And on why radical candor gets all the attention. Radical receptivity is the other half nobody talks about.
- How can I be better?
- What have you observed?
- Where are my blind spots?
Tell me the painful stuff. Hit me straight in the gut.
I ask these questions constantly. Not because I enjoy discomfort (or maybe I do), but because feedback is a primary method I use for growth — after analyzing whether the feedback is actually applicable and worthy of being implemented. That last part matters. Receiving everything doesn’t mean implementing everything. But you can’t filter what you never hear.
Here’s what I’ve learned after 13+ years in tech and organizational leadership: most people are sitting on feedback that could change someone’s trajectory. And they’ll sit on it forever. It happens in our personal lives and relationships, too.
The Silence Tax
There’s a hesitancy in leadership around giving direct feedback. The reason is almost always the same: fear of the emotional reaction from the person receiving it.
So leaders wait. They soften. They hint. They hope.
Meanwhile, a peer or direct report keeps repeating behaviors that don’t align with the outcomes everyone needs. Weeks pass. Months pass. Nothing changes, because nothing was said.
Delaying feedback for too long, or never giving it and just hoping things change, leads to failed outcomes. Every time. Silence isn’t kindness. Silence is a tax you charge the other person without telling them, and the bill arrives later as a stalled career, a broken working relationship, or a performance conversation that should have happened a year earlier.
Fast Isn’t the Same as Right
I’ll confront myself here too, because this cuts both ways.
I give feedback quickly. That’s generally a strength, timely feedback beats stale feedback. But over time I learned I needed to slow down enough to make sure what I delivered was objective and holistic, not just fast, which if you’re not careful can sometimes come out too harsh.
Speed without calibration is just reaction with a delivery date.
The skill I had to build was titration. Matching the decibel to the recipient. Some people need it at full volume. Others need the same truth at a level they can actually absorb. The truth doesn’t change. The dosage does.
Giving feedback in a timely manner matters. Giving it in a measured, calibrated way matters just as much. Most leaders fail at one or the other. Plenty fail at both.
When They Don’t Tell You, It’s Rarely About You
On a personal note: when people withhold feedback from me, it’s hurtful.
Why didn’t you just tell me straight up what you were feeling? What about me made you uncomfortable? I’ve found out years later that certain people questioned choices I made, relationships I had, and they never said a word at the time. You can’t backtrack on that. The moment passed.
Then I realized something that changed how I took it: people not being direct with you often isn’t about you at all.
It’s about them. How they perceive you’ll respond. Experiences they’ve had: giving feedback that blew up, watching someone else get torched for honesty, absorbing a reaction that made them swear off directness entirely. A lot of it traces back further than the workplace. Much of it can stem from childhood experiences.
You can’t rewrite their history. What you can do is make yourself the safest possible target for the truth. Which brings me to the value I hold hardest.
Radically Receptive
Radical candor gets all the attention. Radical receptivity is the other half nobody talks about.
Being radically receptive to feedback, (instead of radically reactive, radically defensive, or radically prideful), is how you train the people around you to be upfront with you. Every time you receive hard feedback without punishing the messenger, you lower the cost of the next truth. Every time you flinch, deflect, or retaliate, you raise it.
The research backs this up in a way I found striking. A two-part study on leadership and feedback-seeking behavior found that leaders who model feedback seeking themselves, asking for it, reflecting on it, staying open to it, create a reciprocity effect where employees actively seek more feedback in return (Crans et al., Frontiers in Psychology). You don’t build a feedback culture by demanding candor. You build it by demonstrating receptivity.
The same research found something else worth sitting with: leadership behavior predicted whether people actually used the feedback they sought even more strongly than whether they sought it at all (Crans et al., Frontiers in Psychology). Asking is the easy part. Plenty of leaders ask for feedback as performance art. The question is whether anything changes afterward. If you seek feedback and nothing about your behavior shifts, you didn’t seek feedback. You sought validation with extra steps.
Before You Deliver It
Now, the giving side, because directness without discipline is just bluntness wearing a leadership badge.
Before you give feedback, consider what the purpose of it is. What outcome are you expecting or desiring? What are you actually trying to convey? What value could it add to the relationship between you two, and how could it genuinely benefit them?
This step exists to check your arrogance, pride, and blindspots. We don’t want to be presumptuous — assuming this person obviously needs our insight, obviously can’t see their own blind spot, obviously requires our correction. Sometimes they do. Sometimes you’re projecting.
If the stakes are high, take a step back. Get objective advice — no names, just the situation — from someone you respect who’s genuinely good at delivering feedback. Pressure-test whether what you’re about to say serves them or just relieves you.
Feedback given to benefit the relationship lands differently than feedback given to discharge frustration. People can tell which one they’re receiving.
Be the One Who Tells Them
Here’s something I’ve noticed with certain people I give feedback to: I’m often the only person in their life willing to tell them the truth without sugar-coating it. No fluff. Straight to the root of the issue.
That’s not a compliment to me. That’s an indictment of everyone else around them.
You will come across those opportunities — moments where you’re clearly the only one positioned to say the thing everyone else is thinking. Take them. I’ve always resonated most deeply with the people who told me the truth up front, and I’ve carried quiet frustration toward the ones who held it for years.
The people around you are making the same evaluation of you right now.
So decide. Are you the person who tells them, or the person they find out about years later?
One of those builds people. The other just watches them.
Tell them.
Recently, I asked a friend to reconsider a decision that will affect them for the rest of their life. Was it my place? This was a question I pondered, but then I thought about myself and people I wish I would have said the thing, and maybe this is selfish, but I was like, I can’t not say something to this person I care about. That would betray my values.
Source: Crans, S., Aksentieva, P., Beausaert, S., & Segers, M. (2022). Learning leadership and feedback seeking behavior: Leadership that spurs feedback seeking. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 890861.