Radical candour

When blunt feedback and genuine concern collide.

Former Google and Apple employee Kim Scott now coaches tech chief executives how to best manage their employees. The mantra she gets them to ascribe to has a simple definition: radical candour.

Bosses are encouraged not to sugar coat their feedback if employees misstep. At the same time, they should care deeply about their workers. Giving blunt feedback from a place of love is the best way to manage people, reckons Scott. “Be humble, helpful, offer guidance in person and immediately, praise in public, criticise in private, and don't personalise,” she writes in her book.

Others agree. “It’s useful, but it’s not inherently new,” says Sally Maitlis, professor of organisational behaviour and leadership at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. Instead, Scott has captured the zeitgeist – a happy medium between the blunt, harsh management of the 1980s and the touchy-feely compassion of the 21st Century. “If you speak with radical candour, then you’re going to help people get feedback in a way they can act on,” says Maitlis. Such a method prevents people from feeling aggrieved or attacked, and instead gives them a positive base on which to build – knowing that their boss is supportive of them on the way.

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Image credit: Piero Zagami and Michela Nicchiotti.