Here is some more about what I mean by radical candor being HIP (Humble, Helpful, Immediate, In person, Private criticism / Public praise, do not Personalize). What follows are some additional thoughts on what that means. But, please don’t let the additional thoughts or the acronym paralyze you. Whatever you do, don’t sit there saying nothing trying to remember what I stands for. For the vast majority of people, the really important thing is to just say what you think.
H is for Humble.
You can’t care personally or challenge directly if you’re not humble. It’s really hard to care at a personal level about somebody if you feel superior. When one person feels intrinsically “better” than another, a good relationship is impossible. And, you can’t challenge directly and be open to the reciprocal challenge if you’re not humble enough to realize you may be wrong.
The first time a person in a class I was teaching raised his hand asked me how to be humble, I sat there with my mouth open. It was all I could do not to break into the song from the 70’s show HeeHaw. “Oh lord, it’s hard to be humble, when you’re perfect in every way!” How to answer a question like that?? I didn’t take it seriously until about the 20th time somebody asked me. Finally, I realized it was a legitimate question and I needed to give a serious answer.
The reason is that criticism does feel arrogant. How can you feel humble and tell somebody when their work isn’t good enough at the same time? It can feel equally arrogant to tell people when their work is great. I often bristle at praise because it sounds insincere or patronizing or somehow belittling. When somebody says to me, “I’m so proud of you!” I think, “Who are you to be proud of me?” It’s the fear of sounding arrogant that sometimes makes me hesitate to give praise to people properly.
Ask questions: I’ve always found it really helpful to offer both criticism and praise in a spirit of inquiry rather than a spirit of self-righteous certainty. When criticizing, I try to keep top of mind the possibility that I may be wrong. The other person might learn something from my criticism--but it’s equally possible that I will learn something from their rebuttal to my criticism. Put another way, it’s always made it much easier for me to criticize somebody when I realize there are two benefits to doing so. One, I may be helping them to fix something that is wrong. Two, I am giving them an opportunity to fix my opinion, which is wrong. The same goes for praise: if you see something impressive, ask a question. How did you do that? What gave you that idea? Can you teach others to do that? etc. This shows that you are not some godly arbiter of what’s good and what’s bad, but a fellow learner.
Power trips you up: Nothing is more corrupting to humility and to giving a damn than formal power. Part of what gives bosses trouble with humility is that they have a little bit of power. Part of what makes it hard for employees to be radically candid with their bosses is the power thing. Part of Google’s management genius was removing that power. But even if you don’t work at a company like Google, you can remember that you can easily get another job, and so find the courage to speak your mind.
Don’t let yourself get too mad/hungry/tired: Most people find it harder to be humble when they’re mad, hungry, or tired.If I focus on managing my emotions it’s easier for me to prevent my ego from getting the better of me.
“Left hand column” and “ladder of inference:” Chris Argyris developed a method useful for keeping oneself humble called the “left hand column.” The idea here is that what you are really thinking, which is often arrogant, leaks out into what you say. If you can be more conscious of what you’re thinking, and can adjust it, you can probably find a productive way to address it. For example if you are thinking, ‘Joe is a bozo and shouldn’t even be at the company,’ you’re not likely to be “HIP” when you criticize the typos you saw in his last ten presentations. However, if you realize what you’re thinking and dig a little deeper, you may realize that you’ve hit the bozo bit too fast. Or, you may realize you should be helping Joe to find a job that’s a better fit for him, not coaching him in a role he’ll never be great at. Argyris also came up with the “ladder of inference” tool. This can help you be humble enough to question your assumptions and get out of recursive loops as you judge people.
“Ontological Humility:” Fred Kofman wrote a great chapter called Ontological Humility in his book Conscious Business. The idea is that when you remember your criticism may be wrong, it can help you to challenge others in a way that invites a reciprocal challenge, and helps you see things from the other person’s point of view.
Well, if you are criticizing a person, then the rest of the team may not need to hear it. For example, if the person consistently makes sloppy mistakes, that's a conversatin that is better had in private. If you're just saying there's a typo on that slide, that's a correction of somebody's work not a critisim of somebody, and fine to do in public. If it's a debate about an idea that obviously needs to be in public. But a debate is very different than criticism in my mind.
I agree it does seem ridiculous to say remember you are talking to a person :) But people forget all the time, and that is why they often say things in an overly harsh way.
If you are talking to a person, it must be personal, but it doesn't have to personalize. If you say, I think that's wrong, and that is something somebody has worked on for a long time, they will take it personally so it is personally. But you haven't personalized--saying you're wrong or you're always wrong is personalizing unnecessarily.
If you want I'll send you about 10 pages I've written on this stuff--would love your reaction, it's very helpful!
You are right, these comments are really helpful! It's so easy to say something that gives people the idea quite opposite to what I'm trying to say...
Yes, adding you to mailing list...
Love the idea of turning the book into a kind of video game; also thinking of building some tools that will make it easier to implement ideas, and buidling community around the book...
I think that the key is to make it safe to make mistakes...this also makes it safe to point them out...
This may be sematics, but in my experience, the bona fide assholes don't point out mistakes because they care about helping the person who made the mistake to improve. And so when an asshole sees they've made a person suffer, they don't care, and don't take the time to reassure the person that they have confidence in their abilities. When a person is being radically candid and they see the person is suffering, they take the time to show they care and to reassure that person they have confidence in their abilities--but it a way that makes it clear the mistake was a mistake, or that their work isn't good enough...
