A scene from “The Office.”
NBC-TV
When you’ve watched HBO’s “Silicon Valley” or NBC’s “The Office,” you have seen several examples of obnoxious aggression and manipulative insecurity exhibited by leaders.Â
It almost goes without saying that actual managers shouldn’t look to mimic Michael Scott, or the command-and-control culture dramatized on television. As a substitute, leaders should strive for what former Apple and Google executive Kim Scott calls the novel candor approach, showing that you just care personally while difficult directly.
While the concept is straightforward, Scott told CNBC Senior Media & Tech Reporter Julia Boorstin on the recent Disruptor 50 Connect event in San Francisco that she views it as radical because it will possibly be difficult to point out you care while difficult a peer at the identical time.
“It’s rare that we do each at the identical time, especially with feedback at work, but really feedback in any a part of your life,” Scott said. “It is a matter of existential dread.”
Avoiding the fear of providing honest feedback
That fear often keeps leaders from providing feedback that matches into the novel candor bucket, as a substitute moving towards three sorts of negative feedback that Scott outlined in her “Radical Candor” book: Obnoxious aggression, or praise that does not feel sincere and feedback not delivered kindly; ruinous empathy, or feedback that tries to spare someone’s short-term feelings but doesn’t tell them what they should know; or manipulative insincerity, actions like backstabbing or passive aggressiveness, which Scott said is the worst form of feedback failure.
Scott said that the challenge for CEOs and leaders is balancing the need to be “compassionately candid without being ruinously empathetic,” something that could be solved by soliciting feedback.
“On the core of radical candor is an excellent relationship between manager and worker, between peers, and up, down and sideways,” she said. “It’s about an excellent relationship, and there are few things which can be more destructive to an excellent relationship than an influence imbalance, so if you may have power, I like to recommend learning the right way to lay it down, learning the right way to solicit feedback from people, and prove to them that it isn’t only protected for them to let you know what they really think, but that they will be rewarded.”
Being tough but fair
Amid recent leadership scandals in addition to the broader societal changes which have occurred, leaders will worry about upsetting staff when providing firmer feedback, but that is not any excuse for being a poor communicator, Scott said.
“What’s happening now could be we suddenly became aware of a bunch of things that we should always have been aware of before, but we weren’t, and other people have retreated to manipulative insincerity, where they’re neither caring nor difficult,” Scott said. “They’re so concerned about their fame as leaders that they are saying nothing, and I get this query with some frequency from CEOs who tell me they don’t seem to be going to offer feedback to certain people on their team because ‘I’ll get in trouble with HR.'”
Scott said it requires leaders who’re willing to “challenge directly, even further than you could be comfortable going,” while also being aware of how what you are saying is landing.
“Despite all the pieces you may read on social media, most of us do actually care personally, but we’re so nervous about not upsetting someone or hurting their feelings or offending them, we fail to inform them something they’d be higher off knowing,” she said.
