They say honesty is the best policy, but is that maxim effective in the workplace?
Despite the potential pitfalls, many businesses are giving it a shot with a relatively new management approach called “radical candor.”
As Business Report details in a new feature in the current issue, radical candor encourages business professionals to directly confront issues with colleagues in a completely honest—yet respectful and compassionate—way.
Kim Scott, a former Google director and consultant to firms such as Twitter, outlines the concept in her bestselling book Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity.
While it has mostly been adopted at big corporations in major markets, smaller companies in cities such as Baton Rouge are starting to incorporate it as well. One of them is injury law firm Dudley DeBosier, which began using radical candor about a year ago. Director of Operations Erin Farrell says it has been a “game changer” for the firm.
“It has really helped make issue resolution happen quicker,” she says. “With radical candor, instead of having backdoor conversations or taking problems to people who really can’t solve them, you’re going to the person whose performance or professionalism needs to be addressed and you’re doing it directly.”
Farrell says the firm introduced the concept at a time when it was doing a lot of hiring and needed to rebuild its team and organizational structure. Managing Partner Chad Dudley brought the idea to the management team after reading about it.
“He basically outlined it for us in a document and said, ‘This is a method for you guys to communicate with each other by being very open and very honest,’” she recalls. “The concept is not a license to be negative or overly rude to other people. It’s just about coaching with compassion and being able to really be direct with your peers and your direct reports in a way that isn’t beating around the bush. On the spectrum, it isn’t passive and it isn’t aggressive. It’s compassionate.”
When introducing the concept, Dudley explained what the standards for the management team were going to be and how the concept could get them there.
“Bad teams have no standards of performance. Good teams have leader-driven standards. Great teams have team driven standards,” explains Dudley. “Everyone on the team holds one another accountable to a high standard in a way that balances radical candor and compassion. It is founded on trust among team members that we are all working towards a common goal—doing the best job we can for the client. That is where we want to be as an organization each and every day.”
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