Radical what now?
Elizabeth (Liz) Gulliver
Our business is your people. We elevate employee experience and drive retention & performance.
Radical. Candor.?
I’ve heard those two words more in the last 2 weeks than in the last 2 years, combined. And while I’m prone to exaggeration, I’m not exaggerating here.?
For the uninitiated, Radical Candor is not a new book (2017) or concept (forever?), but it’s having a Moment. In the capital M sense.?
It feels like everyone I’ve spoken with lately is referencing Radical Candor. People are using it for office book clubs, part of onboarding, and as a management philosophy.?
Why is a 6+ year old book trending right now? My theory: People are craving straight forward, honest information. And radical candor tempts the promised land.?
Lay-offs are driving uncertainty. Who’s out, who’s in? Will there be more? Is my company next? Compound that with economic fears. Are we dipping into a recession? How bad will it be??
In a storm of chaos, we’re seeking refuge in clarity, and those words seem to assure it. I’m not convinced it even has as much to do with the content as with the ideal the title aspires to.?
Now couple that with the other big trend driving companies right now - performance.
Facebook/Meta announced this week that the "management theme for 2023 is the 'Year of Efficiency' and we're focused on becoming a stronger and more nimble organization." And they’re not alone. Every employer is thinking about productivity, a return to performance, and long-term transformation.?
Performance makes perfect sense, but performance alone doesn’t spell longevity for a company. CEOs know that. The 3 words that are top of mind for every leader we’ve talked to in 2023 are: Performance (bottom-line), People (retention), and Sustainability (long-term success/impact).?
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So if that’s the mandate from the top, what comes next? What does that mean for your teams and people??
We've been working with clients to focus on driving results & staying human centered. There’s no one singular solution, but there are systematic changes you can make. If you’re curious to hear more about what that looks like, join us for a conversation on Feb 16.?
BUT where I was going with that, is that people often see those two at odds with each other - how can you be both performance driven and human centric? I think you have to be both to win. And if you truly want radical candor, you need a strong foundation of trust to share that candor. If you want to drive performance, you need a strong foundation of trust to drive shared output. And if you want to be human centered you need…yes, a strong foundation of trust.?
What’s been eroded in the last few years isn’t communication or productivity. It’s trust. It’s leaders saying they don’t trust their people if they can’t see them working. It’s employees saying they don’t trust leaders' intentions & actions. It’s teams who don’t trust whether performance is really based on collaborative success or individual outputs.?
So yes - let’s get radical, but let’s make it radical trust first. Candor, performance, retention and the rest will follow.?
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Advocate and Advisor for Tech for Good, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, and LGBTQ+
1 年Here's a recent McKinsey study that goes right to the point that it is Performance PLUS People that is the winning combination for business results. Our orientation toward priorities and trade-offs works against the notion that the power of a combination of factors can be more powerful than one driver. Complex is not necessarily complicated. https://www.mckinsey.com/mgi/Our-Research/Performance-through-people-Transforming-human-capital-into-competitive-advantage?cid=eml-web
CEO, Giving Children Hope | Speaker-Consultant-Coach on Life, Leadership, and Culture | Kunik Expert
1 年Highest performance teams have the highest trust and deepest commitment. Period. I flew AV-8B Harrier jets in the Marine Corps in the late '80's and '90's. Lost 25-30 fellow Harrier pilots during that time with an accident rate 7x that of other aircraft. To save lives, we had to share our mistakes with each other to identify aircraft problems or flying challenges. In one of my squadrons, at our weekly all-officers meeting, the Commanding Officer set the tone by sharing a "dumbshit" mistake he'd made that week. Vulnerability that created a culture/tone of deep trust. Hiding a significant mistake (losing trust) was the fastest way to get kicked out of the cockpit. Professional competition and "holding people accountable" took a backseat to "always seeking improvement/growth together" and keeping each other alive. If you don't start with trust and commitment with your people, you're already under-performing your potential. You can layer skills and systems on top of a foundation of great people, but the best skills and systems operated by less trusting or committed people, by definition, underperforms. 30+ years later, we're still tight.