{"id":693,"date":"2016-11-22T11:00:35","date_gmt":"2016-11-22T16:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/?p=693"},"modified":"2017-03-03T13:11:51","modified_gmt":"2017-03-03T18:11:51","slug":"radical-candor-workshop","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/2016\/11\/22\/radical-candor-workshop\/","title":{"rendered":"Radical Candor Workshop"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"PaulQuick: Think of a time you\u2019ve failed.<\/span><\/p>\n

That\u2019s precisely the challenge I posed to about 20 judges at the Northeast Judge Conference earlier this month. My workshop, \u201cPracticing Radical Candor,\u201d was an exploration of our experiences with failure — and how we can grow from them.<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll start this article the same way I began my seminar: by explaining what <\/span>radical candor<\/span><\/a> is. <\/span><\/p>\n

Radical candor means nothing more than \u201csay what you think.\u201d But this seemingly simple concept is actually quite difficult to put into practice — especially when most of us have been taught \u201cIf you don\u2019t have anything nice to say, don\u2019t say anything at all.\u201d This mindset pervades almost every aspect of our lives, from our performance at work, to our friendships, to reviews and feedback in the judge program.<\/span><\/p>\n

Guidance (or feedback) is really nothing more than praise and criticism. Most of us <\/span>crave<\/span><\/i> guidance. But, ironically, criticism is often very difficult for us to hear. We put up all sorts of barriers and defensive mechanisms to avoid our self-image being hurt by \u201cnegative\u201d feedback.<\/span><\/p>\n

\"JBM_0335\"
I used minimal slides to underscore important parts of my explanation of radical candor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The philosophy of radical candor asserts that, by providing feedback in the right way, the feedback giver can help lower these barriers — or even stop them from being thrown up in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Radical candor revolves around the idea that effective guidance consists of two elements: caring personally and challenging directly. Caring personally means being deeply and genuinely invested in the other person\u2019s development — and making sure they know that. Challenging directly requires providing unvarnished, specific, constructive criticism. While these two elements can be effective separately, they are most potent when combined.<\/span><\/p>\n

Like any skill, delivering radically candid feedback takes practice. The rest of the workshop was focused on exploring and experimenting with radical candor in a structured, supportive steps:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The participants are randomly split into pairs. One participant is designed as \u201cA\u201d and the other as \u201cB.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. Within each pair, the participants spend about 5 minutes getting to know each other. I encouraged everyone to go beyond ordinary, surface-level introductions (such as name, city, judge level) and to share deeper, more meaningful stories about themselves (e.g. who\u2019s your hero? What\u2019s your greatest accomplishment?).<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Participant A shares a story about a time that they failed. This could be related to judging, or not. During this period, Participant B should be totally silent — this is an exercise in active listening.<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Participant B delivers radically candid feedback about how Participant A handled the presented scenario. During this period, Participant A should be totally silent. In addition to being an exercise in active listening, this helps Participant A avoid giving into the instinct to be defensive or dismissive.<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. Participant A closes the session by telling Participant B, \u201cThank you for your feedback.\u201d<\/span><\/li>\n
  6. Finally, the two participants swap roles and repeat steps 3-5.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
    \"JBM_0352\"
    As the workshop began, I asked everyone to give up their phones and devices so they could focus fully on the challenge of being radically candid.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

    I had initially been concerned that five minutes might not be enough to jumpstart the \u201ccaring personally\u201d aspect of radical candor, but it actually worked out very well. The workshop was a great success! I was blown away by all the participants\u2019 engagement and enthusiasm. <\/span><\/p>\n

    Even more importantly, I\u2019m confident that this method of delivering feedback was truly effective. At the end of the workshop, I asked each participant to write down, in their own words, their recollection of the feedback that they had received. I then asked everyone to share their notes with their partner, who\u2019d given that feedback to begin with. Finally, I asked the group to raise their hands if the feedback that they had offered was accurately reflected in their partners’ notes.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Everyone\u2019s hand went up.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n

    Special thanks to Riki<\/a><\/span><\/span> for inviting me to share\u00a0this conference session update here on The Feedback Loop<\/em>. Please join us\u00a0tomorrow on\u00a0Bearz Repeating<\/em><\/a>, where Riki\u00a0will explain what his recent marathon completion has to do with judging.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Quick: Think of a time you\u2019ve failed. That\u2019s precisely the challenge I posed to about 20 judges at the Northeast Judge Conference earlier this month. My workshop, \u201cPracticing Radical Candor,\u201d was an exploration of our experiences with failure — and how we can grow from them. I\u2019ll start this article the same way I began […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":275,"featured_media":697,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[41,4,59,58],"tags":[23,46,44,61,60],"language":[78],"class_list":["post-693","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-evaluation","category-guest-blog","category-judge-conferences","category-paul-baranay","tag-edited-by-angela-aliff","tag-evaluation","tag-guest-blog","tag-judge-conferences","tag-paul-baranay","language-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/275"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":711,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693\/revisions\/711"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.magicjudges.org\/feedback\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=693"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}