Radical Candor and Visibility

We explore two tools that make growth faster and cleaner: visibility and radical candor. Together, they align teams, shorten loops, and turn feedback into progress.

• Use shared KPIs and reports to improve alignment
 • Balance leading and lagging indicators
 • Reduce silos through open work
 • Pair clear expectations with direct feedback
 • Combine data and candor to speed decisions

Have thoughts on this topic? Share them—we may feature them in a future Toolbox episode.

Always growing.

Benno Duenkelsbuehler

CEO & Chief Sherpa of (re)ALIGN

reALIGNforResults.com

benno@realignforresults.com

Chapters

• 0:00 Two Universal Growth Tools
• 0:10 Defining Visibility and KPIs
• 1:38 Why Radical Candor Matters
• 3:15 Form vs Function in Feedback
• 4:12 Practicing Candor and Closing

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

So there are two universal growth tools that are worth thinking about. One is radical candor, and the other is visibility. So starting with the visibility, that's really anything data-related, reporting, KPIs, and in making sure that what we do and both the inputs and the outputs are visible. What's so important about that is if there if we don't work out in the open and our and other people, other silos, other departments don't know what each of us is working on, what activities we are working on now and planning next week, next year, it's hard to coordinate. If we don't measure the outputs, the results, and if we don't share those up and down and across the company and with clients oftentimes, it's difficult to understand if what we're doing works or not, right? So visibility, data, KPIs, reports, both lagging data and leading data, activity reporting and results reporting are a super important part or tool to help us grow, by the way, both as companies and as people. And then the radical candor is another growth tool that's also sort of the same as visibility, but in terms of how we interact with each other, right? And the importance of radical candor, obviously, brutal honesty, is that we don't waste time beating around the bush, uh, that we don't uh keep each other in the dark. Uh if I do something that I should not be doing, please tell me. If you are doing something that I wish you would be doing, I have to tell you. Otherwise, I can't, you know, I have to set expectations. We all have to set expectations. Radical candor is about that. One of the tricky parts about radical candor is form and style, right? Um there are some people that rub us the wrong way. I rub some people the wrong way, uh, and that's just sort of the way the wall bounces, right? So we have to be mindful of that. Uh style and function uh matter, uh, but radical candor um is hugely important in terms of us being most effective with each other, uh, really um get to know each other, call each other out, keep each other honest. Um and and that includes uh, if you know, not just, you know, uh there's form and there's function, right? The function of radical candor is sort of what we say. Sorry, Lil. Oops. Uh the audio went out on that beautiful day in Amsterdam when I was recording on visibility and radical candor. Uh so let me just wrap it up here from the uh office a little bit later. Um we were talking about radical candor, there's form or there's function. The function is what we say. We obviously got to get that right, uh, but the form, how we say it, uh we're not always gonna get it right. So I try to encourage others to correct me. Uh I try to uh be as approachable as I possibly can about uh receiving feedback when it's not, you know, so uh pleasant for me to hear. Uh, but I can tell you that when you are when you practice radical candor, uh both giving it and taking it, um, it really helps uh in your growth journey. And um let me know if you have other thoughts on this topic, and I would love to hear it, and maybe we can address it in a future um toolbox episode. Take care, guys.