Practise radical candour

Radical candour exists at the intersection of caring personally and challenging directly

I’ve found the book “Radical Candour”, by Kim Scott to be a memorable summary of an effective feedback approach. You display radical candour when you care personally about the people you manage and when you can challenge them directly about their work.

While I suggest you read the book to understand the approach in its entirety, here’s a summary. 

• To show care, you must build trust. This takes time. When you share feedback about certain incidents, you can show care by acknowledging the other person’s positive intent. You can create safety by asking them for their perspective.

• To challenge directly you can follow the situation, behaviour, impact (SBI) framework: 

• the situation you observed;

• the individual’s behaviour in that situation;

• and the impact of that behaviour.

“Ravi, when we were in the sprint review meeting and I asked you to make a note of the client’s feedback, you didn’t acknowledge me or add the item to the meeting notes. This made me feel like you were ignoring me. We also haven’t logged an important fix that the client wants...”

Kim also describes anti-patterns to radical candour, which you must avoid.

• Obnoxious aggression. Challenging directly without showing personal care.

• Ruinous empathy. Showing care without challenging directly.

• Manipulative insincerity. Neither caring, nor challenging directly.

As a manager, learn this framework of building relationships and sharing feedback. It’s best to share feedback in a timely and atomic fashion. When you let feedback pile on for too long, you’ll construct stories about the other person in your head and it’ll ruin your working relationship with them.