Radical Candor: Fully Revised & Updated Edition

“What could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me?”

You’ve finally gotten the other person to offer some criticism. Once again, you have to manage your response. Whatever you do, don’t start criticizing the criticism.

Manage your feelings rather than letting them manage you. Remind yourself going in that no matter how unfair the criticism, your first job is to listen with the intent to understand, not to defend yourself.

Once you’ve asked your question and embraced the discomfort and understood the criticism, you have to follow up by showing that you really did welcome it. You have to reward the candor if you want to get more of it. If you agree with the criticism, make a change as soon as possible. If the necessary change will take time, do something visible to show you’re trying.

In some cases, of course, you may disagree with the criticism. It’s here that your Radical Candor skills become essential. It is never enough to simply acknowledge the other person’s feelings—that invariably feels passive-aggressive and insincere. Instead, first, find something in the criticism you can agree with, to signal that you’re open to criticism. Then, check for understanding—repeat what you heard back to the person to make sure you got it. Then, let them know you want to think about what they said, and schedule a time to talk about it again. It’s essential that you do get back to it. The key then is to explain exactly why you disagree.

spring cleaning. Everyone will stop working on new features for a week and fix bugs in the current product. Engineering teams are constantly tracking and evaluating bugs, so that they have a prioritized list to tackle when the so-called “fix-it” week comes around.

Furthermore, a common concern that people raise about giving feedback is “What if I’m wrong?” My answer is that you may very well be wrong. And telling somebody what you think gives them the opportunity to tell you if you are. A huge part of what makes giving guidance so valuable is that misperceptions on both sides of the equation get corrected. Here are some techniques I’ve found helpful to make sure I’m being humble when giving praise and criticism: Situation, behavior, impact. The Center for Creative Leadership, an executive-education company, developed a technique called “situation behavior impact” to help leaders be more precise and therefore less arrogant when giving feedback. This simple technique reminds you to describe three things when giving feedback: 1) the situation you saw, 2) the behavior (i.e., what the person did, either good or bad), and 3) the impact you observed. This helps you avoid making judgments about the person’s intelligence, common sense, innate goodness, or other personal attributes. When you pass blanket judgments, your guidance sounds arrogant. A simple example from everyday life: instead of yelling, “You asshole!” when somebody grabs your parking space, try saying, “I’ve been waiting for that spot here for five minutes, and you just zipped in front of me and took it. Now I’m going to be late.” If you say this, you give the person a chance to say, “Oh, I’m sorry I didn’t realize, let me move.” Of course, the person might also just flip you off and say, “Tough shit.” Then you can yell with more justification, “You asshole!”:) Situation, behavior, and impact applies to praise as well as to criticism. Praise can feel just as arrogant as criticism. When somebody says, “You’re a genius,” it begs a question:

a common concern that people raise about giving feedback is “What if I’m wrong?” My answer is that you may very well be wrong. And telling somebody what you think gives them the opportunity to tell you if you are. A huge part of what makes giving guidance so valuable is that misperceptions on both sides of the equation get corrected.

By explicitly describing what was good or what was bad, you are helping a person do more of what’s good and less of what’s bad—and to see the difference.

Putting criticism off is simply daunting and exhausting. It’s much more effective and less burdensome to just say it right away!

impromptu guidance really, truly is something you can squeeze in between meetings in three minutes or less.

Don’t use performance reviews as an excuse not to give impromptu in-person feedback.

Guidance has a short half-life. If you wait to tell somebody for a week or a quarter, the incident is so far in the past that they can’t fix the problem or build on the success.

When you see a person’s body language and facial expression, you can adjust how you are delivering the message so they can best hear it.

Email and text should be avoided if at all possible. It always feels faster to fire off an email or text, but when I think about all the times I had to spend hours clearing up a misunderstanding that arose from an email that was misunderstood, I realize that it’s actually faster to walk down the hall or if the person is remote pick up the phone.

don’t let perfection be the enemy of the good.

If you are in a remote office, or if you are managing people in remote offices, it’s really important to have quick, frequent interactions.

If you are in a remote office, or if you are managing people in remote offices, it’s really important to have quick, frequent interactions. This will allow you to pick up on people’s most subtle emotional cues.

When you’re praising people, your goal is to let them know what they did well as clearly as possible and in the way that will make them feel best—not the way you’d like to hear it.

There is a big difference between caring personally and personalizing when giving praise and criticism. Caring personally is good. Personalizing is bad.