Every once in a while, if you’re lucky, you get to work on something that is so fun you can’t believe it’s work. For me, collaborating with my team and the folks at Second City Works to create a workplace comedy series, The Feedback Loop, was one of those experiences. Not only was it fun for me, it’s full of fun feedback exercises, and it’s guaranteed to make feedback conversations fun for everyone.

Since Radical Candor was published, my team and I have been working hard to figure out the best ways to help teams put the ideas into practice in a way that scales but still feels human. It’s so easy to say, “Be radically candid,” and so hard to actually do it.

One of the things that people liked about the book was that I broke it down into some practical suggestions, but I think I didn’t break it down quite far enough.

So how can we learn how to practice this? What’s the best way to practice? Fun feedback activities that go along with our hour-long, five-episode series! (Read all the way to the bottom to get 10% off The Feedback Loop digital course!)

6 Fun Feedback Exercises

Engaging your team with fun feedback exercises can help create a culture of open communication and continuous improvement. Here are a few ideas you might find helpful:

1. Role Plays

Use feedback role play scenarios to mimic real life. Have team members play the roles of a feedback giver, receiver, and observer. This exercise helps individuals see the impact of their feedback in real-time and navigate emotional responses. It’s effective for understanding different perspectives and practicing Radical Candor.

If you’re a regular listener of the Radical Candor podcast, you know that my co-founder and Radical Candor CEO Jason Rosoff do this all of the time.

2. Feedback Pairs

Pair up team members and have them give each other specific and sincere praise. One of our favorite fun activities on providing feedback helps build mutual appreciation and trust within the team. You can also include kind and clear criticism to help each other grow.

3. Gauge Your Feedback

Use the Radical Candor framework and have team members rate the feedback they receive. This helps to understand if the feedback is landing as intended and provides insights for improvements.

4. The ‘Tell Me Why I’m Wrong’ Game

During this fun feedback exercise, encourage team members to present their ideas and invite others to challenge them directly. This fosters a culture of healthy debate and collaborative problem-solving.

5. Brainstorm and Clarify Sessions

Conduct sessions where the team can brainstorm ideas and use ‘plussing’ to build on each other’s suggestions rather than dismissing them. Follow up with clarifying questions to refine the ideas before moving to debates.

6. Whoops-a-Daisy

One of the most successful fun feedback exercises I have used is Whoops-a-Daisy. This is a system where team members publicly admit and learn from their mistakes and win cash in the process. This promotes a culture of learning and continuous improvement.

These exercises not only make feedback fun but also help in creating a trusting and open environment where everyone feels safe to give and receive feedback.

Want Fun Feedback Activities? 5 Ways Comedy Can Help

There’s research that supports this idea that laughter is an incredibly effective way to learn and for messages to really sink in. Radical Candor is the very stuff of human drama and human relationships.

While it’s easier to be funny when you’re getting Radical Candor wrong — what I like to call Radical Candor wipeouts — even when you’re getting it right, it can be quite funny.

Comedy can play a significant role in making feedback conversations more engaging and effective. The integration of humor can help individuals relax and lower their defenses, making them more receptive to both giving and receiving feedback. Here’s how comedy ties into feedback conversations:

1. Learning with Laughter

Comedy creates an enjoyable and memorable learning experience. When people laugh, they are more likely to retain information and apply it in real-life scenarios.

“We learn when we laugh,” Kelly Leonard of Second City Works said to me one day. And that was the start of Improvising Radical Candor, a whole new way to think about how to teach managers, both first time managers and seasoned CEOs, to handle the human drama associated with the job was born.

2. Breaking Down Barriers

Humor can break down barriers and make difficult conversations less intimidating. By incorporating elements of comedy into your fun feedback activities, actual feedback sessions can feel less like a chore and more like a collaborative and light-hearted exchange.

3. Improv Exercises

Improvisation, a staple of comedy, involves drills that teach discrete skills necessary for Radical Candor. Improv exercises can help teams engage in feedback role play scenarios and practice listening with the intent to understand rather than respond, ensuring that feedback is received and digested effectively.

4. Relatable Scenarios

Comedy often reflects real-life situations that people can relate to, making the lessons more applicable to daily work interactions. For example, characters in The Feedback Loop deal with common workplace challenges, and their humorous attempts to practice Radical Candor make the learning process enjoyable and relatable.

5. Role Models of What Not to Do

Comedy can illustrate the pitfalls of poor feedback methods in an impactful way. We wanted The Feedback Loop to help people distinguish between what’s Radical Candor — being kind and clear — and what’s not; for example, what’s actually Obnoxious Aggression, or basically just acting like a jerk.

And all the different ways we try to get Radical Candor right, but we accidentally get it wrong. I think this show manages to do that, and thanks to the hilarious cast, including David Alan Grier, you’re laughing as you’re learning.

Comedy enhances the effectiveness of feedback conversations by making the learning process enjoyable, breaking down barriers, providing clear examples of dos and don’ts, and creating relatable scenarios that teams can learn from.

8 Feedback Role Play Scenarios

We get a lot of questions about feedback role play scenarios and which ones people should use to practice their feedback skills. I love roleplaying on the podcast and often take on the role opposite of how I generally behave.

Feedback role play scenarios are not only one of the most effect fun feedback exercises, they’re also an excellent way to practice and refine feedback skills within your team. Here are some scenarios you can use to create practical and engaging exercises:

1. Micromanaging Boss

One team member plays a boss who excessively micromanages, stifling the team’s growth. The other plays a concerned employee who needs to address the issue with clear examples of how the micromanaging behavior affects team performance and morale.

