29 Nov A radically candid definition of leadership
You don’t have to be a manager, or even manage people, to be a great leader.
Truth is, being a leader nowadays can take many di#erent forms. Often times, these forms are a lot closer in reach than say the traditional gap between senior leadership and employees. They take the shape of colleagues, mentors, thought provokers or even no shape at all — those that sometimes go unnoticed but leave little nuggets of true leadership behind that others acknowledge, witness, or even try to replicate.
I like this definition of leadership because it acknowledges that being a leader is about more than just managing people.
I’ve worked for my share of great leaders, bad leaders, and the ones loosely defined in between.
I’ve learned from each of them the type of leader I want to become and the type of leader I try to avoid. But those I’ve learned from haven’t always been those I report to.
So, what makes a good leader? Well let me tell you, it definitely has nothing to do with the title in your signature block and has everything to do with empathy.
While managing people isn’t a credential to being a leader, understanding and connecting with people- regardless of reporting structure – is still largely valuable.
In its simplest form, empathy is the ability to recognize emotions in others, and to understand other people’s perspectives on a situation. At its most developed, empathy enables you to use that insight to improve someone else’s mood and to support them through challenging situations.
I never really labelled myself as a leader, until one day a colleague pointed out to me that I was. Her words stuck with me because she highlighted a quality in myself that I personally had never tied to leadership. Now, as I read book after book on leadership, that quality — empathy — seems to be at the heart of good leadership.
Recently, I was chatting with colleagues about a presentation I was about to give and the fear I had about breaking down while I gave it (this is another article, I’ll save for a rainy day). As part of this discussion, I shared how I defined myself as an empath and how I felt that being an empath was both a curse and a blessing. Empaths are highly sensitive individuals who have a keen ability to sense what people around them are thinking and feeling. But feeling what everyone around you is feeling can be extremely overwhelming, and this is how I defined the curse of empathy … or an over abundance of it.
In my latest read, however, I learned how empathy can also sometimes disable us from being good leaders.
In Kim Scott’s Radical Candor, the Radical Candor framework identifies ‘ Ruinous Empathy’ in the upper left quadrant — defined as caring personally in its highest form, but challenging directly in its lowest. In other words, it “categorizes behavior in which someone is trying to be ‘nice’ in an e”ort to spare people’s feelings by not saying what needs to be said.”
Kim’s book goes on to teach leaders how to evovle from being ruinously empathetic to radically candid. But what is radical candor?
The whole point of Radical Candor is that it really is possible to care personally and challenge directly at the same time.
It’s being able to tell your colleague that while their presentation materials were strong, the repetitive “ums” in their speech made it extremely hard to follow. It’s about giving feedback that is both impactful, but also comes from a place of caring.
So, how does one give radically candid advice? Well, I wouldn’t do the book justice if I paraphrased so I’m sharing a great excerpt below from the Radical Candor blog that explains how:
Be Humble — Recognize that you do not possess the only interpretation of the facts, and recognize that the other party also holds an important interpretation of the facts. Neither of you possesses the full truth. So, be humble and open to a reciprocal challenge on your feedback.
Be Helpful — Don’t forget the objectives you wrote down, and don’t forget to signal to the recipient that you intend to be helpful.
Give Immediate Feedback — Feedback has a short half-life. We lose details and resolve as time wears on. Give your feedback right away.
Give Feedback In Person — So much of communication is nonverbal, which means so much is lost in email or even on the telephone. Try your best to do it in person to make sure everything is being communicated.
Praise in Public, Criticize in Private — It’s hard enough for people to hear criticism — be sure to grant them the courtesy of delivering it in private. Praise in public both for recognition and learning.
Don’t Personalize — Be careful not to give feedback about unchangeable attributes, such as intelligence. Give feedback on behaviors and results instead of using phrases such as “You’re a genius!” or “You’re wrong.”
Sometimes the qualities we use to define ourselves on a personal note are often those hidden nuggets that make true leaders shine. I never saw my ability to empathize with others as a quality worth acknowledging until someone shined that light for me. Looking back at the great leaders I was fortunate to work with, I see now how empathy was the very quality I admired in each of them … but I also remember them challenging me directly and playing an instrumental role in my growth through constructive feedback that helped shape me into the person I am today.
Whether you consider yourself a leader or not, your ability to connect with someone and offer them feedback that enables their growth is something that should never get overlooked.
Leadership, after all, is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common or even personal goal.
Learning to lead can be hard, but learning to lead with empathy is something we should all strive for.
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