RADICAL CANDOR

What is Radical Candor?

Radical Candor is Radical Transparency for better results.

When people are reminded of what's important and of how they're doing, they're more likely to do the important things. When they know that their performance is visible to others, they're more likely to push for excellence. People don't want to be "on the bottom of the board," and they don't want to let their colleagues down.

The 4 sections to Radical Candor

To be able to be completely radically candid, you need to ensure that every person knows that you care personally, before you challenge directly.

There are 4 sections to Radical Candor:

1. RADICAL CANDOR: You have successfully Cared Personally enough about the situation that when you Challenged Directly, it came across as respectful confrontation. This inspires trust and fundamental change in your coworkers actions.
   
   

2. OBNOXIOUS AGGRESSION: This is achieved when you have not spent enough time ensuring that you coworker knows how much you Care Personally. If you have fallen into this category, your coworker will often fight back alot, possibly disrespectfully.
   
   

3. RUINOUS EMPATHY: This is achieved when you show so much care but do not challenge your team member directly enough. Being over empathetic however not providing direct feedback to help your coworker improve. You may gain a friend, however this promotes absolutely no change and you will never see a shift in the outcome.
   
   

4. MANIPULATIVE INSINCERITY:  This is when you show no care and do not challenge either. Just silence until it is too late. This will create mistrust and again, no change at all.

What the Research Suggests

“Imagine you got to work on Monday and you knew exactly how you had performed the previous week, and could look up how everyone else was doing. Or a manager could go online, any time of the day or night, and see how their team was performing, who deserved a bonus, who was lagging, even if those people were customer service staff, or engineers", said the introduction to a research article in Harvard Business Review.

According to the research, “radical transparency”, the idea of everyone knowing everything, can be a major driver of increased organisational performance. The researchers state that the biggest reason companies fail is because people lose focus and get off track. However, by making everyone’s performance visible, this helps to remove distractions and enables people to concentrate on what is important.

Fairness Drives Employee Engagement

Neuroscience shows that our brains work better when we don’t feel the need to hide our performance or cover up our mistakes. Better to rip the Band-Aid off and confront reality straight away, rather than sneak around hoping we won’t get found out.

We also perform better when our brains aren't worrying about whether someone is getting ahead of us because they are better at politicking and buttering up the boss. You know; those charming people who “talk the talk”, but do not “walk the walk”. With radical transparency, each person’s performance is made visible and objective.

It turns out our brains are strongly motivated by a sense of fairness. When everyone’s performance is made visible on a dashboard, we can clearly see which people truly deserve praise and recognition, and this removes any suspicion of favouritism. Now the people who consistently perform well get recognised for their good work - not those who are good at “looking busy”, or schmoozing the boss.

The Truth Will Set You Free

With radical transparency, everyone can see how everyone else on the team is performing, and all employees get treated fairly according to their performance. Yes, radical transparency can create winners and losers, and to be fair, this environment can be tough at the beginning for people who are not top performers and some may become disengaged when confronted by the reality of their performance, however great workers will take the feedback positively and will come out the other side. 

We measure the score in all sporting activities, why should your organisation be any different? Are you really doing your team a favour by carrying people who just show up and don’t perform to a reasonable standard, one which is negotiated and agreed by all parties up front?

Making performance visible is just the first step. Managers need to meet with their people every week to discuss their KPI scores, how they are tracking on their Projects and Tasks and provide coaching and support to make sure each person is consistently meeting the agreed standard of performance for their role.

Your job as a manager is to coach and support your team to achieve their goals. We do this by the 4DX Score Board. If you are unfamiliar with 4DX please speak to your coach.