The Key to Candor

Photo by Samuel Regan-Asante on Unsplash

Candor in the right context is a powerful leadership tool for founders who are looking to learn and grow

I am a big fan of candor. I have found that candor in the right context is a powerful leadership tool and can be very effective with founders who are looking to learn and grow. But to practice candor with any degree of success, we have to understand a principle of what makes candor effective.

Take the cases of three kinds of people we associate with startups: the founder, the investor/board member and the employee. Traditionally, we think of candor as being honest but also constructive — hence the notion of constructive feedback.

This is the kind of candor a board member feels he is offering when he says to the founder he has invested in, “Let me be honest with you … you aren’t moving the company forward as fast as we need you to.” It’s also the kind of candor a founder feels she is offering when she says to her employee, “Straight up … lately, your work hasn’t been up to standard and you seem less committed than I need you to be.”

In both cases, the investor and founder are actually delivering a piece of criticism rather than coaching, although they would be offended if you told them this. They are couching their criticism in a judgment they believe is right, which puts the other party in the unproductive role of either accepting or rejecting the criticism. In many cases I’ve seen, the criticism is rejected and distance grows between the giver and the receiver. Sometimes, this can lead to so much distance that the mistrust is irreparable.

Ironically, the problem in such cases is that the so-called constructive feedback is neither honest nor candid because it comes from a place of mistrust — i.e., here’s why I’m right, and you’re wrong — rather than curiosity — i.e., we have a bump in the road here, let’s see what’s causing it and what we should do about it.

There is a big difference between these two places of mistrust and curiosity. Mistrust is what makes us conceal more than we reveal. I encourage you to view this video for detail, but the gist is that when we conceal our thoughts, feelings, beliefs, judgements and opinions, we do so out of fear of isolating ourselves from others and losing control of the situation. In other words, we fear conflict and drama, internal and external.

On the other hand, those who choose to reveal themselves to others do so because they know the cost of concealing outweighs the cost of revealing. This is because the concealer cannot be authentic, which undermines his or her energy, creativity and problem-solving ability.

I have seen projects and partnerships fall apart because people chose the long-term pain of concealing, which led to failure, over the short-term pain of revealing, which led to problem-solving.

Curiosity cured the cat

Conscious leaders need to create the right conditions for productive candor to flourish. Otherwise, the greater likelihood is that candor will quickly turn into criticism and below-the-line emotionality.

So how do you create the right conditions for candor? Here are several methods I use and coach others to do.

1. The key with candor is to root it in a place of curiosity that asks what can be learned from an experience. The goal of a candid exchange is not to decide who is right or wrong or who is guilty or innocent, but to explore a problem. And this requires our interest in learning more about ourselves as well as the other person, e.g., their needs, emotions, beliefs, values and so on. This implies an openness to your own unconscious feelings and beliefs as well as the other persons.

2. Another key in my experience is that both parties have agreed to an environment where healthy candor is welcome. Once the parties/team agree that candor is important and welcome, then there are some tools that allow for candor/feedback to be utilized to reduce drama and increase learning.

3. Healthy candor isn’t rocket science but it does require guidelines for giving and receiving feedback that both parties need to agree to play by in order to create a spirit of openness that ensures the feedback actually lands for the recipient.

4. Healthy candor should be viewed as a gift or opportunity. As the giver of feedback, you have the opportunity to take responsibility for how you view others; as the receiver of feedback, you are receiving an opportunity to learn and grow.

When the recipient receives feedback like a gift, they are way more likely to integrate it into who they are. When it comes across as a hammer of criticism, it is often discarded from a place of fear or anger.

Finally, I have written before about how important it is to separate fact from story when you find yourself in conflict with other members of your organization. In fact, the more intense or high stakes the conflict, the more imperative it is that you remember a fact is what a video camera would record of something, and a story is whatever we tell ourselves is true about something.

When offering and receiving feedback, practice the skill of speaking unarguably, which roughly translates into communicating your thoughts, emotions and feelings for what they are — thought, emotions and feelings — rather than as objective facts or truths. For example, if you feel or think that someone has been acting dismissively toward you, tell them you’re telling yourself a story about their acting this way. Don’t simply accuse them of being that way, since you really don’t know.

This way, the other party cannot argue against your feeling or thought, because they’re yours to experience, but will understand where you are coming from and can speak to your concerns from their perspective. Speaking unarguably can ease or even remove the anger or fear factor from an exploration that will proceed far, far more productively without these dramas.

What tools and techniques do you use to ensure that you and your team are using your most challenging conversations as pathways to growing your company?

Sincerely,

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All credit to my ghostwriting partner, Dave Moore, who is instrumental in getting my thoughts out in a coherent manner & into these blogs. Thanks Dave!