Kim Scott is the author of Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity and Radical Respect: How to Work Together Better and co-founder of Radical Candor, a company that helps people put the ideas in her books into practice.

Radical Candor gets measured not at the speaker’s mouth, but at the listener’s ear. But how can you know what another person is thinking about what you’re saying? None of us are mind readers, after all. 

This is why the Radical Candor order of operations is so important. First, you want to solicit feedback before you give it. The best way to know what another person is thinking is simply to ask them, and then reward the candor when you get it.

Next, you want to give praise that is specific and sincere. Expressing appreciation and gratitude is important to the other person.

It also will help remind you what you like about your colleagues, so that when you do offer criticism, you can do it in the spirit of being helpful to someone you care about and not a “you’re a worthless human being” kind of vibe.

Once you’ve solicited criticism and given some praise, you’ve created the conditions for your criticism to land well. Next, you need to know how to gauge your feedback.

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How to Gauge Feedback

Whether you’re giving praise or criticism, there are plenty of possibilities for misinterpretation. The solution is not to clam up in fear. The solution is to gauge how what you’ve said has landed, and choose the right vector on the Radical Candor framework.

Start by paying attention to the other person’s response. Don’t get so focused on what you’re saying that you’re ignoring the other person. Remember, this is a conversation, not a monologue.

You may be wrong about what you’re saying. Or maybe you’re right, but you didn’t say it in a way that the other person could hear.

Start in a neutral place. You don’t want to start all the way at the outer edge of Challenge Directly. If you do, the other person is likely to interpret what you’re saying as Obnoxious Aggression.

You also don’t want to get all creepily personal. Just make sure you’re above the line on Care Personally and clear about what you’re saying.

Next, you want to pay attention to how the other person responds. Before I talk about what could go wrong, let me reassure you that most of the time, this will go smoothly.

We all have a negativity bias and so we remember the one time when we had a feedback trainwreck and forget the nine times when our feedback helped the other person do better work and improved our relationship with that person.

But that bias is, like most biases, irrational. It doesn’t make any sense to optimize for the one time out of ten that things go wrong and just stay silent for fear of offending or upsetting someone.

Let’s optimize for the nine times out ten when we communicate and get closer as a result.

One thing that may make it easier to be radically candid with both praise and criticism is to offer some suggestions for what to do if the conversation doesn’t go the way you’d hoped.

Maybe the person will be sad. Or mad. Or maybe you work up the courage to say the thing and then the person just brushes you off. What do you do then?

What to Do if the Person Seems Sad

You can use the Radical Candor framework to decide how to respond if that happens. And unfortunately you can get these negative emotions when you give praise as well as when you give criticism.

Why? Maybe you praised the least important aspect of their work. Or maybe you praised the wrong person. Or maybe you sounded patronizing. It’s as important to gauge your praise as your criticism.

What if the other person is sad? This is your cue to move up on the Care Personally dimension of Radical Candor. I’m not saying that’s easy. If you’re like me, that’s probably not your instinct.

If I can tell that I’ve made someone sad, it’s my instinct to back off, and to go the wrong way on Challenge Directly, rather than the right way on Care Personally.

If I give into that instinct, I wind up in Ruinous Empathy. I say something like, “Oh don’t worry about it, it doesn’t matter, it’s no big deal.” But of course it does matter and it is a big deal. That’s why I just said the thing. Now, I’ve left the person not only sad but also confused. Does it matter, or doesn’t it?  

So you want to make sure to go the right direction on Care Personally, not the wrong direction on challenge directly. And yet it is so human to do the opposite.

When I worked at Apple, we would hire these actors to do a role play. The reason we hired actors is because they can cry on command.

And as soon as these actors would start to tear up, these bad ass software engineering leaders would say, “Oh, it’s. OK, doesn’t really matter.” And this was just a role play, and they knew they were supposed to be challenging directly.

But it’s deeply instinctive to back off your challenge when someone’s upset. 

But that’s not the right thing to do. Just because they’re upset about it doesn’t mean, the problem is not a problem. Instead, you want to take a moment and attend to the emotion.

When we communicate, we do so on an intellectual plane and an emotional plane at the same time. If you dismiss all the emotional signals coming your way, you’re simply not going to communicate very well.

What to Do if the Person Seems Mad

Now, sometimes the emotion is not sadness, it’s anger. When someone is really angry at you, this is also your cue to move up on the Care Personally dimension of Radical Candor and to try to pay attention to the human need behind the anger.

Once again, this is not instinctive. My instinct and probably yours when someone is mad is to get mad back and wind up in Obnoxious Aggression, or to clam up like a turtle in a shell and back off to Manipulative Insincerity.

