How to Avoid Kicking Up
You may have heard the phrase “kissing up and kicking down,” which refers to the tendency of some people to try to please and flatter their bosses while taking out frustrations on the people who report to them. While this…
What to Do When a Peer’s Feedback Annoys You
We recently received a listener question about peer feedback, and it’s one that I come across often in conversations with readers. Russ and I talked about why peer feedback is so important in episode 23 of the podcast. Here, I’ll…
Civil discourse: try some with your beer this 4th of July!
Civil discourse and Radical Candor in our country have been dealt a heavy blow by an innocent sounding phrase: “politics divides.” These two words have silenced millions of small conversations that should have happened, and resulted in a political food fight…
Give Praise That Isn’t Patronizing
Praise usually seems much easier than criticism, but a lot of people actually hesitate to give praise. They worry about coming across as patronizing, pandering, or just insincere. We think that praise is even more important than criticism, so we…
How to Turn Feedback into Something You Can Act On
Hopefully you’re out there asking for and getting feedback regularly. That’s great! Now, if you’re getting a lot of feedback, we can pretty much guarantee that it won’t all be high quality, actionable stuff. We’ve said before, “Don’t criticize the…
What If You Need to Interrupt?
In episode 12 of the Radical Candor podcast, Kim and Russ talked about how to give feedback to someone who frequently interrupts in meetings. Then a few weeks ago, we also shared advice for how to stop your own habit…
Are You An Interrupter?
We talked about one of the most frustrating meeting habits in episode 12 of our podcast -- interrupting! Kim and I gave some tips about how to handle being interrupted in meetings, and Kim explained some of the reasons that…
What It Means to Care Personally About Your Team
Most of us have experienced a bad boss, and unfortunately, those experiences can create lasting effects. Here’s a story and question we got from a listener after she listened to the first episode of the Radical Candor podcast -- it…
So You’re Younger Than Your Direct Reports…
We frequently talk to managers who find it challenging to have direct reports who are older or more experienced than they are. We’re taught from a young age to “respect our elders,” which actually means to defer to them. With…
Candor’s “Give Feedback” Playbook
We’ve been so excited about all the engagement we’ve gotten from our podcast listeners. We are getting great, thoughtful questions after each episode, and we know they’re questions that others have as well! So we’ll be sharing some of the…