School leaders and personnel often desire meaningful feedback, as is the case with the educators surveyed in a recent SAIS motivation and engagement survey. As evidenced by the data, teachers crave feedback, as good feedback can provide role clarity, affect workload, and guide career advancement.
Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor and Radical Respect, shares her expertise and practical wisdom on how to have courageous conversations and offer meaningful feedback through the practice of Radical Candor. Then, three SAIS school leaders share how they have incorporated the Radical Candor framework into their own practice.
What is Radical Candor?
The decision to write Radical Candor was born from Kim Scott’s desire to reconcile “the wonderful parts of [Southern] culture that were about being empathetic…and truly kind” with how to challenge people in a way that would help both individuals and the companies they serve succeed.
To that end, the framework for utilizing Radical Candor, at its heart, means to simultaneously care personally and challenge directly. Scott shares, “Caring and challenging hardly seem radical. [Yet], everyone I’ve ever worked with all over the world struggles with it.” She suggests viewing the Radical Candor framework as a compass to help guide specific conversations with specific people to a better place.
“There’s a false dichotomy in believing that you must choose between being nice and being effective,” Scott says. Rather, we can do both in tandem, though it is easy to fail in one dimension or another. “I think there are times when all of us remember to challenge directly, but we forget to show that we care personally,” Scott says. Scott dubs this obnoxious aggression, which she emphasizes is not to be used to describe personalities. Rather, we all lean into this area at some point.
Obnoxious aggression is problematic both because it hurts others and does not work. “It’s inefficient.” Scott says. “If I am a jerk to you, you’re likely to go into fight or flight mode in your mind, and then you literally physically cannot hear the words that are coming out of my mouth, so I’m wasting my breath.”
Scott suggests that obnoxious aggression is also problematic for a more subtle reason. When acting in this manner, it is typically not instinctual to shift to the care personally side of the matrix. Instead, too often, individuals back off and find themselves in the manipulative insincerity quadrant, where passive aggressive behavior creeps in, ultimately eroding trust.
Both obnoxious aggression and manipulative insincerity can lead to drama within organizations. Scott describes obnoxious aggression as “front-stabbing,” while manipulative insincerity includes “backstabbing” behavior. While these extreme behaviors may be easiest to pinpoint, the majority of people make most of their mistakes in ruinous empathy, defined as showing others that we care personally but failing to provide important information in the moment out of fear of offending others.
Approaching Difficult Conversations Within the Organizational Hierarchy
To have a radical conversation where you care personally and challenge directly – regardless of the hierarchy – requires focused conversation. Whether speaking with a board chair, a division leader, or a faculty member, Radical Candor works up and down the organizational chart. Scott says, “Radical Candor is all about putting your device away, looking someone in the eye, and having a … two minute conversation. It should be more like brushing and flossing and less like a root canal.”
Yet, hierarchy makes a difference in how to approach potentially difficult conversations. According to Scott, there are few things that hurt a relationship more than a power imbalance. For those who hold the power in the relationship, it is important to “lay it down.” For those who do not hold the power, it is critical to step up and pretend as though hierarchy is not in the room in order to have a real conversation.
According to Scott, you must ensure you are in the right frame of mind before digging into difficult conversations, which is achieved by first soliciting feedback and giving praise. Then, when providing criticism, be quick to gauge how it lands to determine which way to continue in the Radical Candor framework. Beginning with soliciting feedback is an especially useful tactic for those in positions of power – it demonstrates to others that their opinions are valued.
When conversing, offer both praise and criticism (and more praise than criticism). “In any relationship, it’s really important to make sure that you’re focused on the good stuff – that you’re expressing gratitude and appreciation,” says Scott. “People are doing great stuff, and you want to let them know that you notice the good stuff as well as the bad. You don’t want to leave the criticism for too long because it tends to fester if you do that.”
Finally, consider how the conversation you lead is landing. Is the other person frustrated, angry, brushing you off? These cues will guide the next steps and further approaches to care personally or challenge directly, as needed.
Leadership Growth Through Radical Candor
By incorporating the Radical Candor framework into their leadership practices, several school leaders share how they found opportunities for personal growth. In her early years as an administrator, Hilary Robinson, associate head of school at St. Mary’s Episcopal School (Memphis, TN), shares that she leaned into the ruinous empathy quadrant. “When we’re just starting out and trying to establish that we are approachable and transparent, …it’s very easy to fall into the trap of not wanting to hurt someone’s feelings or not wanting to speak candidly about what may really be happening in any given situation,” she says. By incorporating candid conversations into her leadership practice, Robison encourages others to grow through feedback.