2. Missed Deadlines

A team member repeatedly misses deadlines, impacting the project’s progress. The feedback giver must discuss the issue kindly and clearly, highlighting the importance of meeting deadlines and offering support to improve time management skills.

3. Specific and Sincere Praise

Have one team member play a role where they achieved something significant, and another give specific and sincere praise. This scenario helps practice providing meaningful praise that reinforces good performance.

4. Disruptive Behavior in Meetings

One person plays an employee who disrupts meetings with off-topic comments. The other person needs to provide kind and clear feedback about staying on topic and respecting team members’ time while encouraging relevant contributions.

5. Receiving Criticism

A team member’s work quality has declined, and another needs to offer criticism. The feedback should be clear, focusing on specific areas for improvement while showing personal care and offering help.

6. Cross-Departmental Communication Issues

Two departments are struggling to communicate effectively. Team members role-play as leaders from each department, providing feedback on how miscommunications are affecting workflows and suggesting ways to improve collaboration.

7. Peer-to-Peer Feedback

One team member provides feedback to a peer about a professional growth area, such as improving presentation skills. The focus should be on offering actionable suggestions while maintaining respect and support.

8. Recognition of Consistent Performance

One person consistently performs well but feels underappreciated. The feedback giver practices recognizing their contributions without necessarily linking it to promotions, highlighting the value of their stability and reliability.

Role plays like these can create a safe environment for team members to practice delivering and receiving feedback effectively, using the principles of Radical Candor. Encourage participants to reflect on the exercise afterward to discuss what worked well and what could be improved.

Download Our Fun Feedback Exercises

The Radical Candor Practice Playbook is a valuable resource to help you and your team practice giving and receiving feedback effectively by incorporating practical strategies and structured approaches. Here’s how it can assist you in improving feedback conversations:

• Structured Framework: Introduces models like the CORE (Context, Observation, Result, Expected nExt stEps) framework for clear, specific feedback.
• Clear Objectives: Encourages writing down feedback and objectives before conversations to ensure clarity and purpose.
• Practicing with Peers: Allows practicing feedback with a peer or HR partner to refine your message and stay composed.
• HHIIPP Principles: Emphasizes Helpful, Humble, Immediate, In-Person/Synchronously, Public Praise/Private Criticism, and Not About Personality principles for delivering feedback with care and directness.
• Emotional Awareness: Provides strategies for managing emotional reactions and moving from defensive to problem-solving mindsets.
• Continuous Improvement: Encourages regular feedback practice for a culture of continuous improvement and open communication.
• Specific Exercises: Includes role plays and scenarios for practicing feedback in a supportive environment, building skills and confidence.

By following the guidelines and principles outlined in the feedback loop playbook, you can make feedback conversations more effective, fostering a culture of Radical Candor that promotes growth, trust, and collaboration within your team.
Download the Practice Playbook >>

Originally posted on Radical Candor and updated July 18, 2024.

I’ve been thinking about what the most important thing is for leaders to think about in 2026.

This may be kind of a random segue, but I was born in 1967 — the Age of Aquarius. Peace, love, harmony. All you need is love. That was the era I was born into.

And I think right now we may be in the Age of the Asshole, where all you need to do is challenge people to say what you think. But there’s a better way. We don’t have to choose between the Age of Aquarius and challenging directly. Obviously, we need to get out of the Age of the Asshole — and the way out is realizing that we don’t have to choose between love and truth.

We don’t have to choose between being a good person and being super successful. We can have both. We can care personally and challenge directly at the same time, and that’s really what Radical Candor is all about.

When you challenge without showing you care, we call it Obnoxious Aggression. If you care but you don’t challenge, we call it Ruinous Empathy. And when you neither care nor challenge, we call it Manipulative Insincerity.

Leaders Need to Start by Soliciting Feedback

I think the most important thing for leaders to think about in 2026 is that they need to start by soliciting feedback and then reward the candor when they get it.

Leaders need to lay their power down. The best thing leaders can do to create a culture of psychological safety is to encourage people to tell them when they’re wrong.

And by the way, psychological safety does not mean no conflict. It means productive conflict. It means encouraging people to tell you when you’re wrong — and rewarding the candor when you get it.

Rewarding candor does not always mean agreeing with what people say. What it does mean is being open to the feedback. If you agree, you reward the candor by fixing the problem. If you disagree, you reward the candor by having a good, productive disagreement — a respectful disagreement.

So the most important thing leaders can think about in 2026 is this: How can I lay my power down so that people feel safe telling me what they really think — and how can I reward that candor when I get it?

Feedback, Praise, and Painting a Picture of What’s Possible

Of course, leadership isn’t only about laying your power down. You also need to make sure you’re telling people when they’re moving in the right direction and when they’re moving in the wrong direction. That means giving feedback — both praise and criticism.

More praise than criticism.

A big part of being a leader is painting a picture of what’s possible, and praise is a better tool for that than criticism. But you need both. You need to offer people both praise and criticism.

To do that well, you need to learn how to gauge how what you’re saying is landing.

Being an authentic leader does not mean ignoring the impact you’re having on others. You need to say what you’re thinking — about both the good stuff and the bad stuff — and then ask yourself: How did what I say land?

If the person you said it to seems sad or mad, that means you need to move up on the care personally dimension.

If the person you said it to is brushing you off, didn’t hear it, or is defensive, that means you need to move out on the challenge directly dimension. You need to say it again — even more clearly.

What Gets in the Way of a Respectful Culture

There are a lot of things that get in the way of Radical Candor, but one of the biggest — especially in the Age of the Asshole — is disrespect.

