Advice Column

Human Resources

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 describes a common challenge that bosses have with balancing authority and Caring Personally and with building relationships with their direct reports. Hi Kim and Russ, Just listened to the first episode and wanted to share several of my previous "horrible…

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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 this kind of conditioning, it can feel awkward to be in a position of authority over these folks. Here’s a question one of our podcast listeners sent in along these lines: I’m a young startup CEO, and both my Director…

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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 advice we’re giving to individual listeners here on the blog. Here’s a question from Kathryn: My question relates to how one can challenge directly regarding inflexibility. I have a staff member that really struggles with his daily responsibilities I think…

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Fighting Bloviating BS with Radical Candor

Radical Candor can be applied not just in feedback conversations, but in all interactions. Think for example about Radical Candor during meetings, brainstorming, public relations, etc. Each of these types of communications have their own unique challenges related to Radical Candor. For example, here’s a tricky situation sent to us by a reader: As an entrepreneur, pre-funding, having invested a great deal of life-savings into our young business, putting it all on the line to pursue my dream, I am…

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Soliciting Feedback from Your Boss

What happens when your boss doesn’t give you feedback? At first it will seem like your boss is extremely pleasant to work with, but as time goes by you’ll start to realize that the only feedback you’ve received is “good job” and other vaguely positive comments. You’ll start to get the feeling you’ve done some things wrong, but you’re not sure what, exactly. You’ll never know where you stand, and you won’t be given an opportunity to learn or grow.…

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How Can I Stop My Ruinous Empathy?

For those of you who are familiar with our Radical Candor framework, you’ll remember that Ruinous Empathy is in the upper left. High Care Personally, low Challenge Directly. It categorizes behavior in which someone is trying to be “nice” in an effort to spare people’s feelings -- by not saying what needs to be said, by lying, or by just offering a verbal pat on the back. People whose behaviors fall in this quadrant often recognize it right away when…

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Self-Awareness and the Candor Gauge

A question from one of our readers: I was facilitating an internal assertiveness workshop, and one of the dynamics I noticed was that, while everyone was engaged, and I think took away some useful insights, there was a thread of lack of personal awareness that seemed to stop some folks. People said things like, “I’m already pretty assertive, but I could see how this could be helpful.” This isn’t a new phenomenon in my experience. I’ve been doing workshops and…

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Video Tip: How Often Should I Give Feedback?

Speaking earlier this year at Slack, who is also one of our investors, I got a question about the frequency of feedback: I feel like I don't find that many opportunities where I can give someone constructive feedback. Am I just ignoring things? How often should one be doing this? There is one rule of thumb that applies to criticism in general, but is especially good advice when you're really busy and nerves are frayed. It's best summed up by…

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3 Steps for Offering Radical Candor to Executives

DILEMMA: Providing criticism to senior executives can be a daunting undertaking. How do you practice Radical Candor with executives, especially if you know they haven’t been receptive to criticism in the past? We received this question from one of our readers: How do you solve the problem of senior executives who tend to shut down and adopt an Obnoxious Aggressive position when faced with criticism? I’ve found that the Obnoxious Aggressive ones are often challenged internally by feelings of embarrassment…

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Radical Candor in Kabul

I received a great question from a reader recently that I wanted to share. I've been sending your article to all the leaders I know. One of them asked this: In your discussions with Ms. Scott, did she discuss avoiding the perception that you are in the Obnoxious Aggression quad when your intent is Radical Candor?  With perception so often complicating reality, a supervisor utilizing Radical Candor might find themselves chatting with the HR department for being “aggressive”.  Military leaders…

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