Definitely! I am writing a whole book about that :) I can send you a lot more if you want it. But here's the one page version:
First, focus on slowing down and remembering that you’re talking to a person, even if that person happens to be your boss or boss’s boss. This sounds silly, but we all forget to do it. Here is a story: A couple months after joining Google, I disagreed with Larry Page about his approach to an AdSense policy. I wrote an email to several colleagues, which said, “Larry claims he wants to organize the world’s information, but his policy is creating clutter sites, muddling the world’s information.” I went on to imply that his policy was focused on increasing Google’s revenue rather than doing the right thing for users. (Nothing could have been further from the truth. I just didn’t understand what Larry was trying to achieve because, not surprisingly, he was about 15 steps ahead of me.)
If Larry had worked for me instead of co-founding the economic powerhouse of our century, I would never in a million years have sent such an arrogant, accusatory email. I would have asked him privately why he was proposing the policy when the results seemed to be in violation of Google’s mission. If I agreed with his rationale, that would have been that. If I disagreed, I would have explained, again privately, that he seemed inconsistent, and tried to understand his point of view. I didn’t do any of that.
Why did I behave this way? Partly because I believe there’s a special place in hell for those who “kick down and kiss up.” At least I wasn’t making that mistake. But the main reason was that I didn’t really think of Larry as a human being. I saw him as a kind of demigod whom I could attack with impunity. Just because there’s nothing more despicable than “kissing up” and “kicking down” doesn’t mean the opposite is admirable. This is so obvious that I feel ridiculous writing it. I’m sharing it here, though, because I hope that reading this story will help you avoid my mistake.
The clutter sites incident with Larry is a good example of how even well-intentioned criticism can be obnoxiously aggressive if you don’t think of the person you’re criticizing as fully human. The first problem with my email was that it wasn’t humble. I had just joined the company, and I didn’t understand much about how Google’s systems worked. Nor had I bothered to ask any questions about why Larry might be taking the stance he was taking. Instead, I just made a bunch of assumptions and concluded (wrongly, as it turned out) that Larry was more concerned with making money than he was with Google’s mission. Furthermore, my suggestion for how to address the policy issue was not helpful at all because I didn’t really understand the problem that Larry was trying to solve. My other miscalculation was criticizing Larry in a public forum, rather than in private, which would have been the respectful thing to do. And I personalized. I impugned his character by accusing him of hypocrisy. Lesson learned!
So, remember you are talking to a person. Find something about that person that is interesting to you. There are people in your life you care about. Apply what you know about those personal relationships to your work relationships. Work relationships are not friendships, but they are still relationships. When you’re challenging somebody who knows you care, that person will likely take your criticism in the “right way,” even if you say it the “wrong way.” Be “kind,” but don’t just try to to be “nice.” The problem with all the “how to say it nicely” advice out there is that it can make you sound insincere. If you say it “nicely,” but don’t genuinely give a damn about the person, they’ll see through you every time. You’ll look and feel like you’re kissing ass...Another thing you can do is to be open to criticism yourself. Remember, you may not have full context, and you may be wrong.
Also, here is some more about what I mean by radical candor being HIP (Humble, Helpful, Immediate, In person, Private criticism / Public praise, do not Personalize). What follows are some additional thoughts on what that means. But, please don’t let the additional thoughts or the acronym paralyze you. Whatever you do, don’t sit there saying nothing trying to remember what I stands for. For the vast majority of people, the really important thing is to just say what you think.
You are right, that is HARD. That's why bosses have to work so hard to get their employees to criticize them...To GET criticism. Will have a bunch of suggestions in the book I'm writing for this. Open to others that you have. That's also why I recommend a bunch of things that put bosses on a more equal footing with employees.
There is a huge difference between Bridgewater's approach, which I think is called radical honesty, and radical candor, at lesas as I see it (but tell me why I'm wrong and I'll learn something:)
Here is why Bridgewater's approach is obnoxious aggression in my book. There, employees are encouraged to be brutal in their criticism, a policy called “radical honesty.” In one meeting, the criticism got so harsh that somebody started to cry. The conversation was taped, and an executive decided it would be a good idea to send the taped conversation, tears and all, out to the whole company to listen to. He thought people could learn a lot from the incident. My friend who worked there learned he wanted to get a job at a company with a different kind of culture.
The intentions here were probably not as bad as the results. The leaders at the company wanted everyone to say what they really thought. The idea of radical honesty is really appealing to me. But, I saw two big problems with this approach to encouraging criticism. The obvious one was encouraging public rather than private criticism. Public debate and disagreement, yes. Public criticism, no. This mistake was compounded--criticism wasn’t just public, it was publicized in a way that humiliated an employee. The less obvious mistake was that the policy of “radical honesty” inadvertently sowed the seeds of arrogance, not humility. Why? If honesty is good, surely radical honesty is better. Interestingly, it was the words of a Jesuit missionary in the Congo who best explained the problem with honesty to me. “It’s very important to tell the truth,” he said, and then looked heavenward. “But who knows what the Truth is???” When somebody says, “I’m going to be honest with you,” it implies they know the truth and you don’t. There’s not a lot of humility in that.
This is why I use the term “candor.” “Honesty” can lead to arrogance.
I agree with you there is a huge difference between candor and asshole. Sounds like I could have been more clear about that in my talk, so this is helpful.
In my experience the difference between radical candor and obnoxious aggression lies in how much the boss cares about and knows employees at a human level. I also agree with you that the relationship between a boss and employee is not a friendship. But it IS a relationship. That was how Sheryl knew she had to say to me "you sounded stupid," and how she knew I would welcome her question about whether I felt nervous. Other people on Sheryl's team were less stubborn than I am, and she could get through to them in a gentler way. BUT she DID have to get through to all of us.
It's never fun to hear when you've screwed up. I think too much management advice puts too much pressure on bosses to tell people things that will inevitably sting in a way that somehow won't sting. That's just not possible...That's why being a boss is so hard.