There aren’t many leaders who wake up every morning thinking, I want to create a disrespectful work environment. Most leaders know that respect is essential to collaboration. There’s enormous research on this — and there’s also just common sense.

So if most people intend to create a respectful work environment, what gets in the way?

I’m going to boil it down to three things:

1. Unintended offenses (often called unconscious bias)
2. Actual prejudice
3. Bullying

Leaders need to learn how to intervene — and intervene differently — in each case.

How Leaders Should Intervene

Unintended offenses require an I statement.

“I don’t think you meant that the way it sounded.”

This allows you to make a quick, real-time correction and disrupt bias when you notice it.

Prejudice requires an It statement.

An It statement draws a line between one person’s freedom to believe whatever they want and their inability to impose those beliefs on others — especially when those beliefs are based on unfair or inaccurate stereotypes.

You’re not the thought police as a leader. But you are responsible for creating policies that clearly define where that line is. There’s no objective place where I can say, Here’s the line. What I can say for sure is that it’s your job as a leader to make the policy clear.

Bullying requires consequences.

Bullying creates a local maximum: it works for the bully, but it harms the team. It creates more harm than good.

Leaders need to create:

• Conversational consequences — shutting it down in the moment: “You can’t talk to this person that way.”
• Compensation consequences — don’t give bullies high ratings or bonuses
• Career consequences — give clear private feedback and an opportunity to change

Sometimes people bully others without fully realizing what they’re doing. You shouldn’t assume they’re a jerk. But you do need to explain that this behavior hurts others and damages their own career.

And if they can’t stop, you have to fire the bully. Whatever you do, don’t promote them.

There comes a moment in the history of too many teams when the jerks begin to win. That’s the moment when the culture starts to lose — and the results follow.

If the person truly can’t stop bullying, it’s better to have a hole than an asshole.

Love and Truth in 2026

This is how we get the best of both love and truth — of caring personally and challenging directly — in 2026.

Go forth and create a great culture in 2026!

Want to build better relationships at work? Join our interactive 2-hour Radical Candor workshop — new dates just added: Learn more >>

People are listening. Like it or not, you’re under the microscope.

When you become the boss, you are under the microscope. People do listen to you in an intense way you never experienced before you became a manager. They attribute meaning — sometimes accurately, sometimes not — to what you say, to the clothes you wear, to the car you drive.

In some ways, becoming a boss is like getting arrested. Everything you say or do can and will be used against you. When he led Goldman Sachs, Bob Rubin once walked the trading floor to get a feel for what was going on. He stopped and chatted with a trader who’d just completed a transaction buying gold. “I like gold,” Bob said offhandedly. A few weeks later, Bob was startled to see how much gold the firm had bought recently.

“Why are we so long on gold?” Bob asked. “ Because you told us to. You said you liked gold!” was the response. Bob thought he was just making a friendly remark, not giving a “buy” order.

When I was at Apple, somebody told me that the bus program to shuttle employees back and forth between Cupertino and San Francisco had been delayed because Steve had to choose the leather for the interior of the buses. I happened to have lunch with the director of the bus program and asked him if the story was true.

He laughed: “No.” But when I then asked him how the color scheme of the buses had been chosen, he admitted that he’d gone to the parking lot and taken a look at Steve’s car: silver exterior with black leather seats. So the buses? Silver exterior with black leather seats.

You don’t have to be Bob Rubin or Steve Jobs to have a bigger impact than you intend to as the boss. Early in my career, I said to a salesman who tended to wear black shiny shirts, “I sure do like a man in a white oxford.” I was chagrined to see that the very next day he showed up in a white oxford, and for every day for a week after that. Of course, I had been dropping a hint. But I was new to being a boss and totally unused to having people take my hints so seriously.

Often when you’re the boss you might say or do something you expect to be blown off, whereas in fact you’ve moved way further out on the “challenge directly” axis than you had intended to. So now what? I go much more in depth about this in Radical Candor, 40% off for a limited time.

Need help now? You can chat 24/7 with my Google Portrait. Click to get started.

Radical Respect is a weekly newsletter I am publishing on LinkedIn to highlight some of the things that get in the way of creating a collaborative, respectful working environment. A healthy organization is not merely an absence of unpleasant symptoms. Creating a just working environment is about eliminating bad behavior and reinforcing collaborative, respectful behavior. Each week I’ll offer tips on how to do that so you can create a workplace where everyone feels supported and respected. Learn more in my new book Radical Respect, available wherever books are sold! You can also follow Radical Candor® and the Radical Candor Podcast more tips about building better relationships at work.

Originally posted on Radical Respect

Plus, RSVP to my live conversation with Julia Austin. Click the image below to save your seat.

Unconscious bias can significantly impact decision-making processes within organizations, often leading to missed opportunities and talent being overlooked.

What if Texas Instruments had not left Morris Chang, an immigrant, feeling sidelined for decades? He didn’t lack talent; he lacked opportunity — exactly what Taiwan offered him.

After being repeatedly passed over at Texas Instruments, Morris Chang left the U.S. and founded TSMC there, which makes the chips that are essential to keeping our economy operating. Had it not been for the way that unconscious bias crept into the promotion system at TI, Chang could have built these chips in the U.S.

The Best Tip for Leaders Who Want to Prevent Bias at Work

When biases go unrecognized, they can influence judgments and decisions in ways that are not aligned with an individual’s true capabilities or potential. In the case of Morris Chang, unconscious bias may have contributed to him being repeatedly passed over for promotions, despite his evident talent and potential.

