Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean

by Kim Malone Scott

“Healthy emotional empathy makes for a more caring world. It can nurture social connection, concern, and insight. But unregulated emotional empathy can be the source of distress and burnout; it can also lead to withdrawal and moral apathy.

Empathy is not compassion. Connection, resonance, and concern might not lead to action.

Compassionate Candor engages the heart (care personally) and the mind (challenge directly).

RADICAL CANDOR PUTS building good relationships at the center of a boss’s job.

In an effort to create a positive, stress-free environment, I sidestepped the difficult but necessary part of being a boss: telling people clearly and directly when their work wasn’t good enough. I failed to create a climate in which people who weren’t getting the job done were told so in time to fix it.

I’d never given Bob any criticism. I’d also never asked him to give me feedback,

Lack of praise and criticism had absolutely disastrous effects on the team and on our outcomes.

Rather than focus on “giving feedback” to my team, I encouraged them to tell me when I was wrong. I did everything I could to encourage people to criticize me, or at least simply to talk to me. After a false start (more on that later) the team started to open up.

And indeed, this was my experience at the company. At Apple, as at Google, a boss’s ability to achieve results had a lot more to do with listening and seeking to understand than it did with telling people what to do; more to do with debating than directing; more to do with pushing people to decide than with being the decider; more to do with persuading than with giving orders; more to do with learning than with knowing.

Brillant words

we often played a video of Steve explaining his approach to giving criticism. He captured something very important: “You need to do that in a way that does not call into question your confidence in their abilities but leaves not too much room for interpretation . . . and that’s a hard thing to do.”

“I don’t mind being wrong. And I’ll admit that I’m wrong a lot. It doesn’t really matter to me too much. What matters to me is that we do the right thing.”

Ultimately, though, bosses are responsible for results. They achieve these results not by doing all the work themselves but by guiding the people on their teams. Bosses guide a team to achieve results.

The questions I get asked next are clustered around each of these three areas of responsibility that managers do have: guidance, team-building, and results.

Very few people focus first on the central difficulty of management that Ryan hit on: establishing a trusting relationship with each

person who reports directly to you.

They determine whether you can fulfill your three responsibilities as a manager: 1) to create a culture of guidance (praise and criticism) that will keep everyone moving in the right direction; 2) to understand what motivates each person on your team well enough to avoid burnout or boredom and keep the team cohesive; and 3) to drive results collaboratively.

“Care Personally.”

The second dimension involves telling people when their work isn’t good enough—and when it is; when they are not going to get that new role they wanted, or when you’re going to hire a new boss “over”

“Radical Candor” is what happens when you put “Care Personally” and “Challenge Directly” together.

Why “radical”? I chose this word because so many of us are conditioned to avoid saying what we really think. This is partially adaptive social behavior; it helps us avoid conflict or embarrassment. But in a boss, that kind of avoidance is disastrous.

The most surprising thing about Radical Candor may be that its results are often the opposite of what you fear. You fear people will become angry or vindictive; instead they are usually grateful for the chance to talk it through. And even when you do get that initial anger, resentment, or sullenness, those emotions prove to be fleeting when the person knows you really care.

There are few things more damaging to human relationships than a sense of superiority.

The key, as in any relationship, is how you handle the anger. When what you say hurts, acknowledge the other person’s pain. Don’t pretend it doesn’t hurt or say it “shouldn’t” hurt—just show that you care. Eliminate the phrase “don’t take it personally” from your vocabulary—it’s insulting. Instead, offer to help fix the problem. But don’t pretend it isn’t a problem just to try to make somebody feel better. In the end, caring personally about people even as you challenge them will build the best relationships of your career.

The hardest part of building this trust is inviting people to challenge you, just as directly as you are challenging them. You have to encourage them to challenge you directly enough that you may be the one who feels upset or angry. This takes some getting used to—particularly for more “authoritarian” leaders. But if you stick to it, you’ll find that you learn a great deal about yourself and how people perceive you. This knowledge will unfailingly allow you and your team to achieve better results.

it’s vital to remember that very important lesson from the “um” story—don’t personalize.

“It’s not mean. It’s clear!”

This time, the comment was contextualized, far more personal, and specific. And, this time, Russ said, “Now that was Radically Candid praise!”

Radically Candid criticism To keep winning, criticize the wins

is to point out to great players what they could have done better, even when they have just won a game. Especially when they have just won a game.

WHEN YOU CRITICIZE someone without taking even two seconds to show you care, your guidance feels obnoxiously aggressive to the recipient.

most people would rather work for a “competent asshole” than a “nice incompetent.”

Remember, Obnoxious Aggression is a behavior, not a personality trait.

Obnoxiously aggressive praise Belittling compliments

When Steve Jobs asked Jony why he hadn’t been more clear about what was wrong, Jony replied, “Because I care about the team.” To which Steve replied, “No, Jony, you’re just really vain. You just want

people to like you.” Recounting the story, Jony said, “I was terribly cross because I knew he was right.”

That’s why Colin Powell said leadership is sometimes about being willing to piss people off. When you are overly worried about how people will perceive you, you’re less willing to say what needs to be said.

In that context, admitting that I had behaved badly would probably have been better received.

praise that’s ruinously empathetic is not effective because its primary goal is to make the person feel better rather than to point out really great work and push for more of

when giving praise, investigate until you really understand who did what and why it was so

great. Be as specific and thorough with praise as with criticism. Go deep into the details.

Start by asking for criticism, not by giving it

Don’t dish it out before you show you can take it

Balance praise and criticism Worry more about praise, less about criticism—but above all be sincere

Others advocate the “feedback sandwich”—opening and closing with praise, sticking some criticism in between. I think venture capitalist Ben Horowitz got it right when he called this approach the “shit sandwich.” Horowitz suggests that such a technique might work with

less-experienced people, but I’ve found the average child sees through it just as clearly as an executive does. In other words, the notion of a “right” ratio between praise and criticism is dangerous, because it can lead you to say things that are unnatural, insincere, or just plain ridiculous. If you think that you must come up with, say, two good things for every bad thing you tell somebody, you’ll find yourself saying things like, “Wow, the font you chose for that presentation really blew me away. But the content bordered on the obvious. . . . Still, it really impresses me how neat your desk always is.” Patronizing or insincere praise like that will erode trust and hurt your relationships just as much as overly harsh criticism.

“How long do you spend making

sure you have all the facts right before you criticize somebody? How long do you spend making sure you have all the facts right before you praise somebody?” Ideally you’d spend just as long getting the facts right for praise as for criticism.

Google emphasizes caring personally more than challenging directly, so I’d describe criticism there as Radical Candor with a twist of Ruinous Empathy.

Apple does the opposite, so I’d describe its culture of criticism

as Radical Candor with a twist of Obnoxio...