Featured Archives | Radical Candor

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…

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…

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…

Tapping the Potential of Each Team Member is the Best Way to Retain Talent

Guest post about tapping the potential of each team member by Allie Cooper From taking the time to have career conversations to delegating responsibility, a great leader is one who lifts their team members up, allowing them to grow and push their boundaries. Tapping into the potential of each team member means understanding their strengths, long-term ambitions and professional needs. While this might seem like common sense, a lot of bosses neglect to personally invest in their team members, which…

Human Resource Management – Quick Tips & Tricks From peopleHum

Guest post about human resource management from HR experts at peopleHum, the Future of Work people platform. Human resource management is about more than solving internal disputes, presenting an attractive work culture in front of potential candidates and managing legal affairs. Human resource management is about people. It is about ensuring employee engagement, conducting fair company-wide practices and maintaining the overall health of the organization. An HR manager is responsible for all these individual functions. Therefore, an HR manager should…

Direct Reports and Radical Candor: 5 Tips for Giving Guidance and Feedback

This article about practicing Radical Candor with direct reports originally appeared on Deliberate Directions. Your relationships and your responsibilities at work reinforce each other positively or negatively, and this dynamic is what drives you forward as a manager—or leaves you dead in the water. What’s more, your relationships with your direct reports affect the relationships they have with their direct reports, and your team’s overall culture. Like it or not, your ability to build trusting, human connections with the people…

Why You Can’t Skimp On Radically Candid Performance Development Conversations

This post on performance development originally appeared on Bonusly, a company building tools to help people feel a sense of purpose and progress at work. Most everyone has had a boss who failed at performance development⁠—helping people on their team grow and move forward in their careers. In fact, before I developed the Radical Candor framework, Caring Personally while also Challenging Directly, I was this boss. I had an employee I’ll call Bob. Despite having a stellar resume, Bob was…

Featured

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

The Biggest Reason We Run from Challenging Conversations

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

Tapping the Potential of Each Team Member is the Best Way to Retain Talent

Human Resource Management – Quick Tips & Tricks From peopleHum

Direct Reports and Radical Candor: 5 Tips for Giving Guidance and Feedback

Why You Can’t Skimp On Radically Candid Performance Development Conversations

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