Unconscious bias can manifest in various forms, such as assumptions based on race, gender, age, or other characteristics that are not relevant to job performance.

These biases can lead to:

1. Talent Overlooked: Qualified individuals may be passed over for promotions or key projects, leading to a loss of valuable contributions to the organization.

2. Homogeneous Teams: Biases can result in hiring and promotion practices that favor certain groups, leading to less diverse teams. This lack of diversity can stifle innovation and creativity, as diverse perspectives are crucial for problem-solving and driving growth.

3. Reduced Morale and Engagement: When employees perceive bias in decision-making, it can lead to decreased morale and engagement. This can result in higher turnover rates and a loss of institutional knowledge.

4. Stagnation and Inefficiency: Organizations may miss out on innovative ideas and improvements if they fail to recognize and nurture diverse talent. This can lead to stagnation and inefficiency, ultimately affecting the organization’s competitiveness and success.

Do you want your organization to make biased or unbiased decisions? If you, like me, believe that unbiased decisions yield better results and a more reasonable work environment, you’ll agree that you will raise the bar, not lower it, when you seek to strip bias out of your management systems.

How to Become Conscious of What's Unconscious

Since bias is so often unconscious, you’ve got to get proactive about noticing and correcting the ways that bias is affecting decisions about whom to hire, reward, mentor, and fire. You’ve got to do so with the same energy you’d use to investigate a decrease in profitability, research a competitor, explore a new opportunity, launch a product, or enter a new market to grow your business.

Think of bias and the resulting discrimination as a virus in your operating system. It will eventually kill your system if you don’t proactively identify it and fix it.

Addressing unconscious bias involves creating awareness, implementing fair and transparent processes, and fostering an inclusive culture where all employees feel valued and have equal opportunities to succeed.

Radical Respect is a weekly newsletter I am publishing on LinkedIn to highlight some of the things that get in the way of creating a collaborative, respectful working environment. A healthy organization is not merely an absence of unpleasant symptoms. Creating a just working environment is about eliminating bad behavior and reinforcing collaborative, respectful behavior. Each week I’ll offer tips on how to do that so you can create a workplace where everyone feels supported and respected. Learn more in my new book Radical Respect, available wherever books are sold! You can also follow Radical Candor® and the Radical Candor Podcast more tips about building better relationships at work.

Originally posted on Radical Respect

I often say that relationships don’t scale, but culture does. And yes, I still agree with that.

One of our Radical Candor podcast listeners recently asked a question a lot of managers of large teams grapple with: How can you have effective one-on-one meetings with 30 to 50 direct reports, especially in a manufacturing environment where private spaces might not even be available?

I love this question because the reality is: you just can’t have 50 real, deep, meaningful relationships. Human beings do not scale. So, what can you do?

Step One: Build an Ideas Team

One of the most important goals of a one-on-one meeting is to listen. And when you can’t listen to every person every week, you have to find a scalable way to create a culture of listening. That’s where an ideas team comes in.

The ideas team gives everyone a way to submit suggestions, complaints, and broken processes — from furniture to strategy — without overwhelming the manager. The team figures out which ideas have the most impact and makes a few prioritized asks of the manager. This lets the team self-manage a bit. It’s not a place for interpersonal complaints — those should be handled directly, with Radical Candor.

You can use a shared document, a physical box, or even a big piece of paper on the wall where people vote on ideas. The key is to ensure everyone has a way to be heard.

This approach isn’t just emotionally meaningful — it’s good business. The best ideas come from the people on the shop floor. I’ll never forget the story from a telecommunications company using Joyous (no financial relationship, just admiration). Their field techs kept reporting that a certain wrench — used 20% of the time — wasn’t stocked in vans. Once it was, efficiency soared. Happiness and innovation go hand in hand.

Step Two: Management by Walking Around

Another approach I recommend is walking around. This is not a new idea — Abraham Lincoln did it!

Block an hour a week — or even a day — and just walk. Ask people how they’re doing, what’s broken, or what you could stop doing to make their day better. When I did this at Google, I once pushed a misplaced couch back into position. A teammate jokingly said, “You got a new job?” But it sparked a cultural norm: we move the couches. Years later, that phrase is still alive on that team.

But be aware: the first time you do this, people may think they’re in trouble. You have to prove over time that you’re walking around to help — not to punish.

Step Three: Make Time for Focused One-on-Ones

Make the most of your professional life

Even with a huge team, you still want personal time. Here’s what I recommend:

• Schedule three 15-minute one-on-ones per day.
• Spread them out — you’ll go from consoling one person to strategizing with the next, and emotional whiplash is real.
• Ask people to bring an agenda. If they don’t have one, give them three minutes of silence to think. You’d be surprised what emerges.
• Spend 12 minutes listening — really listening. Don’t jump to fix-it mode. Help them think through solutions.
• Use the last 3 minutes to solicit feedback: What can I do or stop doing that would make your day better?

Remember: listening is not doing nothing. It’s an active, intentional practice. It’s like listening to music — not as background noise, but as a full-body experience.

And if you can create a culture where people feel heard — even when you can’t meet with everyone every week — you’ll have a much more resilient, efficient, and happy team.

Let’s move the couches, together.

Curious about how radically candid your communication is? Take our quiz.

