Applying radical candor to praise and critiques

Back in 2015, Google started talking about psychological safety. It was the common thread between their highest-performing teams. When you hear that, you can’t help but get sucked into a vortex of trying to figure out how to foster psychological safety and measure it in your team.

I was recently talking about psychological safety with another Stryver. We already do pretty well with it on our team, but we both wished it could be better. He mentioned that his soon-to-be wife was really into the way it is described in Radical Candor, a book by Kim Scott. The next day (thanks, Amazon Prime) it was in my hands and I was hooked.

Radical candor supports psychological safety

The key tenets of radical candor are the same as psychological safety. They both stress the importance of getting to the best answer or solution, without leaving a pile of pissed off people in your wake. While I was always super on board with this, I felt like I had run out of tips for actually implementing this in my everyday interactions. But after reading the book, Radical Candor has given me tons of new ways to approach tough situations.

This deck covers the principles of the book’s framework and provides some tips for implementing radical candor in how you give both praise and critiques.

Yes, there is another framework and a beautiful matrix for business nerds to love, but there is so much more to the book. My favourite part is how Kim spins through the nuances of work situations with an endless amount of examples. They often focus on what not to do, which I found tremendously helpful in illustrating the fine line between different interactions.

If you’re working on psychological safety with your team, I highly recommend reading the full book. But if time is in a crunch (when is it not?) feel free to take the deck and start some clear and sincere discussions with your team!