How to Speak with Radical Candor

What's up, everyone. This is Alex Lieberman, co-founder, and Executive Chairman of Morning Brew. Welcome back to Founder’s Journal, my personal audio diary, where I give you, the business builder, the tools you need to think better in order to build better, whether that's building a business, a team, or a new product. Today, I am talking about radical candor. Let's hop into it. 

So just imagine how good you would feel if you spoke with complete and utter honesty at work, and you never held back because you were afraid of how someone would react. And imagine how well companies would be run if everyone understood what people thought of them and how they could be doing their job better to help the business grow.

Kim Scott’s Radical Candor

 It sounds so obvious when I say it, but it is so incredibly rare to find people and companies that operate in this manner. For the largest part of my time as a manager at Morning Brew, I absolutely messed this exact concept up, but today that changes thanks to Kim Scott, who is the author of Radical Candor. You are going to leave with a framework and tools that will empower you to operate bullshit-free and for your business to operate bullshit-free.

 Let me start by sharing a story of what radical candor looks like in practice. It's a story of Kim Scott, who I just mentioned. Kim had just joined Google. This was a while ago, and she was one of the people who was responsible for the company's massive AdSense business. You know, Google is an advertising behemoth. And for context, in that business, the AdSense business, did $147 billion in 2020. So it's obviously huge. Kim was one of the leaders of this business, and she was tasked with giving a presentation to Larry and Sergei who are Google's founders and Eric Schmidt, who was the CEO of Google at the time. And basically she had to present to them how AdSense was doing as a business. 

As Kim describes it, the business was crushing it, so presenting was easier. She said Eric basically fell out of his chair when she shared how many publishers had joined AdSense in the last few months. And he basically asked, what are any resources we could give you to maintain the business’s crazy growth trajectory? So obviously Kim left the meeting feeling good. And why wouldn't she? The most important people at one of the largest companies in the world were absolutely mind blown by the business's success. 

Getting radical candor from Sheryl Sandberg

But after the meeting, Kim Scott's boss, Sheryl Sandberg, who you've probably heard of, she's now the COO of Facebook, she asked Kim to take a walk with her and Cheryl will proceeded to talk about all the things that impressed her about the presentation, as well as how well AdSense was doing as a business. And then she said, but Kim, you said “um” a lot. And Kim heard that it was like, that's it? That was the negative feedback that I said “um” a lot? What does it matter that I said, since all these executives were happy with how the business was doing? And so then Sandberg, who was still on this topic, proceeded to ask him if she was nervous, and that's what caused her to say filler words like “um,” and she even offered to get a speaking coach for Kim to work on her presentation abilities. And Kim was like, is this really that big of a deal? She ended up brushing off the offer saying that a speaking coach wasn't necessary, and it probably wasn't the best use of her time. And that is what then got Sheryl to use a totally different approach. She goes to Kim, you know, Kim, I can tell, I'm not really getting through to you. I'm going to have to be clearer here. When you say “um” every third word, it makes you sound stupid. Obviously that got Kim's attention. And you're probably listening to this and thinking to yourself, geez, like Sheryl is pretty unempathetic and bold for telling someone that they sounded stupid. And what Kim Scott would go on to say is, we’ve basically been trained to think in this way: We were told if we don't have something nice to say, we shouldn't say it at all. But what Kim goes on to say is that basically this was the nicest possible thing that Sheryl could have done because if not for Sheryl's directness, Kim Scott would have never seen this as an actual problem. She would have never put in time or effort to improve her public speaking and to this day she would be saying “um” every third word. What ended up happening was Kim Scott ended up getting a speaking coach. She no longer uses the word “um.” And she's super thankful for what Sheryl taught her. So much so that since that experience, Kim has spent pretty much her entire career since then teaching radical candor to companies and to anyone who will listen. She's written books on it, a ton of literature. 

The framework for radical candor

And so what Kim Scott has developed is this very simple framework. It's broken into four quadrants and every manager in a company lives in one of those quadrants. 

