The graduate was right about everything. That was the problem.
It was early 2022, and the team had been through an extraordinary period. We'd stood up an entire medical mask manufacturing operation during the pandemic—built a factory, established the compliance apparatus, grown the team. We'd been the last company to get a government contract but the first to deliver—37 days from contract to medical-grade masks shipping to the NHS. But that sprint was well behind us now. The team had been building and refining this operation for well over a year, working extended hours, solving problems nobody had faced before.
Then we brought in fresh graduates to help with process improvement. One of them walked in on day three and immediately started pointing out all the things we were doing wrong.
And they were absolutely correct. The processes were rough. There was low-hanging fruit everywhere. Their suggestions were excellent.
The team's body language said everything. Crossed arms. Tight jaws. Eyes that said "who is this person?"
I thought good feedback was about being right. If the observation was accurate and the suggestion was sound, that should be enough. Say it clearly, back it up with evidence, and people should listen.
That's not how it works.
I'd learnt this a few months earlier through a book recommendation—Kim Scott's Radical Candor. Someone had given it to me in late 2021, and the framework immediately made sense of patterns I'd been seeing for years but couldn't quite articulate.
The framework is simple: two dimensions, four quadrants. But it explains why the same piece of feedback can land completely differently depending on the relationship behind it.
Care Personally + Challenge Directly = Radical Candor
That's the goal. You care enough about someone to tell them the truth, even when it's uncomfortable. You challenge them because you want them to succeed.
But there are three other quadrants where most of us spend more time than we'd like to admit:
Obnoxious Aggression - You challenge directly but haven't established that you care. Even when you're right, it lands as an attack.
Ruinous Empathy - You care about someone so much that you avoid saying the hard thing. You think you're being kind, but you're actually being unhelpful.
Manipulative Insincerity - You don't care enough to challenge, and you're just going through the motions. Passive-aggressive territory.
Here's what I've realised: I don't live in one quadrant. I drift through all four depending on who I'm talking to, what pressure I'm under, and what else is competing for my attention.
Let me show you what that actually looks like.
Back to that graduate in early 2022.
They walked into a situation where the team had accomplished something most people thought was impossible. Medical device manufacturing with all the regulatory compliance. Supply chains nobody had used before. Quality systems built from scratch. All during a pandemic.
But it wasn't just the initial 37-day sprint anymore. The team had been sustaining and improving this operation for well over a year. Building the factory. Developing the compliance systems. Growing the team. Solving new problems constantly. The exhaustion wasn't from one intense sprint—it was from the sustained pressure of building something entirely new whilst keeping it running.
The graduate saw none of that. They saw inefficiencies. Workarounds that should be formalized. Processes that could be optimized. And they said so. Loudly. Immediately.
I watched the team's faces during those first meetings. The graduate would make a suggestion—often a good one—and I'd see people's jaws tighten. Eyes would roll when they turned away. The body language screamed: "Who the hell is this person to tell us what we did wrong?"
The graduate was stuck in Obnoxious Aggression. They challenged directly—no problem there. But they hadn't built any relationship with people who'd just pulled off something extraordinary. The team didn't hear the feedback as help. They heard it as criticism from someone who didn't understand or appreciate what they'd been through.
The conversations we had were delicate at first. I didn't want to crush their enthusiasm or make them feel like their ideas weren't valued. But eventually I had to challenge directly: "Your intention is really good. Your ideas are sound. But right now, nobody can hear them because they don't know you care about them or what they've accomplished."
The shift was gradual. They started focusing on building relationships with just two people from the operations team. But not in a superficial way—they were looking for win-win situations. Where could they help these people solve a problem that mattered to them? Where could their process improvement ideas make someone's life genuinely easier rather than just "better" in some abstract sense?
I watched it unfold over weeks. They'd spend time understanding what the team had been through. They'd ask questions about how problems got solved under pressure. They'd show genuine appreciation for the context before even thinking about suggesting improvements.
Then, when they did suggest something, it would be framed as: "You mentioned you're frustrated with how long X takes. I've been thinking about that. What if we tried Y?"
Within about a month, I watched the same person make similar types of suggestions in a meeting. This time, people leaned in. Nodded. Built on the ideas. One of the team leads said afterward: "They really get it now. They understand what we're trying to do."
Same person. Same quality of ideas. Completely different reception.
The graduate learned what I should have taught them from day one: Challenge without care is just noise. And care takes time to establish.
I've had technical people on my teams who really cared about how others were doing. They'd notice when someone was struggling, offer to help, take on extra work to lighten the load.