If they’re mad and I get mad back and I wind up an Obnoxious Aggression. If they’re mad and I’m kind of afraid of their anger, I wind up in Manipulative Insincerity. That may be kind of a harsh term for it because I’m being self-protective.

The way to combat these instinctive reactions to another person’s anger is to take a moment to attend to the emotion in the room. That is much easier said than done.

It’s pretty hard to Care Personally about someone who’s yelling at you. When I’m in that situation, I try to get curious, not furious.

More Thoughts On Responding to Emotions

What are some specific things you can do or say when confronting anger or sadness? One simple thing you can do is simply to acknowledge the emotion that you think you’re noticing. You can say something along the lines of,  “It seems like I’ve upset you /made you angry / frustrated you.”

Very often it’s our temptation to pretend like emotions don’t belong at work, but that is just denying our humanity. Emotions are not both natural and inevitable. Sometimes just giving voice to it can help you and the other person cope with it.

But remember that you may be misinterpreting the emotion you think that you’re noticing. The University of Chicago recently published research demonstrating how bad we are at interpreting each other’s facial expressions and body language.

There may be more noise than signal there. So take the time to ask the other person how they are feeling, rather than just assuming.

You can also ask the question, “How can I help?” Maybe the person wants some water, or to go get a cup of tea. In fact, if someone seems upset and there are a couple of bottles of water handy, hand them one.

Sometimes just the act of unscrewing the bottle of water and taking a sip of water, and then putting the cap back on can help the person regain composure. Or if you’re the one losing composure, you can take a sip of water–or a deep breath.

Sometimes our emotions resonate with the other person’s, and our emotions amplify their emotions unproductively. You want to be an emotional shock absorber, not an emotional trampoline, in these situations.

Another thing that I strongly recommend is that you just eliminate the phrase “don’t take it personally” from your vocabulary. We all spend more time at work than just about any other part of our lives. And when it doesn’t go well, it’s natural to feel upset. So don’t imply that the person’s emotions are not legitimate. 

Last of all, think about what works for you and ask other people. Ask other people what works for them.

The emotional labor of feedback is intense. And all of us need help and advice. And we need people to talk to. We need people to talk to about conversations that we’re nervous about.

We need to talk to people about conversations that didn’t go well. What can we learn from them and come up with ways to practice these skills?

What to Do if They Brush You Off

Of course, sadness and anger are not the only two responses you’ll get. In fact, when feedback goes sideways, it’s often because the other person won’t have heard you at all. The most common communication failure is the illusion that it has happened.

So what do you do if you work up the courage to say the thing to the person, and then they just brush you off, or don’t seem to have heard it?   

This is your cue to move out on Challenge Directly dimension of Radical Candor. And that is really tricky because sometimes having to say it again even more clearly feels mean. Remember, clear is kind. 

But it is still hard. It is hard to find the words that will make what you’re trying to say clear to the other person. You have to do it though, because that is your job.

Still, when you say something and you can tell it didn’t land, it’s tempting to give up, telling yourself, “Well,  I tried to tell them, it would have been mean to say it more clearly.” If you do that you wind up in Ruinous Empathy.

Or, even worse, you go and gossip behind their back, and wind up in Manipulative Insincerity.

When someone is not hearing you, you have to say it again, even more directly. You’ll often have to say it more than once.

How to Say It Even More Clearly, With Kindness

What can you do to respond to someone who it seems like is being defensive, willfully obtuse, or for whatever reason is not hearing you?

One of the things you can do is to remind yourself not to jump to conclusions about what is going on in their head. Try asking, “I’m not sure how to interpret your reaction. Can you help me understand?”

Another thing you can do is to say, This is important. “I want to make sure I’m being as clear as possible.” Or, share how you feel. “I don’t feel like I’m being clear.”

Note that these are all “I” statements. Please do NOT say, “You’re not listening to me.” Part of what I mean by “Radical Candor gets measured at the listener’s ear not the speaker’s mouth,” is that when you are trying to give someone praise or criticism, you’ve got to own what you’re saying.

It’s not helpful to demand that the other person interpret you correctly. You’ve got to say it in a way that they can hear you.  

Another thing you can do is to come to the conversation prepared with several different specific examples of the problem that you have identified or the good behavior that you’ve identified.

If the person interrupts you at the first one, say, “Look, I want you to see the same trend that I’m seeing, so let me get through all these examples. I promise you, I’m going to give you the opportunity to tell me why I’m wrong about each one. 

And lastly, think about what would work for you, and ask someone you trust what works for them in these situations. Again, this is really hard. The emotional labor here is intense. Talking to other people can help you find the support you need so that these conversations don’t burn you out.

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