The Radical Candor Framework
February 24, 2023
Introduction
Over the past six months, Joyous have built an exciting new partnership with Radical Candor - a team lead by Kim Scott and Jason Rosoff that help organizations fix their feedback fails. The team at Radical Candor are dedicated to spreading the word about Radically Candid guidance and feedback. Radical CandorTM is Caring Personally while Challenging Directly. It's guidance that's kind and clear, specific and sincere.
Together, we have developed The Radical Candor Joyous Framework - a framework that that supports your whole organization to Care Personally and Challenge Directly. Organizations can use the framework as a compass for candid conversations to help guide them to a more productive place.
We want organizations to expand their use of feedback by asking for it, giving it, and encouraging it.
The Elements of The Radical Candor Joyous Framework
The Radical Candor Joyous Framework consists of four major elements:
- Key Impact Areas. The three key impact areas that make up The Radical Candor Joyous Framework are: Relationships, Team, and Feedback.
- Topics. For each impact area there are multiple topics that conversations are centered around.
- Campaigns. For each topic, there is a series of pre-designed campaigns. Campaigns run for two weeks.
- Conversations. A campaign consists of two conversation starters focusing on others and self.
.png)
Campaigns
Radical Candor campaigns are organized by topic within the Framework.
The 10 campaigns in the figure above are ideal for organizations to consider when planning their campaign schedule. The order in which campaigns are prioritized is completely flexible.
The remainder of this section provides an overview and sample campaign for impact area.
Relationships
.png)
The focus of this impact area is to positively impact relationships at work. To build strong relationships, you have to Care Personally. This can be as simple as showing enough vulnerability to admit when you’re having a bad day, and creating a safe place for others to do the same.
In order to succeed, you have to Challenge Directly. Challenging people is often the best way to show you care. It does not mean that whatever you think is the truth; it means you share your (humble) opinions directly.
Caring Personally while Challenging Directly can move you from a command-and-control culture to one of collaboration.
The 1.01 Increase Caring Personally campaign guides people to think about what would make them feel cared for as well as what they can do to ensure the people they work with feel cared for.
Team
The focus of this impact area is to positively impact team functioning. To build a great team, you need to understand what motivates each team member, and how each person’s job fits into their life goals.
The most important thing you can do for your team collectively is to understand what growth trajectory each team member wants to be on at a given time, and whether that matches the needs and opportunities of the overall team.
The 4.01 Support Personal Growth campaign guides people to think about how they could better receive the support and resources they need to grow in their roles.
Feedback
.png)
The focus of this impact area is to positively impact feedback culture. To be really great at building a culture of feedback, you have to get it, give it, and encourage it.
Giving and receiving feedback can be the difference between success and failure, which means you need to make a concerted effort to both give and receive feedback.
The 6.01 Promote Radical Candor campaign guides people to think about what changes to feedback received and feedback given would help themselves and others succeed at work.
The Radical Candor Joyous Framework Contributors
Kim Scott is the author of Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity and Just Work: How To Root Out Bias, Prejudice, and Bullying to Create a Kick-Ass Culture of Inclusivity and co-founder of Radical Candor, a company that helps people put the ideas in her books into practice. Kim informed the framework content and helped to form the partnership between Radical Candor and Joyous.
Jason Rosoff is the CEO and Co-Founder of Radical Candor. Over the last four years, he’s helped all kinds of organizations, from tiny startups to the giants in the Fortune 100, realize the power of creating a more Radically Candid culture. Through this work, he’s helped hundreds of companies develop real human relationships between team members and through those relationships, achieve amazing results collaboratively. Jason helped to inform the framework content.
Ruby Kolesky is a Co-CEO at Joyous. Over the last three years Ruby has led the direction of the Joyous product, and co-authored a book about a new way of working called Joyfully. She enjoys working on new frameworks and partnerships, including The Radical Candor Joyous Framework alongside Kim and Jason. Her view is that empathetic and caring leaders who feel free to speak with Radical Candor will help make life better for even more people at work.
Philip Carden is a Co-Founder of Joyous and previously ran a global business division at a large technology multinational. He is widely published on diverse topics including employee and customer experience, automation, analytics, security and telecoms. He works with Fortune 50 companies to use Joyous to involve their frontline workforces in improving operations and culture. Philip initiated the partnership because of the similar philosophies behind Radical Candor and Joyous.
Kim Scott is the author of Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity and Just Work: How To Root Out Bias, Prejudice, and Bullying to Create a Kick-Ass Culture of Inclusivity and co-founder of Radical Candor, a company that helps people put the ideas in her books into practice.
Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter and other tech companies. She was a member of the faculty at Apple University and before that led AdSense YouTube, and DoubleClick teams at Google.
She’s also managed a pediatric clinic in Kosovo and started a diamond-cutting factory in Moscow.
Jason is the CEO and Co-founder of Radical Candor. Over the last four years, he’s helped all kinds of organizations, from tiny startups to the giants in the Fortune 100, realize the power of creating a more Radically Candid culture. Through this work, he’s helped hundreds of companies develop real human relationships between team members and through those relationships, achieve amazing results collaboratively.
In his past lives, Jason received undergraduate and graduate degrees in business from New York University. He also worked as a product design team lead at Fog Creek Software, the small-but-mighty New York-based software company that created well-loved products like Trello and Stackoverflow. In 2010, he moved to California and helped launch Khan Academy, the world-renowned educational tech non-profit. Over the next seven years, he helped it grow from three people to a few hundred and reach over 100 million students around the world as both chief people and chief product officer.
Ruby is a comedian-turned engineer, previously leading product at two global tech companies, she has been CEO at Joyous for 4 years. Her passion for making a positive impact on people’s lives is perfectly matched with the mission of Joyous to make life better for people at work.
She enjoys working across all parts of the organization and is passionate about product direction and data science.
She is the co-author of Joyfully, a book about shared leadership, modern organizational structures, and a new way of working. Her second book Pathways, is a guide to help woman and other under-represented people get a job in technology in six months or less.
She was the Winner of the Product Category for Women Leading Tech Australia 2022 and a finalist in the Inspiring Individual Category of the HiTech awards in 2023.
