You used a simple question to get to know each other and build connection and safety.
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Radical Candor is commonly understood as a way to ‘deliver feedback’. It is seldom considered a way to ‘build relationships’. In your team experience, you practiced using Radical Candor principles to create more meaningful, supportive relationships with each other.
Round 1 – “Connection”
You used a simple question to get to know each other and build connection and safety.
Round 2 – “Giving and Receiving Praise”
You gave & received specific and sincere praise based on the first connection activity.
Round 3 – “Go to Question”
You solicited feedback and sought to learn one thing you could do to improve.
You may want to lead-off a future meeting with an ‘exercise’ or ‘game’ to extend the learnings from your experience. Here is an exercise we developed for your team:
To build on your Teamraderie Radical Candor experience, ask each of the attendees to give one piece of specific and sincere praise to a teammate in the next week.
Prior to making the request, start by reminding your team to keep your praise specific and sincere. Use CORE (we know, we know, technically it should be called CORN…).
You may want to send an email to your team to expand on the experience with Radical Candor. Here’s a draft email that you can personalize to fit your style as a leader:
Team,
Thank you for joining our “Radical Candor” experience this week.
It may have seemed counterintuitive that we would rely on a framework (Radical Candor) typically associated with ‘feedback’ to practice better human relationships.
What I learned from the exercise was the importance of becoming comfortable with becoming more open, more vulnerable, and more expressive. The exercises showed me that I can do better on all three dimensions.
I’m looking forward to our interweaving more and more meaningful relationships together – using these and other approaches – as we support each other do our best work.
Manager
Teamraderie experiences are designed in collaboration with management professors at Stanford University and Harvard Business School. Here are the principles Radical Candor incorporated into your experience:
Invite Team Members to Share Personal Stories
A Rotterdam School of Management (2021) study showed asking members of the team to express unique viewpoints and perspectives (showcasing diversity – but within an inclusive environment) led to higher creative expression on teams. This Teamraderie experience helps satisfy both “uniqueness” and “belonging” needs of teams.
Candor Improves Performance by Accelerating Speed of Transfer
A Harvard Business Review (2009) article cited several studies that found teams that communicated more openly, rapidly, and vertically showed improved performance – particularly for teams that required judgment, expertise, and broad perspective to operate at peak performance. This Teamraderie experience gives team members direct practice in candid communication – and seeks to expand that across a team.
Provide Opportunity for Team to Exhibit Authentic Leadership Styles
A University of Nebraska (2006) study found employees’ perception of authentic leadership serves as the strongest predictor of job satisfaction and can have a positive impact on work-related attitudes and happiness. This Teamraderie experience invited all team members to reflect openly and exhibit authenticity.
Includes Kit
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International-Ready
Author: HBR IdeaCast
Highlight: “The most common mistake, the mistake that 85 percent of us make 90 percent of the time is what I call “ruinous empathy.”
Author: Julian Zlatev, Harvard Business School
Highlight: “Trust is a conviction that is built slowly, over a long period of time, through repeated interactions. How can we build trust under these circumstances?”