One person in particular was brilliant technically but deeply uncomfortable challenging people directly. When they saw someone's code creating tech debt or someone's approach heading toward problems, they'd just... quietly fix it later. Clean up the mess. Refactor the code. Work around the issues.
They thought they were helping. Being a good team player. Not making waves.
During a group review session, I introduced the concept of Ruinous Empathy. The idea that you can care so much about not upsetting someone that you actually damage them in the long run.
"You're being kind in the short term," I said, "but you're being unhelpful in the long term. The person never learns. They keep creating problems. And you keep cleaning up after them while getting more frustrated."
The lightbulb moment came during a code review. They finally spoke up about a pattern that was causing issues. Explained clearly why it was a problem. Suggested an alternative approach.
The other developer thanked them. Genuinely. "I had no idea this was causing issues. Why didn't you say something sooner?"
That one successful challenge changed everything. They realised that people wanted the feedback. That staying silent wasn't protecting anyone—it was just preventing growth.
The effect snowballed. The whole team started improving because someone finally cared enough to say the difficult thing. And it spread. Other people noticed that direct challenge was being received well. They started speaking up about their own concerns. Within a few weeks, the team had shifted from a culture where people stayed quiet to avoid conflict to one where people challenged each other because they trusted the care behind it.
This is one of the most powerful things about Radical Candor—it's contagious. You don't need everyone to start at once. You need one or two people to model it successfully, and then watch it spread exponentially through the team. Start small. Build from there.
I wish I could say I've mastered this. I haven't.
With people I don't really know, I fall into Manipulative Insincerity. I'll be overly polite in meetings with stakeholders I rarely interact with. I won't push back on bad ideas because I'm focused on something else or don't want to pay the "price of being right" with someone I need to work with later.
A few months ago, I was in a meeting where a new "drop everything" project landed on another team. It was an area I'd worked in before but wasn't currently involved with. The project was going to create a massive amount of work for a small number of people.
I stayed quiet. I was focused on other priorities. I didn't want to get pulled into something that wasn't "my problem." Classic Manipulative Insincerity—I didn't care enough to challenge the decision or help carry the load.
Later that day, on a lunchtime walk, I kept thinking about it. Those people were going to be buried. And I could actually help—I had relevant experience and capacity if I chose to make it.
I went back and offered to take on part of the work. It took more of my time and theirs to bring me up to speed, but it was the right thing to do. I was able to put it right because I caught myself and had good enough relationships with those people that I could admit I'd initially opted out.
But I'm certain there are times I miss it entirely. Times when I stay quiet and never circle back. That's the danger of Manipulative Insincerity—it's efficient in the moment, but hollow. Nobody benefits, including me.
With senior consultants or domain experts, I slip into Obnoxious Aggression. I assume they already have all the context and knowledge, so I impatiently jump to "what do we do" or "how do we fix this" without explaining the full situation or taking time to understand their constraints. I challenge without establishing care first. Then I'm surprised when they get defensive or the relationship feels transactional.
With long-time team members working on lower-priority projects, I drift into Ruinous Empathy. I care about them, but I'm distracted by other things. So I withdraw from discussions. I don't engage in deep review. I don't put up objections to paths I'm uncertain about. I think I'm giving them autonomy, but really I'm just not challenging them when they might need it.
The framework doesn't fix this. But it gives me a way to notice when I'm drifting and course-correct before the damage compounds.
Here's what I've learned about the "Care Personally" dimension: you can't fake it, and you can't rush it.
We tend to do this well with new starters. We get their accounts set up. Introduce them to key people. Help them navigate the initial confusion of a new organization. That foundation of care goes a long way.
But I've completely missed the mark with contractors. I've treated them as temporary resources rather than people. Then been surprised when they disengage quickly or deliver the minimum rather than bringing their best thinking.
Back in 2013, when I was a purchasing manager, I built an exceptional relationship with a supplier by doing something simple: I treated them like a person with constraints and pressures, not just a vendor.
I took time to understand their buying cycle. When they needed forecasts to plan their own production. I made sure I could get them information when they needed it, not just when it was convenient for us.
That investment meant we never had the crisis moments other companies faced. They held buffer stock for us because they knew we were growing quickly and our forecasts were reliable. They gave us better commercial terms than we probably deserved at our volume. When we had technical questions about their products, they'd send engineers to train our team—going beyond what the contract required.
The relationship worked because the care came first. We could challenge each other directly—"You're asking for something impossible" or "You promised this delivery"—because we both knew the other person understood our constraints and genuinely wanted us to succeed.
I've carried that lesson forward: the investment in caring personally isn't just nice, it's strategically essential. It's the foundation that makes challenge possible.
Individual relationships are one thing. Building this into team culture is harder.