And so if you have a piece of paper in front of you, I recommend that you draw this out because I think it will be helpful. You can also just pause this episode, go get a piece of paper and a pen, come back, start it back up. I'm going to share this framework that Kim Scott uses to teach every manager how to operate with radical candor. So first you have a vertical or a y-axis and that axis is caring personally. That's the category. So the higher up on this Y axis, the more that you care personally about your employees and the people that you manage, the lower on that axis you go, the less you care personally about your employees and the people you manage. So that's the y-axis on this chart. Next draw, a horizontal or x-axis through the middle of the y-axis. And so now you're basically making a “T.” The category for the x-axis is challenging directly. So the further to the right on this axis, the more that you are challenging your coworkers or employees directly speaking openly, honestly, and in a direct manner. And the further to the left on this axis, the less you challenge those around you directly. 

So now what we basically have is we have this T, or a graph, and we have four quadrants: top left, top right, bottom left, bottom, right. So I'm going to start from top left and work my way counterclockwise and tell you about each of these quadrants.

Ruinous empathy

 The top left quadrant is what we call ruinous empathy. This is reserved for managers that care really deeply about their people, but do not challenge them directly. I think most managers fall in this quadrant. I definitely fall in this quadrant. This is the quadrant where we think, because we're empathetic, we can't say anything but positive things. So we don't say anything at all if it is somewhat critical or it comes off as negative. This is the quadrant that causes surprises and not the good kind. So the classic example here of someone who is a ruinous empath, not over-communicating, is when they end up firing an employee and the employee had no idea that they were doing poorly and it is a complete shock to them that should never happen. 

Manipulative insincerity

Now let's move down. This quadrant is reserved for people who don't care personally about their people and they don't challenge directly. This is the worst possible place to be. It's not common, but it leads to the bosses that you never forget. This quadrant is referred to as manipulative insincerity and Kim Scott had a perfect example of this type of behavior. This is a true story. She had a past boss who ended up walking into one of her coworker’s offices. That boss hit the speaker phone button in the office, ordered her coworker to call another colleague and ask that colleague what they thought of the boss. And this boss instructed the employee to act like the boss wasn't there so that he could hear what this person thought about them when they didn't think he was listening. This is such a perfect example of someone who doesn't care about their people and doesn't want to address things head on, which is the perfect formula for someone who operates behind people's backs to benefit their own career trajectory. So that's bottom left. 

Obnoxious aggression

Let's keep moving. Next is bottom right. Bottom right quadrant is the professional that challenges directly, but does not care personally. This is known as obnoxious aggression, or I like to call it the raging asshole. We've all worked with this type of person. They are short. They are direct. They're blunt. At times they feel emotionless. And in a lot of ways they're super effective, but they come off as unempathetic. So the difficulty with this type of person is, how is the employee that's receiving feedback from the raging asshole, going to be motivated to do things that this person says to them? And I'd say, this is the second most common type of manager after ruinous empathy. 

Radical candor

Now last but not least is the top right quadrant. That's the one we've been waiting for. This is the person who cares personally, so they're high on personal care and they challeng directly. This is what Kim Scott refers to as radical candor and what every professional should strive to embody. And it makes sense. Think about how much more likely someone will be to receive constructive guidance on how they can be doing a better job. If they knew that their boss actually cared about them and wanted to see what's best for them in their career. So now the obvious question, how do you practice radical candor, where you're both caring about a person and challenged directly? The acronym that Kim Scott uses is “hip” or HHIPP. Radical candor is humble. It's helpful. It's immediate. It's in-person and it's in private if it's criticism or in public if it's praise, and the last P, it doesn't personalize. On that last one, because it can be confusing, here's what I mean by it doesn't personalize: Using the Sheryl Sandberg example. It's nuanced, but Sheryl, when she obviously spoke really directly to Kim, she said, you say every three words and you sound stupid. What she didn't say was Kim, you are stupid. It's a small difference in words, but it takes away the personalization of the critique. 

3 recommendations for using radical candor:

So those are the four types of managers with radical candor, top right, being the goal for each of us. Now, what I want to leave you with is a few of Kim Scott's actionable steps for actually using radical candor in practice. Because to me, this is the hardest part. You're listening to this and you're probably like, okay, that makes total sense, right? Care about people, be direct so you don't have to speak behind people's backs. But how do you actually do that in practice? Three recommendations. 

