relationships

Brutal Honesty And Radical Candor

Brutal Honesty and Radical Candor: 6 Ways You’re Getting Radical Candor Wrong and 5 Ways to Get It Right

We have learned something really important from the way that the press sometimes covers Radical Candor. And we want your advice on how to communicate this idea more clearly. We want to learn to describe Radical Candor in a way that is not open to misinterpretation: too often press articles assert that Radical Candor is the same thing as brutal honesty, as front-stabbing, or that it is some sort of license to be a jerk. It is none of those…

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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 Great Start to a Radical Candor Journey

A few weeks ago, we received an amazing email from Samir Sagar, Director at Manubhai Jewellers. He had shared some of our blog posts and videos with his team several weeks prior, and on the day of the email to us, had held a meeting with his five direct reports to ask for feedback. I told my team that I am at fault for not creating an atmosphere in which they can bring their honest feedback ...and that I never…

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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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Quitting with Radical Candor

As we’ve mentioned in a couple of podcast episodes (Ep 13: Help! My Boss is a Micromanager and Ep 8: How to Give Feedback to Your Boss), sometimes no matter how hard you try, no matter how much great feedback you solicit and give, a job just isn’t going to work out, and you’re going to have to take the advice I got from Gretchen Rubin: Don’t forget to quit.   Quitting can be really hard. Maybe you’ve got a…

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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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6 Key Lessons for Every New Manager

CONGRATULATIONS! You’re now a manager! You’ve worked hard, done well and been promoted to lead a team. That in and of itself is a HUGE accomplishment. But it’s only the beginning. Because now you need to figure out how the heck you’re going to actually be a successful, inspirational, motivational leader. That, my friend, is no small task. In fact, I am not sure that there exists a more jarring transition than the transition from individual contributor to manager. I…

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Radical Candor Racism

How to Have Effective 1:1s

There are a lot of ways to think about holding one-on-one meetings (1:1s) with the people on your teams. Heck, here at Candor, Inc. we don’t even fully agree on one exact prescription. We have a few tips below for thinking about how to have effective 1:1s. Have them Have regular 1:1s. I have to start at the beginning here, because it’s simply not the case that all managers are holding regular 1:1s. This is a cardinal sin. 1:1s are…

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