Connect before you correct
Linda Brandt, MPH
Connection Catalyst ?? || Igniting Change Through Facilitation & Strategy || Program Management Pro || Ambassador of Good Ideas
Does the thought of addressing an issue directly with a coworker make you queasy or scared?
On the flip side, have you ever wished your coworkers would be more direct and tell you what they really think?
In many workplaces, indirect feedback is so common that it’s taken as normal. If you’re wondering what’s wrong with indirect feedback, many experience indirect feedback as passive aggressive. It’s also hard to improve when you don’t get honest and direct feedback. Further, when indirectness is the norm, those who are direct can be viewed as too much or an outsider.
Scott says the key to impactful feedback is to care personally and challenge directly. She calls this “radical candor” or “compassionate candor.”
Radical candor is when a coworker takes you aside and tells you when you are wearing too much cologne or are being insensitive. Radical candor is important at work because people need honest and direct feedback to grow personally and professionally.
Sometime our caring keeps us from challenging people directly. Scott calls this “ruinous empathy.” This sounds like, “I love you. I love you. I love you. You’re fired.” As author Brené Brown says, “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind” Said another way, sometimes being nice isn’t actually very nice. When we don’t care and we challenge directly, Scott calls it “obnoxious aggression.” To avoid this feedback pitfall, make sure to connect before you correct.
Whenever possible, get to know your coworkers. Caring relationship makes direct feedback possible. Direct feedback, in turn, helps yourself and others thrive at work.
As someone who transitioned out of clinical practice with couples and families into the world of applied research and evaluation, I can tell you this is a universal principle of relationships. It works as a parent, a partner, a supervisor, and a program evaluator.
Career Coach & Strategic PM | Litera Director of Transformation
1 年I like how the twist to radical candor is "connect before you correct" it has a nice ring and good message behind it. I'm used to startup culture where people love to use radical candor to just be aggressive and brash. So when I moved back to MN, I really cherished the passive aggressive because I feel like I could work with that and tease out what someone wanted by connecting with them vs. just high intensity of aggression I was used to in the past.
Partner, Intune Collective | Best-Selling Author | Experience Designer + Facilitator | Executive Coach | Creativity, Connection, & Org Dynamics | The Business of Being Human | The Significance Project | Somatic Educator
1 年Thank you Linda Brandt, MPH and Kim Scott. I have introduced these concepts to quite a number of teams and it IS a sticky concept that people get right away. It's fascinating to explore the right mix of love and challenge for different people. So much relies on their shaping stories too!
Providing research, rituals and workplace wellness programs to retain and engage mothers.
1 年This book has been on my wish list for a while Linda, thank you for the reminder.
Thank you Linda! I was born in Minneapolis, btw. And grew up in Memphis. And now live in California. So I've experienced three very different flavors of Ruinous Empathy....I think it's probably the most common problem in any culture, though it feels different. Universally human, culturally relative....