Giving feedback at work – the perennial challenge for managers…and for everyone
You know, they say that feedback is a gift, but that’s still not how most people see it. Giving feedback is still seen as one of the most challenging aspects of organisational life. I’ve podcast and blogged on this topic quite a lot in the past so do go back and search the back catalogue using ‘feedback’ as the search term if you’re interested to hear or read more.
Giving feedback is seen as hard for managers but also for teammates and colleagues at work. Here’s a statistic from our most recent database extract at Strengthscope. With a sample size of over 1500 from our StrengthscopeTeam™ database for 2023-24, we found that of 15 areas relating to team behaviour that team members are asked to rate (such as having a clear purpose, getting together to share successes, relying on each other to get the job done, etc.), the second to lowest rated area is team members providing constructive feedback to each other.
And yet, in 2021, based on a global dataset of over a million employee responses, Workleap reported that 96% of employees said that receiving feedback regularly is a good thing; 83% of employees really appreciate receiving feedback, regardless of whether it’s positive or negative; and 62% of employees wished they received more feedback from their colleagues.
What is radical candour and why does it matter?
So with all that in mind, and to help people get more courageous and step into the discomfort they feel about giving feedback, a US author Kim Scott who had managed large tech teams across Silicon Valley, created a model that I want to share with you today. It’s called the Radical Candor model. The subtitle is ‘Be a kickass boss without losing your humanity’ but actually it applies to all employees whether you’re a manager or not and is super useful in teams.
Ruinous empathy
What Scott says is that too many people (managers and colleagues alike) care so much (so they’re super high on the ‘Care personally’ axis) that they don’t want to risk disrupting what they see as a positive relationship with their colleague and so the fail to challenge directly. That is, to give constructive feedback. So they don’t and the feedback never gets said, so it never gets heard, so it never leads to change. Actually, it leads, by definition, to ignorance because the person who should hear the feedback doesn’t even know there was feedback to hear. And that leads to a state, as Scott describes, of (and I love this label) ‘Ruinous empathy’. Empathy that ruins you. However well intended, this is empathy that doesn’t help, it hinders, nobody learns and nothing improves. It’s ruinous. And we all do it.
Radical candour
On the other end of the Challenge directly axis, change DOES happen. And it happens because the people who provide this kind of feedback are willing to disrupt the status quo, they are willing to put the feedback recipient’s development ahead of their own fears and anxieties, because they are prepared to be ‘Radically Candid’. They still care, they stay human, they’re not cruel but they are willing to give feedback and to challenge someone to think or do differently. And this can lead to profound growth and change. I’ve shared the stats on how much people need and want feedback. At the end of it all, people just crave clarity, so they need to hear the good, and the bad because both can help growth.
Obnoxious aggression
Now for completeness I’ll briefly talk about the other two quadrants of Kim Scott’s model. But only briefly.
So on the two lower quadrants of the model, we have a situation where the feedback giver does not care personally. In the first of these, the feedback giver doesn’t care personally but does challenge directly and Scott calls this ‘Obnoxious aggression’. When you forget the compassion and caring but you challenge directly, you may see a little change but this is more likely to be change based around compliance and any change is likely to come after a big wodge of defensiveness. Because people like to feel valued and respected and that needs to be evident throughout any attempt to give feedback.
Manipulative insincerity
The final (and darkest) quadrant is ‘Manipulative Insincerity’. No caring and no challenging. You’ve disconnected emotionally, there’s an aloofness that’s going to be evident in the relationship and people will feel it. So it definitely doesn’t lead to any change and worse, over time, it leads to mistrust. Beware manipulative insincerity. We are all prone to it.
I really like Kim Scott’s emotive labels because typically, people’s first reaction is to be a little shocked by the strength of language but after a moment of sitting with them, people understand the labels quickly and also see their own behaviour in those labels. And I think it’s important to communicate with emotional impact on this, because feedback is an emotive topic and that’s the reason there’s not enough of it. So I feel the ‘shock’ factor is welcome.
In summary then, radical candour facilitates communication that’s kind, clear, concise and sincere. It’s good for teams and individuals, it establishes a healthy relationship between a leader and their direct reports.
What gets in the way of radical candour?
My experiences of Kim Scott’s model are several, I’ve used it with a number of international teams of professionals from various industries and it always lands well. Most often, I’ll use it to tee up some sort of group feedback session, like ‘speed feedback’, where you need to give feedback to each colleague in your team one thing you appreciate about them and one thing that would improve the quality of your working relationship – or something along those lines. You have 1 minute per person each way and then you move on. It can start off awkwardly, but with the preamble from Kim Scott, these sessions generally go well.
However, in some teams, particularly new teams, or those who haven’t been working together long, or in teams who have just been through a lot of change, or maybe those who are experiencing some dysfunction and where trust is low, anxiety around hurting others’ feelings or your message landing badly or making things worse than they are really can get in the way of delivering that radically candid message that’s so needed, wanted and important for learning.
How has Strengthscope responded and what have we learned?
We’re really aware of this at Strengthscope and we’re also aware that adopting a positive psychology based approach which focuses on strengths and what we love and are energised by, can lead to a greater deal of openness and to a greater acceptance of constructive feedback on what might need to change or be done differently.
What we’ve done is to develop a strengths based feedback framework that over time, can establish that culture of growth mindset and psychological safety that Kim Scott references in Radical Candor and which can lead to people being much more open and honest in giving and receiving feedback.
It can be a key tool for managers and teams that want to give kind, clear, concise and sincere feedback. And you may already know it. Or you may not. It’s Strengthscope360™ – a 360 degree feedback tool based on positive psychology that supports leaders who want to bring radical candour to their teams.
And it works for any and all teams, no matter how sensitive or delicate their context or relationships. And that is in part because it is completed anonymously and online. And in part because you are asked to provide feedback using the language of strengths. Which is, at its heart, a really caring way of giving feedback. But we also provide the balance of challenging directly by asking feedback providers to say how they feel someone’s strengths could be used better or differently.
The feedback that we get on the tool is that people tend to be much more open to change based on their Strengthscope360™ report than they are based on traditional 360 degree reports.
We’re seeing a big uptick in Strengthscope360™ being requested right across our client base, so if you want to have a chat with the team about how to use it, to get in touch because we love talking about our products and how they can help.
In conclusion – do not fear the giving of feedback, fear the not giving
In conclusion, I just want to give another shout out to the power of feedback, delivered with clarity, kindness and with the intent of helping to improve things. That kind of feedback is radically candid. And it is the most likely to lead to positive change for the recipient. Till next time, stay strong.