Radical Respect is a weekly newsletter I am publishing on LinkedIn to highlight some of the things that get in the way of creating a collaborative, respectful working environment. A healthy organization is not merely an absence of unpleasant symptoms. Creating a just working environment is about eliminating bad behavior and reinforcing collaborative, respectful behavior. Each week I’ll offer tips on how to do that so you can create a workplace where everyone feels supported and respected. Learn more in my new book Radical Respect, available wherever books are sold! You can also follow Radical Candor® and the Radical Candor Podcast more tips about building better relationships at work.

Originally posted on Radical Respect

I’ve said it before, but it’s worth saying again: Emotional dysregulation, bullying and bloviating are not leadership attributes. People who cannot manage themselves should not manage others.

But as we all know, there are many people in positions of power who abuse it, despite there being a growing consensus that coercion, even by otherwise visionary leaders, neither gets the best results out of people nor generates the innovation necessary to thrive in the modern economy.

Yet, most of us have the impulse to coerce when we can get away with it, and leaders often can get away with it unless checks and balances constrain them.

For instance, at too many companies, CEOs appoint board members specifically not to challenge their authority, not to hold them accountable. CEOs also sometimes hire HR people who will serve them rather than be real partners who can hold them accountable. When this happens, HR investigations can go badly off the rails.

However if a company has a board of directors, it is the board’s responsibility to hold the CEO accountable — it’s one of the reasons you have a board of directors in the first place.

Compliance Exists to Go Around the CEO

For these situations, companies have a compliance function that should have a strong leader. The compliance function should report directly to the audit committee and can go around the CEO if needed. The internal audit function works the same way for the same reasons. If someone needs to report financial wrongdoing or discrimination or harassment, they need to be able to go around the CEO if the CEO is the problem.

This works better in public companies than it does in private ones. Dambisa Moyo, author of How Boards Work, explains that public corporations have far greater obligations — from all manner of stakeholders — for transparency and disclosures around forward-leaning social and cultural issues than privately held companies do.

For example, issues of gender diversity, pay parity, climate change, and ESG (environmental, social, and governance) factors are all areas where public companies are subject to scrutiny and reporting whereas private institutions generally are not.

The Most Powerful Are Often the Least Accountable

The issue here is that the people who have the most power — the people on the board of directors — are generally best positioned to dodge accountability. This puts HR in a terrible position unless the organizational structure is deliberately designed to limit the power of the CEO. The board of directors must hold the CEO accountable and have HR’s back.

Of course, many small businesses — bars, restaurants, dry cleaners, bodegas, and so on — don’t have a board of directors. The company I cofounded, Radical Candor®, has no board of directors. How can small business owners hold themselves accountable? A few things can help.

One is to appoint an ombudsperson whom people can go to with complaints. This ombudsperson needs to be someone who carries a lot of sway with the business owner — a mentor, for example — and who is willing to give a personal email address and phone number to all employees.

Another idea is to form a complaints committee: two or three employees who are generally trusted by the rank and file because they will not be afraid to bring problems to your attention.

These kinds of checks and balances are the only way to ensure you’re continually optimizing for collaboration instead of coercion.

Foster Collaboration, Not Coercion

Make the most of your professional life

Collaboration is essential to any great human accomplishment. Designing organizations that promote healthy collaboration requires proactive efforts to combat coercive behaviors from individuals and groups, such as arbitrary, ego-driven, fact-ignoring biased decision-making, bullying, harassment, and physical violations or violence.

When we build organizations and management systems that put checks and balances on the power of leaders, they can be held accountable for their behavior and their results. Employees are not silenced. We help each other improve, and we achieve more than we could ever dream of achieving alone.

When we design management systems carefully, we can mitigate the damage this can do, embody true leadership, and resist the lure of authoritarianism.

Need more tips? Read Radical Respect. Need help right now? You can chat 24/7 with my Google Portrait. Click the image below to get started.

Radical Respect is a weekly newsletter I am publishing on LinkedIn to highlight some of the things that get in the way of creating a collaborative, respectful working environment. A healthy organization is not merely an absence of unpleasant symptoms. Creating a just working environment is about eliminating bad behavior and reinforcing collaborative, respectful behavior. Each week I’ll offer tips on how to do that so you can create a workplace where everyone feels supported and respected. Learn more in my new book Radical Respect, available wherever books are sold! You can also follow Radical Candor® and the Radical Candor Podcast more tips about building better relationships at work.

The nature of bullying is to isolate the target, making them more vulnerable. The minute an upstander intervenes, showing solidarity, the bullying behavior has failed in its goal.

Rather than being isolated, the target of the bullying has an ally, one who has demonstrated that bullying won’t work and isn’t acceptable.

Why then do we so often ignore bullying, thus allowing it to stand? Sometimes it may be a fear of the person doing the bullying that makes us hesitate to intervene; other times it is not fear but uncertainty about what might be the most effective response.

It can be difficult to know what to do when you see injustices happening. Right To Be , a nonprofit that develops training for upstanders, offers five different ways to intervene when you observe bullying: direct, distract, delegate, delay, document.

Direct

Challenge the person doing the bullying in the moment. Try a “you” statement. Here are some examples:

• “What’s going on for you here?”
• “Do you realize how you sound?”
• “Do you know how what you said sounds?”
• “You’re being inappropriate (disrespectful, etc.).”
• “Yo, not okay.”
• “You need to leave them alone now.”
• “What you’re saying is biased (prejudiced, offensive, etc.).”

Remember: If you’re a leader, you need to take the direct approach. The rest of the Ds are for upstanders who are not leaders and for whom the direct approach may feel too risky.

Distract

While it may be more satisfying to confront bullying directly, sometimes the direct approach makes things worse for the person being bullied, might escalate the situation, or might put the upstander in harm’s way. In these cases, the best thing to do might be to create a distraction.

