📅 Thought for today:
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‘Believe me, you don’t want to be at a company where there is more candor in the hallways than in the rooms where fundamental ideas or policy are being hashed out.’
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— Edwin Catmull
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#thoughtfortoday #management #leadership #candor #candour #honesty #truth #compassion
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The issue of candor (I use the American spelling – it saves a lot of ‘u’s) arises regularly during conversations with company leaders.
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Maybe they have read Radical Candor by Kim Scott, a book I have mentioned before.
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If they read it to the end, they will find a concept I have adopted in my teaching – Compassionate Candor.
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Candor is often misinterpreted as “blunt truth”. The dictionary definition is open and honest, often the word “frank” comes up.
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This openness and honesty are far too often missing in management teams and in public life.
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I suspect politicians are the people we think of as being avoidant of candor, yet I find it most often in senior managers working together.
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For a variety of reasons, they do not, and will not, tell their peers what they are feeling and thinking. Whether to protect the recipient’s feelings or the giver’s, they fudge, prevaricate, sugar-coat, and dissemble.
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Psychological Safety is a critical element of this – is it a safe place to express your honest opinion?
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Sadly, thanks to bad management and leadership, it is not a safe place, and good people go unheard because they don’t speak.
