Radical Candor by Kim Scott

Radical Candor by Kim Scott

Sometimes the mere knowledge of the existence of a phrase is enough to change you.

This was my experience the first time I read Kim Scott’s excellent book, Radical Candor. It’s a brilliant framework for understanding how to best give feedback. And don’t be fooled by the name, Radical Candor is not aggressively sharing every piece of feedback that occurs to you.

At the heart of this book is a 2×2 (ok, I am a sucker for a 2×2) which plots “Care Personally” against “Challenge Directly.” I think she highlights the impact of direct feedback, when it isn’t clear that the giver of feedback cares. Maybe they don’t care. Or maybe they just aren’t making enough effort to show that they care. But this feedback often fails because it comes across as “Obnoxious Aggression”.

But the quadrant that really struck me was on the other side of the grid. What does it look like if you care personally but fail to share directly? This is “Ruinous Empathy.” Out of a misguided sense of care you fail to share directly and you ruin the relationship.

I have heard someone describe this as “You care so much about the person that you have to fire them because you never gave them feedback.” This is a huge concept that has shifted how I give feedback and how much I give. My danger zone is that I drift into ruinous empathy, and so I need systems to make sure I am always sharing directly. But often I have to help people on my teams, who can’t understand why their feedback is being taken as obnoxious aggression. It’s not enough to care, you have to really show you care.

This book is full of great concepts. Scott differentiates between a rockstar and a superstar. Both of these are top performers, but the one is aggressively seeking new opportunities while the other is happy to keep performing where they are. And as we go through different seasons, we might shift between a rockstar and a superstar based on our life situation.

A last cracking nugget from this book. When giving feedback, Kim Scott suggests we think:

Situation, Behaviour, Impact.