Trinity Episcopal School (Charlotte, NC) Head of School Imana Sherrill, on the other hand, says she initially leaned towards the obnoxious aggression quadrant, with a tendency toward being direct and to the point. Though she found herself challenging directly, the missing piece was caring personally. She shares, “It has taken some time to really blend those two together.” Sherrill now balances being candid with caring about others, with Radical Candor shaping the way in which she approaches conversations. Instead of focusing on ensuring her point is heard, Sherrill pulls back and leads with intention, communicating in ways that allow others to be heard and taking time to learn how each member of her team best receives information.
Like Robinson, Cecil Stodghill, head of school at The Altamont School (Birmingham, AL), found himself in the ruinous empathy quadrant – what he dubs the Southern “bless your heart” mentality of avoiding hurt feelings. After two decades working in admissions and enrollment management, he learned that being candid with families about the care for their children was better in the long run for helping navigate school processes. Honesty need not be too gentle nor brutal but can instead strike a balance. “In order to best lead and support, I had to be more honest and direct,” Stodghill says.
Integrating Radical Candor Into a School Community
To integrate Radical Candor into their respective school communities to create a culture where candor is rewarded, all three leaders encouraged group reads. For Sherrill, Trinity Episcopal School incorporated Scott’s book as an all-community read. Parents, faculty, board members, and even some alumni read the book, which provided a common language.
After reading the book over the summer, a coach from Randical Candor joined the school in August to work with the entire faculty, which Sherrill describes as transformational. “I found we were having a really hard time communicating hard things with each other,” Sherrill says. “[After the training], we were able to talk about how to give praise, which is really hard for faculty. I think that was one of the things that shocked me. It was harder to really give themselves credit for the good work they’re doing, and then to pass that along.”
The Radical Candor framework is now the model for Trinity Episcopal School. The community regularly gives praise first and often so that when the hard things must be said, a collegial, supportive foundation is already in place. Not only has this approach helped faculty peer relationships, Sherrill says it has also shaped the way she speaks with her board and faculty.
Similarly, Stodghill introduced the book initially as a leadership summer read for The Altamont School’s administrative team. “Being new to The Altamont School, … this culture of Radical Candor has been very foreign in my school community, so I wanted to start with my leadership team,” he says. Through the framework, leadership has invested time working on language in terms of being honest with one another.
Stodghill is intentional about treating every individual differently, providing feedback in the way that works best for each person. Of the experience, he shares, “Radical Candor has helped me better understand these individuals and how I can care for and challenge them [in the way] they need. Hopefully, they can go to their teams and do the same. We’re learning to treat everyone differently, yet learn to use Radical Candor as a framework in terms of communicating to one another and really caring for them as well.”
Much like the experience with The Altamont School, Robinson at St. Mary’s Episcopal School implemented the book with the senior leadership team and established common language around Radical Candor, opening the floor up for soliciting feedback. She discovered that upward feedback is really important to her team: “A lot of times, we as leaders can get so immersed in delivering feedback doing teacher evaluations or parent conferences, we forget to solicit feedback for ourselves. The book has really leveled the playing field in a way.”
St. Mary’s uses the book within its professional learning communities, now integrating it at the teacher level. “We are doing good work in establishing a culture where someone who reports directly to me feels very comfortable giving me feedback,” she says. “I am comfortable receiving the feedback and praising them for giving me the feedback.” To work through any potential discomfort of providing feedback to others, Robinson shares that discussing various scenarios helps people feel they have permission to challenge while caring personally.
CORE Feedback and the Generational Divide
As schools consider the needs of their faculty and staff, especially early career educators, Scott stresses the importance of treating each person as an individual, regardless of their generation. “Even if you have a bunch of newly minted college grads, each one is still an individual. You’re going to have to treat them all differently,” she shares.
Scott attests that it is important for leaders to be open to feedback, especially with individuals who are just out of college. In an SAIS pulse survey, academic and division leaders share that they only occasionally (50%) or rarely (14%) solicit feedback.
Scott encourages employers to solicit feedback from younger employees and to reward that candor. By doing so, leaders demonstrate a willingness to consider new ideas and open the door for sharing wisdom across generations. “It’s really important, especially if you have power – even if you don’t think of yourself as a person who has power [but] you have tenure – to be willing and able to start by soliciting feedback,” Scott says.
To offer feedback that is meaningful, Scott suggests the CORE method, providing context, observation, result, and expectation. This format works regardless of personality types and can be used whether offering praise or constructive criticism. For example, a supervisor might praise an employee: “In the meeting (context), when you offered the pros and the cons of your recommendation (observation), you earned credibility (result). Do more of that (expectation).”
The polarity of caring personally and challenging directly is a tension to be managed, not a problem to be solved. For those who earnestly seek to grow and to lean into the idea of Radical Candor, there are opportunities for building stronger communities.
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