communication

Radical Candor Emotional Reaction

5 Things to Do When You Disagree With Feedback

Around the time the first edition of the book came out, Helen Rumbelow wrote an article about Radical Candor. I really enjoyed talking with Helen, and was so happy that she immediately understood the difference between Radical Candor and Obnoxious Aggression. Reading Helen’s article, I also realized that I haven’t talked nearly enough about what to do when you disagree with feedback you get. By not explaining this clearly enough, I have given Helen the impression that pretty much all…

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Encourage Feedback

5 Ways to Encourage Feedback Between Others

It’s a lot easier to lead by example than it is to change other people’s behavior. If you want to encourage feedback between the people on your team, you're going to have to create an environment where people fee safe and encouraged to give real feedback. When I was at Google, rather than focusing on “giving feedback” to my team, I encouraged them to tell me when I was wrong. I did everything I could to encourage people to criticize…

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What’s the Ideal Manager-Employee Relationship?

You may have seen me featured as "The Candid Boss" for The Muse, an online career resource destination. One of the questions I am often asked is, can managers and employees be friends at work? An even more essential question to ask is, what does an ideal manager-employee relationship look like? How is it different from a friendship? The “boss-employee” relationship is relatively new. For most of human history, we accomplished our great collaborative feats through terrible brutality — forced labor. During…

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A Radical Candor Rollout: Interview with Gather

We recently got the chance to talk with another leader who has rolled out Radical Candor on his team, and we wanted to share his experiences with you. Nicholas Miller is the co-founder and CEO of Gather, a company creating event management software for restaurants and other venues. Here’s how he introduced Radical Candor at Gather, and how it has helped them evolve their feedback culture. How did you hear about Radical Candor, and how did you introduce it to…

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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 give some additional advice about how to approach peer feedback. ...this has to do with a part-time job in retail. I am 56 and have a coworker who is 22 or so. She has been there 3 years and I…

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Radical Candor Racism

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 of interrupting. There’s one more question we’ve been getting about this topic...What if you need to interrupt someone? How do you go about gently telling a person that's speaking for way too long in a meeting, that his time's up?…

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Are you an Absentee Manager, a Micromanager, or a Thought Partner?

In Episode 13 of our podcast we talked about the dreaded micromanager boss and how to work towards a better relationship with them. As a part of that discussion, we briefly talked about a few ‘modes’ a manager might fall into based on how close they are to the team’s work. 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…

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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 cause people to interrupt. Several listeners wrote in to commiserate about being interrupters and asked for our advice on how to stop. I just listened to Episode 12 of the podcast, and it really struck a chord. I have been…

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Radical Candor in Digital Services: Interview with ThreeSixtyEight

Back in December, we learned about another company that has committed to a culture of Radical Candor. ThreeSixtyEight is a digital services company that specializes in creating beautiful design and brand experiences for their clients, and they have made Radical Candor a core value, both for internal and client interactions. Kenny Nguyen, the CEO, reached out to us via Twitter to share his company’s mascot: We were so excited by the ThreeSixtyEight “Radical Condor” mascot and wanted to learn more…

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Resolve to Be a Better Leader in 2017

It’s that time of year. A time for new beginnings. A time for renewal and resolution. Like many, you may be feeling inspired and committed to a set of New Year’s Resolutions. But have you committed to any that will help you be a better leader in 2017? Maybe you’re not sure where to start, what leadership resolutions to choose. John Farmer, one of our engineers, and I developed a list of “Leadership New Year Resolutions” to help you start…

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