Delegate

By delegate, I don’t mean ask someone “below” you in a hierarchy to do the work; I mean get help from another person who is in a better position to intervene, or build solidarity with others. You can delegate up, down, or sideways.

Delay

Sometimes uncertainty about the risk of retribution may make you reluctant to intervene on the spot. But you can still check in with the person who got bullied later to offer support and ask how you can help.

Document

Your ability to document bad behavior can be an invaluable service to people harmed by bullying — whether because they want to report an episode (and third-party evidence helps) or simply because it is comforting to get a reality check that what happened to them was wrong.

An upstander can take notes or even video what is happening during an incident in a way that the person harmed can’t. If you document, remember, the document belongs to the person harmed, not to you.

Need more tips? You can chat 24/7 with my Google Portrait.

Radical Respect is a weekly newsletter I am publishing on LinkedIn to highlight some of the things that get in the way of creating a collaborative, respectful working environment. A healthy organization is not merely an absence of unpleasant symptoms. Creating a just working environment is about eliminating bad behavior and reinforcing collaborative, respectful behavior. Each week I’ll offer tips on how to do that so you can create a workplace where everyone feels supported and respected. Learn more in my new book Radical Respect, available wherever books are sold! You can also follow Radical Candor® and the Radical Candor Podcast more tips about building better relationships at work.

Originally posted on Radical Respect

Stephanie is a speaker, a C-suite executive, a thought leader, and author of Ally Leadership: How to Lead People Who Are Not Like You. She’s led through transition, built high-performing teams, and navigated the complexity of change with incredible clarity.

Our recent conversation gave me one of the best calls I’ve had all day — and some of the best leadership wisdom I’ve heard in a long time. I knew she had to come on the Radical Candor® Podcast — you can watch the episode below.

Start with Expectations, Lead with Clarity

Stephanie, Amy Sandler and I talked about what it takes to lead in turbulent times, and one thing that really struck me was how she builds trust from the start.

“The very first thing that I always do, no matter what team I’ve taken over, is I have a meeting just with my team,” she said. “The reason why that is super important to me is it gives me an opportunity to do a couple things. One, to actually share a little bit about myself, how it is that I lead. But then the other piece that’s equally as important is… I will always say to them why it is that I’m there.”

I love how she sets expectations with care and clarity. “On this team what’s important to me is that we are each other’s keeper,” she tells them. “We have to have each other’s back… We’re all going to either win together or we’re gonna all lose together, but it’s our choice.”

When I heard that, I immediately thought about the times I hadn’t been that clear. I remember when I was a first-time CEO, and my co-founder said to me, “Kim, you’re awfully fast to flip the bozo bit.” It hit me hard. That wasn’t how I thought of myself, but it was true. I had become the leader who makes their mind up about people so quickly and doesn’t change when there’s new evidence. I realized I wasn’t soliciting enough feedback.

The Power of Vulnerability and Asking for Feedback

You've definitely worked with one of these "good coworkers" before... The... | Radical Candor®

So now, one of the first things I do to build trust is ask for feedback. I’ll say, “What can I do or stop doing that would help you work better with me?”

Stephanie does something similar, and her version is one I’ve started to adopt myself. She tells her team: “There is going to be something I do or say that will probably offend you somewhere along the line. Just know that’s not my intention… When I do it — not if — I would ask that you right then and there, stop me and correct me.”

That’s Radical Candor in action. And it’s such a powerful ask. I told her, “Your question that you ask is a great way to just… encourage the people around you to disrupt your bias. And then you’re gonna learn to think differently.”

Being an Upstander, Even When It’s Hard

https://youtu.be/9Rzlc0oAUyw

Stephanie also reminded me how much courage it takes to speak up — especially when no one else does. She described a meeting where a disagreement unfolded between her and her boss. “The rest of the team sat there and said nothing,” she said. “Then when we had a break, they’re all like, ‘Oh my god, Steph. I agree with you.’ … And I remember saying to them, shut up. Shut up. I don’t want to hear it.”

That story stuck with me, because I’ve been there. I remember once when a team member told me, “You are the most aggressive woman I ever met.” And in my head, I thought, “Your problem is not my aggression. Your problem is my gender.”

But what I actually said was nothing. I was trying to be open to feedback. But by not saying anything, I wasn’t being a good ally to the women on my team. It wasn’t good. TLDR: we wound up getting sued because I had created a hostile work environment for women — not my intention, but it happened.

Stephanie’s story reminded me that silence in those moments is not neutral. It’s harmful. “This is the season that we as leaders have to be super courageous,” she said. “You’re a leader. You’re built for this.”

Curiosity Matters More Than Certainty

Your 4-Week Sprint to Being A Better, More Successful, Leader

We also talked about how hard it is to lead teams where nobody looks like you or thinks like you. I’ve been in that position more times than I can count. “Back in the day, men weren’t used to having women as bosses,” Stephanie said. And still today, underrepresented leaders face unique challenges. That’s why her book, Ally Leadership, resonated so deeply with me.

She describes a leadership model built around the acronym ALLY: ask, listen, learn, and then take action. “What we don’t talk about is how do you lead teams that don’t think alike, act alike, look alike…?” she asked. “I’m less concerned about an empathetic leader… I’m more focused on a curious leader.”

That really landed. It’s something we talk about often in Radical Candor: the importance of curiosity over certainty. “The brain is constantly evolving,” she told me. “Back in the day it may have been afraid of a saber tooth tiger… now that same brain may be afraid of rejection or saying the wrong thing.”

