I never actually read Radical Candor.
Several years ago, my company decided everyone should read Radical Candor. They bought copies for everyone and organized discussion groups where we’d talk about what we’d read and how we could apply it. I remember asking my manager if he wanted me to read it too. He laughed and said, “No. I’m worried what would happen if you read it with how candid you already are.”
If you know me, that’s probably not all that surprising. I’ve never been someone who enjoys dancing around a problem. If something isn’t working, I’d rather talk about it than spend weeks pretending it isn’t there. If I think we’re introducing unnecessary risk, I’d rather have that conversation before we ship than after we’ve spent a weekend fixing production. Ironically, I never actually read the book. I sat in on the discussions, listened to what everyone took away from it, and understood the basic premise, but I never sat down and read it myself.
One thing I’ve learned over the years is that people are usually much more willing to solve a problem than defend themselves against one. QA puts us in an interesting position because a large part of our job is pointing out problems. Sometimes it’s a bug. Sometimes it’s a missing requirement. Sometimes it’s a workflow that doesn’t quite make sense or an edge case nobody thought about. It would be really easy to approach every one of those conversations by trying to convince everyone else that you’re right.
I don’t think that’s a particularly productive way to work. These days I approach those conversations with curiosity instead. Rather than immediately explaining why I think something is wrong, I’ll ask if we can walk through the flow together. I’ll ask whether something feels off to them too, or if there’s a business rule I’m missing. Sometimes there is. Sometimes I misunderstood the requirement. Sometimes we both realize there’s a bigger issue neither of us had considered. I find that approaching conversations this way makes me a much better listener, and the other person is usually much more willing to hear my concerns because they don’t feel like they’re being put on the defensive.
I’ve also discovered something kind of funny over the years. Every once in a while a discussion gets stuck. Everyone agrees there’s a problem, but nobody seems particularly interested in figuring out how to solve it. That’s usually when I propose the absolute worst solution I can think of. Not something that would make life harder for customers—something that would be an absolute nightmare for engineering.
“That’s okay, we’ll just manually update those records every Friday.”
“We can have Engineering fix them one at a time.”
“We’ll just add it to the deployment checklist.”
It’s amazing how quickly people become invested in finding a better solution.
I don’t actually want to implement any of those ideas. What I want is for everyone to stop defending their position long enough to start solving the problem together. Once there’s a common enemy, a truly terrible solution, the conversation usually changes completely.
Maybe that’s what Radical Candor is really trying to teach. Maybe it isn’t. Like I said, I never actually read it. What I do know is that I’ve had far more success approaching people with curiosity than certainty. I think challenging ideas is part of our job, but I’ve found those conversations go much better when people feel like you’re working with them instead of against them.
