Radical Candor Blog | Radical Reading About Radical Candor

Give Immediate Feedback Because Feedback Has a Short Half Life

Radically Candid praise and criticism is immediate. You'll remember the specifics much better when you point something out right away, so you’ll be more clear with your feedback. You’ll also be more kind (and results oriented) because you’ll give the person the opportunity to repeat the good or fix the bad faster. Continuing our tips and techniques for the HIP Approach, here are some reminders and practical suggestions for giving immediate feedback. Feedback has a short half life Remember, the…

Radical Candor: Be A Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

Start the Feedback Conversation with Radical Candor Book Club Discussion Questions

Discussing Radical Candor as a team in a book club can help solidify the ideas and get everyone thinking about how to start applying them to your day-to-day behaviors. We’ve put together this list of Radical Candor book club questions to get you started with the discussions for each chapter, but we’d love to hear your ideas as well! Part 1: A New Management Philosophy Intro Describe an experience when you didn’t give direct feedback, but you wish you did.…

Micromanager, Absentee Manager or Thought Partner — Which One Are You?

We call managers who have low, almost non-existent involvement in their team’s work absentee managers. Those with extremely (maybe excruciatingly) close involvement are micromanagers. And in between those are the thought partners, the ones who empower, enable and encourage their teams to do the best work of their lives. How can you determine where you fall on this spectrum so you can learn how to move in the right direction instead of being a micromanager or an absentee manager? To help you figure out when you’re…

How To Practice Radical Candor with Strangers

"I can see how Radical Candor works when I already have a relationship... but what about with people I barely know. Isn’t it too risky?" Our Radical Candor coaches get this question fairly often, and I won’t pretend it isn’t risky to offer feedback to a complete stranger. It is. But not being Radically Candid is also risky. And the rewards of being Radically Candid for you and for the other person can be enormous. In fact, the idea of…

The Biggest Reason We Run from Challenging Conversations

In order to build Radically Candid relationships, it's important that you don't try to prevent, control or manage other people’s emotions. Instead, acknowledge the emotions, react compassionately and try to master your reactions to other people’s emotions versus the emotions themselves. This is especially important when you're engaging in challenging conversations. In this guest blog post, Radical Candor Coach Farrah Mitra explains why challenging conversations are difficult and how caring personally and challenging directly can help you master them by…

Brutal Honesty and Radical Candor: 6 Ways You’re Getting Radical Candor Wrong and 5 Ways to Get It Right

We have learned something really important from the way that the press sometimes covers Radical Candor. And we want your advice on how to communicate this idea more clearly. We want to learn to describe Radical Candor in a way that is not open to misinterpretation: too often press articles assert that Radical Candor is the same thing as brutal honesty, as front-stabbing, or that it is some sort of license to be a jerk. It is none of those…

3 Ways to Introduce Radical Candor’s Feedback Framework to Your Organization

When we talk about Radical Candor at companies or with individuals, we see a lot of heads nodding in agreement. People understand that Radical Candor's guidance and feedback framework can improve performance, reduce politics and make work more fun. But how do you make sure that these ideas that resonate in the moment actually get implemented, rather than forgotten? Here’s a question from one of our readers: As a CEO who hasn't been practicing Radical Candor, is it advisable to…

Radical Candor: Feeling Safe to Speak Truth to Power

One of the main ways to build a Radically Candid culture is by creating an environment where people feel comfortable speaking truth to power. This kind of culture can only be achieved when managers understand that it is authentic relationships and not power that drive them forward. Unfortunately, finding a job that fosters this kind of culture can feel akin to finding a unicorn. However, companies that do encourage people to speak truth to power build trust between employees, no…

Acting Like a Jerk by Not Caring Personally is a Radical Candor Fail

What makes Radical Candor radical is that it’s a deviation from the norm, which tends to fall somewhere between acting like a jerk and avoiding confrontation altogether. The purpose of Radical Candor is to create a new normal where guidance is both kind and clear, not to reinforce bad behavior. This means that if you don’t Care Personally about the person you’re delivering feedback to, you’re exhibiting Obnoxious Aggression, not Radical Candor. Ever since the book Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss…

Lights! Camera! Feedback! Second City Works and Radical Candor Get Guidance from Strategic Partners on ‘Improvising Radical Candor,’ a Workplace Comedy-Based Online Learning Program

Second City Works and Radical Candor bring together learning and development leaders from some of the world’s top organizations to exchange ideas, gather insights and share laughs at a Launch Partner Summit for Improvising Radical Candor, a workplace comedy online learning program available in early 2020. In advance of the release of Improvising Radical Candor’s comedy-based online learning program, Radical Candor and Second City Works invited early adopters to an exclusive Launch Partner Summit on Nov. 7, 2019 at world-famous…

Give Immediate Feedback Because Feedback Has a Short Half Life

Start the Feedback Conversation with Radical Candor Book Club Discussion Questions

Micromanager, Absentee Manager or Thought Partner — Which One Are You?

How To Practice Radical Candor with Strangers

The Biggest Reason We Run from Challenging Conversations

Brutal Honesty and Radical Candor: 6 Ways You’re Getting Radical Candor Wrong and 5 Ways to Get It Right

3 Ways to Introduce Radical Candor’s Feedback Framework to Your Organization

Radical Candor: Feeling Safe to Speak Truth to Power

Acting Like a Jerk by Not Caring Personally is a Radical Candor Fail

Lights! Camera! Feedback! Second City Works and Radical Candor Get Guidance from Strategic Partners on ‘Improvising Radical Candor,’ a Workplace Comedy-Based Online Learning Program

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Care Personally + Challenge Directly