But it doesn’t have to stay that way. Stephanie’s advice is simple and powerful: “Go and spend time with people who are not like you.” That’s how we build trust. That’s how we build teams that challenge each other — and us.

“None of us gets everyone,” she said. “But if you have that type of competence as a leader and you can lead that type of team, you are unstoppable.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Lead with Candor. Speak with Clarity. Stay Curious.

If you’ve ever hesitated to give feedback because you were worried about hurting someone’s feelings — or if you’ve given feedback only to see it backfire — you’re in good company. We’ve all been there. That’s why we’ve put together the Radical Candor public workshop. It’s a practical, hands-on session where you’ll learn to give feedback that’s both kind and clear, and receive it in a way that fosters your growth.

You’ll have the chance to practice the essential skills of Caring Personally while Challenging Directly in a supportive environment with others who are eager to become better leaders and teammates. Whether you’re new to Radical Candor, part of a team already embracing it, or considering how to implement it in your organization, this workshop is designed to help you move beyond fear and into meaningful connections.

🗓️ Upcoming workshop dates: 📍 June 5 📍 June 27 📍 July 14

Radical Respect is a weekly newsletter I am publishing on LinkedIn to highlight some of the things that get in the way of creating a collaborative, respectful working environment. A healthy organization is not merely an absence of unpleasant symptoms. Creating a just working environment is about eliminating bad behavior and reinforcing collaborative, respectful behavior. Each week I’ll offer tips on how to do that so you can create a workplace where everyone feels supported and respected. Learn more in my new book Radical Respect, available wherever books are sold! You can also follow Radical Candor® and the Radical Candor Podcast more tips about building better relationships at work.

I’ve had the incredible opportunity to collaborate with the amazing teams at Google Labs and Radical Candor on a groundbreaking new experiment called Portraits — and I’m honored to be the first Portrait featured.

Portraits is a new way to interact with trusted voices using AI, designed in collaboration with the experts themselves. That means you can now “talk” with a digital version of me — my Portrait — about communication, leadership, and relationships. It reflects my real voice, my thinking, and my approach to Radical Candor and Radical Respect.

One of the greatest joys in my work is the conversations I’ve had with people around the world — especially those moments when someone says, “Your book made me feel like I had company” when they felt alone trying to navigate a management challenge. But one of my greatest frustrations has been how many conversations I can’t have because I simply don’t scale.

Radical Candor, Real-Time With Google's AI Portraits | LinkedIn

That’s why I wrote Radical Candor in the first place — and now, Portraits is taking that idea one step further. This tool can be there for you in real time, whether you’re facing a tough conversation, navigating team dynamics, or just want to practice giving better feedback. With Portraits, this knowledge is now more accessible than ever. While I, as a human, can’t be everywhere at once, my Portrait can scale to meet your needs.

My son even gave it a spin — he had an hour-long argument with it about our house rules and later admitted the Portrait was more fun to talk to than me. (High praise in my book! That’s what it’s like living in the house of Radical Candor :)

So while this isn’t exactly the same as sitting down together, I hope it feels close. And I hope it helps. You can try it out now at labs.google/portraits or access it on the Radical Candor homepage Please let me know what you think — I can’t wait to hear. You can leave your feedback here.

Radical Respect is a weekly newsletter I am publishing on LinkedIn to highlight some of the things that get in the way of creating a collaborative, respectful working environment. A healthy organization is not merely an absence of unpleasant symptoms. Creating a just working environment is about eliminating bad behavior and reinforcing collaborative, respectful behavior. Each week I’ll offer tips on how to do that so you can create a workplace where everyone feels supported and respected. Learn more in my new book Radical Respect, available wherever books are sold! You can also follow Radical Candor® and the Radical Candor Podcast for more tips about building better relationships at work.

Welcome to the 100th edition of this newsletter! If you want to get more info, tips, and advice from the Radical Candor and Radical Respect teams, subscribe to our email newsletter at RadicalCandor.com/News.

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my career — and one of the most common has been jumping to conclusions about other people’s intentions. It’s so tempting, when someone does something frustrating, to label them. “She’s just difficult.” “He’s being an asshole.” But over the years, I’ve come to see how damaging that tendency is — not just to our relationships at work, but to our ability to solve problems.

There’s a name for this mental habit: the fundamental attribution error. It was coined by Lee Ross, a social psychologist at Stanford, and it refers to our tendency to attribute someone’s behavior to their personality rather than considering the situation they’re in — or our own role in what’s happening.

I wrote about it in Radical Candor, and I still think about it all the time. It’s a problem because one, it’s usually inaccurate, and two, it renders an otherwise solvable problem really hard to fix. After all, changing personality is slow and difficult. Changing behavior? That’s something we can actually work on.

When You Make It About the Person, You Miss the Point

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my career — and one of the most common has been jumping to conclusions about other people’s intentions. It’s so tempting, when someone does something frustrating, to label them. “She’s just difficult.” “He’s being an asshole.” But over the years, I’ve come to see how damaging that tendency is — not just to our relationships at work, but to our ability to solve problems.

There’s a name for this mental habit: the fundamental attribution error. It was coined by Lee Ross, a social psychologist at Stanford, and it refers to our tendency to attribute someone’s behavior to their personality rather than considering the situation they’re in — or our own role in what’s happening.

I wrote about it in Radical Candor, and I still think about it all the time. It’s a problem because one, it’s usually inaccurate, and two, it renders an otherwise solvable problem really hard to fix. After all, changing personality is slow and difficult. Changing behavior? That’s something we can actually work on.

