HALF TIME THOUGHTS, EPISODE 33: WHEN DID TRANSPARENCY AND CANDOR BECOME RADICAL?

When I laid out my New Year Solutions in Episode 28 of #HalfTimeThoughts, framed around the sardonic acronym OMICRON, I had R stand for Radical.

It was in the sense of radical candor and radical transparency, famously espoused as leadership principles by the billionaire hedge fund manager, Ray Dalio, in?Principles: Life and Work (Bookshop.org | Amazon). ?He argues that such practices create a culture that is direct and honest in its communication.

Since composing my New Year’s list, I’ve given each item deeper consideration while preparing to write the series of articles that followed it and in fussing with how to integrate the ideas into my daily life.

To be frank (which is apropos, given the subject of this article), I’m having trouble with the R is for Radical idea.

It’s not that radical candor or radical transparency have lost their appeal or would be difficult to achieve.?Compared to many, I’m already a straight shooter in my communications.

It’s the fact that either of those attributes should qualify as radical in the first place.

Which begs two questions:?What do we mean by radical??And when did transparency and candor gain that qualifier?

What Do We Mean by Radical?

I’ll lean on the experts at Oxford Languages for the adjectival definitions:

• Relating to or affecting the fundamental nature of something; far-reaching or thorough.
• Advocating or based on thorough or complete political or social change; representing or supporting an extreme or progressive section of a political party.

By labeling transparency and candor as radical we are therefore either:

• Declaring that we will apply them at a new level of thoroughness that would be considered a stretch – far-reaching in that definition, or
• Describing them as requiring a complete social change and being representative of an extreme or progressive political view.

I’ll give you my two cents on each.?Suffice to say, I’m even more concerned about their usage than before.

Radical as in Extreme Thoroughness

Can one be somewhat candid in the same way a material can be semi-transparent???

The word candid comes from the Latin candidus meaning white.?It carries a sense of purity and a lack of bias.?

If you’re "off-white", you’re not being 100% truthful or unbiased.

Indeed, modern usage of candid usually involves how straightforwardly someone responds to a question, or how complete and truthful their statements are found to be.

Radical candor is simply candor.?Anything less is somewhat untruthful, somewhat biased, or somewhat incomplete.

In this sense, radical candor is simply candor.?Anything less is somewhat untruthful, somewhat biased, or somewhat incomplete.

It’s the mere presence of candor that’s radical.?Being candid means being thorough, truthful, and unbiased.

Transparency is – pardon the pun – a little murkier.

There are many situations in which being completely transparent might cause harm to oneself, one’s employer, or other related parties.

For example, it’s acceptable to release partially redacted financial statements that show how a business is performing without giving away information that might advantage its competitors.

Similarly, it’s appropriate to disclose certain aspects of a process to show outsiders that it is being run fairly without revealing the specifics of individual steps or the results applying to individual participants.

Radical transparency thus makes more sense – revealing a lot more of the behind-the-scenes action than before – but its application doesn’t necessarily make sense.

There’s no clear advantage to radical transparency, provided we are granted sufficient transparency to draw the conclusions we need to make.

Radical as in Social Change and Political Extremism

In this sense, radical candor and radical transparency imply that those characteristics are not part of the social norm, would require a complete social change to achieve, and are potentially symbolic of an extreme political view.

When we advocate for them, we’re implicitly saying that candor and transparency aren’t currently woven into our social fabric.

That brings us to my second question: when did candor and transparency become radical??Or, by this definition, when did they cease to be part of our social norm?

Perhaps I’m delusional and they never were part of civilized society.?Have people always told half-truths and have businesses and wealthy people always obfuscated important information?

Dalio wrote Principles in 2017, summarizing his learnings while running Bridgewater Associates, the investment firm he founded in 1975.?So he has been advocating for radical truth and transparency since long before Trumpism, when the COVID pandemic was nothing more than a scary prediction on the CDC’s list of bad things waiting to happen.?

COVID has accelerated many things, including the trajectory of many societal changes. Was candor and transparency already scarce or has the schism between political ideologies (and the associated politicization of COVID) driven it out of mainstream society?

To coin Dalio’s phrase, has our culture lost its ability to engage in direct and honest communication?

In Support of Transparency and Candor

When I posted my New Year Solutions list, I was frustrated at finding myself less willing to express my feelings and beliefs.?It left me feeling hypocritical and exposed to misunderstandings and unwelcome surprises when dealing with friends, family, and other folk.

Several readers replied privately that they share my concerns but counseled against becoming any more outspoken.?The divisions within U.S. society today run much deeper than one can safely assume will be contained to a heated debate.?They are causing people you hitherto found to be highly rational and high functioning to say and do things you never would have imagined.

While discretion remains the better part of valor, obfuscating one’s beliefs, ideas, and motives for fear of being judged (or worse) leaves the other party to fill in the blanks.?And guess what, if you aren’t expressing solidarity with their views, they’re going to assume you’re “the enemy”.

I realize that can be quite different when that other party is a family member rather than a potentially hostile, potentially armed, potentially unhinged stranger (although there are sadly all too many stories of family members turning violent on one another in the heat of ideological debate).

Although transparency and candor aren’t going to change what people believe or how they choose to act, per se, more dialog not less is always the more constructive pathway.

I’m inclined to share my beliefs and opinions with you in the spirit of debate and mutual understanding.?I wish that wasn’t labeled radical in any of the senses discussed above, and I hope it doesn’t label me as some social outlier or political extremist.?

I may not be “mainstream” in either Red or Blue America (by dint of my European origins, if nothing else) but I’m far from extreme, even within the relatively narrow spectrum that U.S. politics occupy.?

For that matter, nor should candor and transparency be.?They ought to be principles that civilized people at all points along that spectrum embrace.?Unfortunately, that’s not what’s modeled by many of our elected and corporate leaders.

Transparency and candor became radical – distanced from the social norm – when they ceased to be non-negotiable qualifications to hold public or private office.

My conclusion is that transparency and candor became radical – distanced from the social norm – when they ceased to be non-negotiable qualifications to hold public or private office, and when the Fourth Estate allowed them to languish in the pursuit of readership, viewership, and profits.

Perhaps we will see a new generation of leaders emerge, ones who restore those qualities and demonstrate leadership in their practice??

We must recognize, however, that such leaders can only succeed if their constituents and stakeholders are willing to accept the truths they share.?

So perhaps that’s where transparency and candor get radical – on the receiving end.?

Then the question becomes: Are we willing to accept and genuinely listen to the direct and honest communication that Dalio says radical transparency and radical candor will bring?

Authors Note

As I was editing this post for publication, the furor around Joe Rogan’s podcast on Spotify was boiling.?

Among those who reacted was Brené Brown, one of the most outspoken advocates for both free speech and stopping to learn the facts before forming an opinion.?She suspended her Spotify-hosted podcasts on January 29th, causing additional furor among her fanbase (both supportive and negative).?

On February 1st, she published this explanation for the pause and what she’s going to do next.?It will qualify as radical candor in most people’s book.?

I admire Brené’s ability to slow down, orient herself, form a coherent picture of what’s going on, decide what action makes sense for her, and then proceed.?We would do well to learn from her example.

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