1) Share the framework with your team 

The first is to share this practice with your team so they're familiar. So literally take this two-by-two that you drew out and share it with your team, and then go and ask them to rate where you lie on this graph. So literally you have them take a post-it note or a circle and have them indicate, are you operating with radical candor or ruinous empathy? Are you operating with manipulative insincerity? Or are you the raging asshole? I guess the one difficulty with that is if you're the raging asshole, people may be a little bit afraid to mark that. But the whole idea is to get people comfortable with this framework, to understand that radical candor is the goal. And what that allows you to do is as you start trying to challenge people directly and you care deeply about them, they are open to receiving that feedback because they understand what place you are coming from. So that's the first exercise is to share the two-by-two with them. Have people show you where you are currently operating, and then tell them that the goal is to operate with radical candor so when you end up doing that, they accept it versus reject it.

2) Make backstabbing impossible

Exercise number two: Make backstabbing impossible within your company. This is something that I have seen in most companies where people like to talk behind other people's backs because it's easier, it's a way for people to vent, but it is such a toxic way of behaving. You cannot let people talk badly about each other to you. So in Kim Scott's example, when she would have any employee come complain to her about another employee and in the example she used, these were two employees who bumped heads a lot, they didn't like each other. She would do two things. She would start by asking the person if they have tried to work it out directly with the other employee, if the answer is no, she tells them to go do that. And she doesn't entertain or engage a conversation about that other employee. And if the person she's talking to is like, I can't do this, I can't address them directly. Then she will offer to bring both employees together in front of her. She will moderate an open and honest discussion, but she will never act as the intermediary that engages in conversation about the other person, without them there. 

3) Make it easier to speak truth to power

The third and final exercise for engaging in radical candor, you need to make it easier to speak truth to power. And what that actually means is you need to make sure that people who work for you, so your direct reports and their direct reports, they need to be empowered to speak openly and honestly, and challenge each other directly. This framework that I just shared with you from Kim is not just for bosses. Yes, it helps managers a ton, but everyone needs to operate in this way. And so what Kim would actually do to work on this exercise is she would meet with a manager's direct reports with the manager's permission. So in the example she gave, she basically said there was this manager named Scott. Scott had 10 direct reports, which in my opinion is too many direct reports, but that's for another episode. And she would say to Scott, can I get feedback from your direct reports to help make you a better manager? He would say, yes. She would go to the direct reports and say to them, I want you to deliver me one to two pieces of the most important feedback to help Scott be a better manager. And then what Kim would do is she would take notes in the meeting as the direct reports were giving this feedback, she would compile the feedback, and then she would deliver them to Scott. Scott would go through the feedback and his job was to basically prioritize it and then deliver to his 10 direct reports the exact things he was working on because of the feedback that they gave him. And what Kim also said here is she would start these exercises by making the direct reports anonymous. So she would deliver the feedback to Scott without personalizing people's names to it. But she said, if you're actually operating with true radical candor, you don't have to be anonymous with it, and so her goal was after doing this exercise, a few times, employees would actually be okay with personalizing the guidance they gave to Scott to be a better manager. And so now you have the keys to radical candor. You understand what it is. You understand why achieving it is so important and is actually your moral obligation as a manager or an employee to make other professionals the best versions of themselves. And you have three specific practices for indoctrinating radical candor in your work and your culture of your company. 

I want to hear from you

This is always a difficult concept for people to put into action. So I want to hear if there's anything that's stopping you from trying to build up this muscle as soon as possible, shoot me any thoughts or questions you have about radical candor as a tool for being a great manager to alex@morningbrew.com or DM me on Twitter @businessbarista.

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Credits

And finally, I just need to give a huge shout out to the people who make Founder’s Journal possible. Our show is produced and engineered by Dan Bouza. Our associate producer is Bella Hutchins. Brian Henry is our executive producer. Alan Haburchak is Morning Brew’s director of audio. Holly Van Leuven is our fact checker. Noah Friedman is our video producer and editor. And I'm your host, Alex Lieberman. Thanks again for listening. And I'll catch you next episode. A big thank you to American express business who made today's show possible.