciprocal challenge.

The “direct” in “Challenge Directly” does NOT mean to be brutal. Radical Candor is not brutal honesty. It means to share your (humble) opinions directly, rather than talking badly about people behind their backs.

Challenge Directly does NOT mean just saying whatever pops into your head…

Why It’s Called “Radical”

Why did we choose the word “radical?” Here’s a definition of radical: “(especially of change or action) relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; far-reaching or thorough.”

The reason we use the word Radical is that the kind of candor we’re talking about is rare. It feels unnatural to practice it. It flies in the face of the “if you don’t have anything nice to say don’t say it at all” maxim that most of us have heard since we learned to talk. Changing training that’s been instilled in us since we were eighteen months old is hard. But, with playful practice and a commitment to being kind and clear, Radical Candor can change your relationships at work, home, and everywhere in between.

Why It’s Called “Candor”

We chose the word candor over truth or honesty very consciously.

We chose the word candor because, to us, the word has more of a “here’s what I think, what do you think” connotation than the words “truth” or “honesty” do.

I encourage you to pick up the book, Radical Candor, watch the YouTube videos, and think about how you might model radical candor in the future.  Let me know what you think about the content as I value your opinion.  Personally, I think the balance between being direct and honest but also caring is one of the fundamental necessities of a high-performing team.

Happy Thursday!

-srt

REFERENCE:

Scott, Kim.  Radical Candor