When You Make It About the Person, You Miss the Point

I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my career — and one of the most common has been jumping to conclusions about other people’s intentions. It’s so tempting, when someone does something frustrating, to label them. “She’s just difficult.” “He’s being an asshole.” But over the years, I’ve come to see how damaging that tendency is — not just to our relationships at work, but to our ability to solve problems.

There’s a name for this mental habit: the fundamental attribution error. It was coined by Lee Ross, a social psychologist at Stanford, and it refers to our tendency to attribute someone’s behavior to their personality rather than considering the situation they’re in — or our own role in what’s happening.

I wrote about it in Radical Candor, and I still think about it all the time. It’s a problem because one, it’s usually inaccurate, and two, it renders an otherwise solvable problem really hard to fix. After all, changing personality is slow and difficult. Changing behavior? That’s something we can actually work on.

When You Make It About the Person, You Miss the Point

If you’re convinced someone is “just a jerk,” then it’s always going to happen again. That’s the trap. There’s no room for feedback, humility, or even the idea that your own behavior might be playing a part.

That’s why I always tell people to solicit feedback before you give it. When you ask what you might be doing that contributes to a situation, you open the door to fixing it together, instead of assigning blame. We say it a lot at Radical Candor, but it bears repeating: no name-calling. The moment you find yourself thinking “you are…” — whether it’s “you’re wrong” or even “you’re brilliant” — you’re likely talking about a personality trait. That makes it harder for the other person to change, and harder for you to be helpful.

There was someone I worked with in New York who had a reputation for being a jerk. But I liked him. He was intense, sure, but he cared. A few years later, someone told me, “He’s one of the most supportive people at the company.”

I was blown away by the transformation. When I asked what changed, he told me someone had taught him to stop saying “you’re wrong” and start saying “I think that’s wrong.” That small shift — owning his perspective instead of declaring someone else’s flaw — had a huge impact on his relationships and his career.

That Time We Got an F in Business School

Sometimes the lessons stick best when they come from a mess. When I was in business school, our group project completely fell apart. Why? One person passed a note during a meeting that said, “Check out so-and-so picking his nose. I think he just nicked his brain.” The note got passed to the guy it was about — and he was furious. We couldn’t work together after that, and we failed the assignment.

If I could go back, I’d apply the model we now teach: CORE — Context, Observation, Result, and Expected Next Step. I’d say something like, “When you passed that note to Catherine (context), and Elliot saw it (observation), it made him angry and discouraged collaboration (result). I think you owe him an apology (expected next step).” I didn’t handle it that way at the time, but I wish I had.

That’s what I love about the CORE framework. It slows me down. It helps me remember that instead of saying, “You’re a negative Ned,” I can be specific: “In that meeting, you kept focusing on the problem, and it discouraged people.” It makes me better, especially when emotions run high.

Intermittent Fasting, or: Why I Bit My Husband’s Head Off

Feedback gets complicated when you’re not even aware of your own state of mind. A few years ago, I snapped at my husband at breakfast. Not because he said anything awful — but because I was hungry. I was trying intermittent fasting, and it turns out I do not do well when I’m hungry.

A few days later, I said, “I don’t think this fasting thing is working for me.” And he replied, “Oh, thank God. I knew I couldn’t talk to you about anything until after lunch.” He knew the context. My kids, on the other hand, just thought, “Mom’s a big you-know-what.”

That’s why understanding context — literally the first letter in CORE — is so essential. If you don’t know what’s going on with someone, it’s easy to assume the worst. That’s when judgment creeps in.

A Little Grace Goes a Long Way

One of the most powerful things Jason Rosoff, my Radical Candor co-founder, has said is that when we really know someone, it’s easier to assume good intent. We give them the benefit of the doubt. We imagine how their context might be affecting their behavior.

I think we need to extend that grace more widely. Most people aren’t out to get us. They’re not trying to be difficult. They’re going through something — just like we are.

So when I sit down to write or give feedback, I keep a sticky note on my computer: “Show, don’t tell.” Don’t say “She’s smart” — show what she did. Don’t say “He’s difficult” — describe the impact of his actions. That keeps me grounded in a growth mindset.

When Furious, Get Curious

The next time you find yourself upset, pause. Ask yourself: Am I reacting to a behavior — or to a story I’ve told myself about who this person is? If you’re furious, try to get curious. Ask a question. Find the context.

And if you’re giving feedback, try CORE. Be specific. Stay focused on the impact. Invite collaboration. I promise, it’s more productive — and more humane — than calling someone a name, even if you’re tempted.

After all, none of us are perfect. But if we can stop making it about who people are and start talking about what they do, then we’re not just solving problems. We’re helping each other grow. And that’s what Radical Candor is really all about.

☀️ Summer is the perfect time to level up your leadership.

Join us for one of our upcoming Radical Candor public workshops to learn how to give feedback that’s kind and clear, build stronger relationships at work, and lead with both courage and compassion.

🗓️ Upcoming workshop dates: 📍 June 5 📍 June 27 📍 July 14

Radical Respect is a weekly newsletter I am publishing on LinkedIn to highlight some of the things that get in the way of creating a collaborative, respectful working environment. A healthy organization is not merely an absence of unpleasant symptoms. Creating a just working environment is about eliminating bad behavior and reinforcing collaborative, respectful behavior. Each week I’ll offer tips on how to do that so you can create a workplace where everyone feels supported and respected. Learn more in my new book Radical Respect, available wherever books are sold! You can also follow Radical Candor® and the Radical Candor Podcast more tips about building better relationships at work.

Originally posted on Radical Respect