I'm in the middle of this right now. New people joining. What we're working on evolving. The systems we support changing. Lots of forming, storming, norming.
Here's what I'm actually doing to try to build this culture:
Making caring visible isn't optional. I'm explicit about spending time getting to know people before diving into work. Contractors and full-time employees get the same introduction process. When someone joins, I set up one-on-ones with key people specifically to build relationships, not to transfer knowledge or assign tasks.
But I'm also removing barriers that force people to route everything through me. There's a moment in The Unicorn Project - A Novel About Developers, Digital Disruption, and Thriving in the Age of Data where they talk about removing "the square"—the organisational pattern where someone on one team needs help from someone on another team, but instead of talking directly, they have to go up to their manager, who talks to the other person's manager, who then goes down to the person who can actually help. I actively encourage and praise direct cross-team communication. I don't want to be the person who has to broker every relationship or give permission for people to talk to each other.
I've set up regular cross-team conversations where people can understand each other's drivers and what makes them productive. Not status updates—actual conversations about how they work and what they need to do their best work.
We run team demos where people show what they're proud of or what they've learned. Not formal presentations—just sharing. I give extra support to introverts who aren't comfortable presenting, but I also make it clear that everyone participates. This is how we learn about each other's work and build appreciation for what people are dealing with.
And I've started being more direct about presence. If someone is persistently distracted in meetings or on their phone when others are speaking, I'll have a private conversation about it. Sometimes I'll call people out in the moment: "Hold on, I want to make sure you heard what Sarah just said." It feels uncomfortable, but letting people be mentally absent is Ruinous Empathy—I'm not helping them or the team by ignoring it.
I'm also trying to understand what motivates each person and actively support those goals. Not in a superficial way, but genuinely helping people achieve what they care about. When someone knows you're invested in their success—not just in what they can do for you—care becomes concrete rather than abstract. And I'm building networks of people who care about each other's success. Creating connections between team members who can support each other, not routing everything through me.
Creating space for challenge is the harder part. I'm trying a few specific things:
I genuinely thank and celebrate good challenge, particularly when someone is challenging me. When someone pushes back on my ideas or points out where I'm wrong, I thank them publicly. I want the team to see that challenge is not only safe but valued.
I actively set up peer reviews—code reviews, document reviews, architecture reviews. Sometimes I facilitate them, but often I deliberately get out of the way. These are lower-stakes environments where people can practice challenging directly without the weight of performance conversations or major decisions.
I'm also experimenting with different modes of working. Some conversations need to be synchronous and direct. Others benefit from written proposals where people can challenge thoughtfully. I'm trying to create multiple channels for challenge so people can find the one that works for them.
The goal isn't perfection. The goal is making Radical Candor more common than the alternatives. And recognising when we drift into the other quadrants so we can name it and adjust.
I've seen this work before—with that technical person who finally spoke up in a code review and it spread through the team. You don't need everyone to embrace it immediately. You need one or two people to model it successfully, demonstrate that challenge is safe and valued, and then actively nurture that behaviour. Celebrate it publicly. Create more opportunities for it. Connect people who are doing it well. That's what I'm trying to create now at scale: enough successful examples, deliberately supported and encouraged, that the culture shifts from people staying quiet to people trusting that challenge comes from care. This is active culture-building work, not something you set and forget.
It's working in some places. I see people challenging each other more directly and building stronger relationships. But I also see where I'm falling short—where I'm still the bottleneck, where people are still holding back, where care feels transactional rather than genuine.
Building culture is slower than I want it to be. But I'm learning that's part of the point—if it were fast, it probably wouldn't stick.
Management isn't just about making good decisions and executing well. The deeper truth is that it's about relationships.
You can have the right strategy, the right process, the right technical approach—and still fail if people can't tell each other the truth.
Radical Candor isn't about being perfectly in that top-right quadrant all the time. That's impossible. It's about recognising where you are in any given moment and knowing how to move back towards caring personally and challenging directly.
It's about building relationships where you can tell someone the truth because they know you care about them. And where they can tell you the truth for the same reason.
I'm still learning this. Still catching myself in Obnoxious Aggression with consultants. Still drifting into Ruinous Empathy when I'm distracted. Still being Manipulatively Insincere when I don't want to invest the energy.
But I notice it faster now. And I'm getting better at the shift back.
That's the real value of the framework—not perfection, but awareness and the ability to course-correct before the relationship damage becomes permanent. And the understanding that the strongest teams aren't the ones that never struggle with this—they're the ones that notice when they're drifting and deliberately move back.
Watch the TED Talk: How to lead with radical candor | Kim Scott
Read the book: Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott