Are you a bad boss or a great boss? Let me set some context:
Bad Boss:
- Makes people miserable
- Has a top-down authority attitude
- Stifles people and innovation
- Talks more than they listen
Great Boss:
- Builds relationships – individuals and teams
- Displays open and honest communication
- Encourages and empowers people
- Listens with intent to understand
We all know what a bad boss looks like, and we could build a list a mile long of their characteristics and behaviors. I want to focus on great bosses and a particular attribute they all have – the willingness to piss people off.
From birth, we’re taught that if you don’t have anything nice to say, then don’t say anything at all. When we reach adulthood, we’re told to act professionally. When you become a boss, it’s your job to tell people when they screw up. Kim Scott, the author of Radical Candor, talks about how great bosses care deeply and challenge directly.
Scott describes “radical candor” as being made up of four attributes:
- Humble – being modest in one’s importance
- Helpful – ready to collaborate
- Immediate –
- In-person praise
- In-private criticism
- Doesn’t personalize –
- You are not stupid, but your behavior is.
To be a great boss is to live at the crossroads of caring deeply about your direct reports while being willing to challenge them directly when it might hurt. Scott quotes John Stewart Mill’s (a British philosopher and civil servant) definition on moral obligation: “The source of everything respectable in man either as an intellectual or as a moral being is that his errors are corrigible. … The whole strength and value of human judgment, depends on the one property, that it can be set right when it is wrong.”
It’s not just your job, it’s your moral obligation to care deeply and challenge directly. When you do, you’ll be living “radical candor.” You might piss someone off, but you’ll be a great boss!
