Which Companies Use Radical Candor Successfully?

This is a topic near and dear to my heart because so many companies espouse to practice “Radical Candor” but in reality it is a simple concept that is often very hard to execute. And in my observation, the companies that manage to pull off Radical Candor are those where managers truly practice empathy, even when it is hard. Thus, I always mention Google and Apple because Kim Scott worked at both of these companies and got Radical Candor just right. Then there are many smaller teams at companies like Dropbox, Stripe and some social platforms where people practice feedback rituals and share what works for them. My main point is that training is key. If a team spends time learning how to give negative feedback and rehearses tough conversations, they will be so much better at treating candid feedback as permission to care rather than permission to be blunten.

A simple checklist to test for Radical Candor: Do 1-on-1s happen on a regular basis? Is feedback given in a timely fashion? Does the leader ask for feedback as often as possible – also on themselves? If you answer “yes” to all of these questions, you can safely assume that Radical Candor is being put into practice at your company. But if you’re not so sure, I’d recommend you test the method in a small setting first. For example, a mutual feedback round during a sprint retro could be a good starting point. It will quickly become apparent whether or not candid care is valued at your company.

I get a particular high from teams practicing Radical Candor in all its messy, human+caring+challenging form. Given that Kim Scott developed this framework while at Google, Apple and other large tech companies, you can still see her influence at places like these as well as in a handful of startups. The key to these teams moving fast while not letting their relationships turn into stale routines is that they implement small mechanical features on top of practicing Candor in their regular check-ins, using feedback templates and training their managers. This is quite different from treating Radical Candor as a slogan and not actually practicing it.

The biggest differences for me between success and failure in helping people implement ‘Radical Candor’ are around the culture tone the leader sets personally and then follows through on. I know of lots of teams at companies who get the mention in Silicon Valley media, such as Google teams, some teams at Dropbox and Stripe, and various engineering organizations on social platforms. These teams have been known to use frameworks for feedback inspired by ‘Radical Candor’ that prevent teams falling into the 2 opposite modes of ‘ruinous empathy’ and ‘obnoxious aggression’. However, there are plenty of organizations where ‘Radical Candor’ is used as a euphemism for ‘we are really blundering but we’ll just call it candor’. My experiments in trying to get this right have been to pair brutal feedback with help and support, e.g. a PM gives really tough feedback to a team member and then sets up time for coaching to implement the feedback along with lots of details on what to do next.

One thing to look for when trying to replicate Radical Candor is training and development of managers and leaders to give and receive feedback. Look for rituals that embody calibrated performance discussions, peer feedback, manager shadowing, etc. Are leaders at your company vulnerable and willing to admit failure? I have seen Radical Candor be translated to and successfully used in hospitals, non-profits, and schools because the core idea is simply to care about others personally and challenge them directly. My best advice to try to build more Radical Candor in your workplace is to experiment with the smallest possible change to your current process of talking with each other (e.g. retro reviews) to ask for one thing to start, one thing to stop, and one thing to continue to do, and make sure that person has time and/or resources to help you with the thing you want to start. It is very low risk and it clarifies your intent and can actually start to change your culture from trying to be brutally honest to actually being able to give radical care to others.

We use radical candor in my book club, but it wasn’t easy to get there. The basic idea is that you can be very honest about things you hate about a book and still be respectful. It took some time but now these discussions are some of the most interesting and even fun parts of my book club. My biggest hope is that if a casual social group of people can achieve this within the boundaries of some ground rules then a company can too. The key is that in a company there is so much at risk for giving feedback that it becomes a poison pill for many people. Thus, the million dollar question for a successful company is how do you make people feel as safe to give feedback as they would in a voluntary book club for personal enrichment? How?