Decoding Radical Candor

Recently, a colleague of mine introduced me to Radical Candor - a best selling book by Kim Scott. The concepts in the book led to an understanding that brought so many things into focus, even though I had a vague awareness of the concept earlier.

A short intro and my personal take from the concept was, there are multiple ways of managing people, all of which requires a constant feedback loop. There are multiple ways in which you can approach your ways of delivering these, namely:

Obnoxious Aggression

• Challenging directly without caring personally

• Comes across as brutal honesty or "front stabbing"

• Praise feels insincere, criticism is unkind

Ruinous Empathy

• Caring personally without challenging directly

• Sparing someone's feelings in the short-term by withholding necessary feedback

• Praise is vague, criticism is sugar-coated or avoided entirely

Manipulative Insincerity

• Neither caring personally nor challenging directly

• Insincere praise to someone's face, harsh criticism behind their back

• Passive-aggressive, political behavior that creates a toxic environment

If you're like me, you are seeing multiple instances and situations where you've been exposed to one or the other of the above. Kim, recommends a different approach to the way you maintain healthy working relationships. And that is with, you guessed it right:

Radical Candor

It involves two key components:

1. Caring Personally - Building strong relationships by showing vulnerability and creating a safe space for others to do the same. This means bringing your full humanity to work, not just being "professional."

2. Challenging Directly - Sharing your honest, humble opinions directly with others. This often means giving critical feedback, which can feel uncomfortable but is necessary to help others improve.

Radical Candor happens when you combine caring personally with challenging directly to give feedback that is kind, clear, specific and sincere.

The key is to aim for Radical Candor by genuinely caring about others while also being willing to challenge them directly with kind, clear feedback. This builds trust and helps people improve, unlike the other approaches which can damage relationships and hinder growth.

If you wish to go deeper into the topic, do check out the book and understand the nuances of each.

I'm Sunny, I write on this small blog about engineering leadership and growth in technology. Previously, I have build multiple 0-1 & 1-10 journeys at tech startups, these days I'm learning the 10-100 journey at scale. Follow along the journey on LinkedIn, X, or SubStack to stay in the loop.