Candour: Why it’s so important and how to get better at it
I spend a lot of time speaking with leaders at different stages of their careers, across industries and sectors and from companies at various stages of maturity. I ask many of them to share their top leadership lessons and challenges. One theme that comes up often is being honest in giving difficult feedback.
One senior leader, who has had a long career in a large organization, shared that one of their greatest leadership challenges has been helping their colleagues address their blind spots. While this leader came to recognize that being direct in giving feedback was a responsibility that comes with leadership, it never got easier.
Another leader, who is at an earlier stage in their leadership career, indicated that their greatest challenge is managing staff performance issues, particularly related to behaviour and conduct. They are still working their way through this and experimenting with different ways of speaking their mind.
For me, giving difficult feedback has required a deliberate effort and development. I have become stronger at it with experience and age, but I am still studying the art of being honest and direct in delivering difficult feedback.
I expect that this is true for many people. Whether it be at work, in volunteer roles or with friends and family, we are not always honest with our feedback. There is a built-in dilemma in our lives.
On the one hand, in order to achieve the best possible outcome, to collaborate well and solve problems effectively, we need full information and open sharing of views and ideas. Misleading and withholding information and feedback is detrimental.
On the other hand, social forces work against always being honest. We sometimes rationalize that the reason we hold back from giving difficult feedback is that we don’t want to offend or be impolite. Other times, our fears and the limbic-driven instinct for self-preservation holds us back.
Ed Catmull, President of Pixar and Disney Animation, in his book Creativity Inc., dives into this topic to share how his company attempts to overcome lack of honesty – which he relabels ‘lack of candour’ – in the service of producing the best possible movies.
He says, “A hallmark of a healthy, creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms. Lack of candour, if unchecked, ultimately leads to dysfunctional environments.”
He acknowledges that there may be good reasons to be careful about what you say. A person may want to be polite or respectful or they may not want to appear to be a know-it-all.
More often, though, holding back comes from fears of saying something ‘dumb,’ of being judged or of an emotional reaction or retaliation. Catmull says that these are the tendencies his team works hard to overcome at Pixar.
Brené Brown, the vulnerability research professor I have mentioned previously, has commented on this in her work as well. Her findings are that delivering honest feedback requires a balance between both courage and vulnerability. It makes sense, right? Giving honest feedback requires putting yourself in an uncertain position. You don’t know how the other person is going to react, so you feel vulnerable. Doing it anyway requires courage.
A few years ago, Google initiated a study called Project Aristotle to understand why some work teams were more effective than others. The goal was to figure out how to predictably create the perfect team.
There were many hypotheses prior to completing the study: better to put introverts together, perfectly balance individual competencies, put highest performers together, people that got along socially work together more effectively, etc. After studying 180 teams, researchers could not find a consistent pattern based on any of the hypotheses.
What they did determine was that there were 5 key dynamics for the most effective teams. The most important dynamic was “psychological safety,” which Harvard Business School Professor Amy Edmondson defines as “a belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns or mistakes.”
Putting it all together (Catmull, Brown, Google) suggests that the most effective teams are made up of people who have the courage to be vulnerable and have leaders and members who explicitly discuss and re-enforce norms of psychological safety. Not easy to do, but worth the effort!
Recently, a leadership professor at the Ivey School of Business recommended a book to me called Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott. The premise of the book is that too many leaders give meaningless positive feedback, while others easily give critical feedback without providing support or do not give any feedback at all.
The author believes that all leaders float between each of these three styles but the most frequently occurring is the meaningless positive feedback. She calls this “ruinous empathy,” where concern for the person’s short-term feelings holds you back from giving feedback which will help them in the longer term.
Scott defines a fourth style, radical candour as “caring personally, while challenging directly.”
So why don’t we practice radical candour more? Scott offers several reasons and two resonated with me.
The first reason is that many of us are raised to be careful not to hurt people’s feelings. I was a wisecracking kid. I did it to get some laughs and attention. Every once in a while, I said something to a teacher, a friend or one of my brothers’ friends that embarrassed them or hurt their feelings.
Through some tough conversations, punishments and a few detentions, I got the message: “If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say it.” For most of my life, I have been encouraging and positive. When I got into leadership roles, it was hard to shake that kind of training that was learned at a young age, and it was difficult for me to deliver the tougher messages in a meaningful way.
The second reason is that we have a strong negativity bias as human beings. Negative circumstances and reactions are over-represented in our memories and that affects our behaviour.
Nine times out of 10, when you give candid feedback, it will likely go well. The recipient will appreciate the feedback and you will feel like you’ve exercised your role well as a friend or a leader. But 1 time out of 10, it will go horribly wrong. It may result in tears, lost tempers and defensiveness, personal attacks and humiliation or all of the above. The fear of that 1 time is enough to hold us back from giving candid feedback the next
time.
Scott goes on to describe an ‘order of operations’ when it comes to radical candour:
1. Solicit criticism yourself. Sincerely ask for it, prove you can take it and reward the person when they give it to you.
2. Give praise to the other person after they have given you criticism. It puts both you and them in a better frame of mind.
3. Provide radical candour to the other person – care personally and challenge directly at the same time.
4. Check to see how the guidance you are giving is landing – this is about paying attention to reactions and confirming how the recipient is understanding what you have said.
5. Encourage it between others – do not give feedback or offer criticism about someone else and do not encourage it if someone is sharing criticism about someone else.
The most important point I took away as something to work on myself is this: develop and practice the question you will ask to solicit criticism about yourself while making the other person feel safe.
“The way you ask for criticism and react to it when you get it goes a long way toward building trust.”
Here is the one I am going to start testing with my coaching clients: “What can I start doing or do more of that will improve how I support you?”
If you’re interested in learning more about radical candour, Kim Scott gave an interview on the HBR Ideacast. If you prefer video, you can watch her delivering a keynote.
Over the course of my career, I’ve developed some of my own practices to improve how I give difficult feedback. I offer them below for you to consider the next time you have to be candid.
When you are anxious about delivering a difficult message, tell the recipient you are feeling anxious or nervous prior to delivering the message. Naming the emotion you are feeling puts you at ease and creates a human connection.
Deliver feedback with kindness but expect and allow for an emotional reaction. If you brace for it and it happens, you will be ready. If it doesn’t happen, you will be pleasantly surprised.
Ensure you are giving the feedback in service of the individual or for the higher purpose of the organization or mission. This should not be about unloading something that is irritating you.
Do not overwhelm the individual. If there are several pieces of feedback, when possible, don’t tackle them all in one sitting. Keep it simple and straightforward.
Give feedback but try to avoid offering solutions or recommendations unless asked. Give the recipient the opportunity to come up with their own solutions and the power to ask for help.
Finally, an important point to keep in mind is that candour is not just about delivering criticism. It is also about the way we deliver praise. The praise we give should not be loose or flippant like “Great job today!” or “Nicely done!” It should be specific and should demonstrate Scott’s ‘care personally while challenging directly’ mantra.
Praise should be offered in a way that ensures the recipient knows exactly what they should do more of in the future. In fact, you want to challenge them to do it more and continue to get better at it.
For example, “Great job today! I thought it was excellent the way you handled that challenging question by staying calm, confirming your understanding of the question and being explicit about what you knew and what you didn’t know. Keep working on that so you can do it consistently.”
I hope you have found something in this article that will be helpful to you. Do you have any ideas or experiences that have helped you be more candid in giving feedback? Please share them by commenting below or sending me an email at shakeel@oceanbluestrategic.com.
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