“Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity” by Kim Scott demonstrates the power of honest feedback in a professional setting and how it stems from a moral responsibility towards others. Kim’s book shows that feedbacks are not always effective in communicating clearly with teams to drive good performance. Giving feedback is a puzzling exercise for even the most practiced because most of them are afraid to challenge their teams directly, and some do not care personally about them.
Kim, who lead teams in her previous roles in Google and Apple, explained how radical candor feedback is about confronting teams while having their best interests at heart and being candid in a helpful way, without any hidden or personal agendas. She said in her book “ There is nothing more damaging to human relationships than an imbalance of power. Candor is the honest broker of truth that neutralizes the imbalance.”
She also describes the two main facets of radical candor as “challenging directly” and “caring personally.” without which feedbacks are at best ineffective. When these two parameters are poorly attuned, many bosses fall in the three others categories than being radical candor: ruinous empathy, manipulative insincerity, and obnoxious aggression. Kim’s book is full of ground-breaking thinking that rethinks the way feedbacks are done today. She impressively questions unproductive phrases we hear in today’s workplace such as “Keep it professional” or “don’t take this personally” and prove how effective winning teams are all about embracing others as human beings and then considering their work as the personal expression of their identity.