Radical Candor

When you’re the boss, it’s awkward to ask your direct reports to tell you frankly what they think of your performance—even more awkward for them than it is for you. To help, I adopted a go-to question that Fred Kofman, author of Conscious Business and my coach at Google, suggested. “Is there anything I could do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me?” If those words don’t fall easily off your tongue, find words that do. Of course, you’re not really just looking for one thing; that opening question is just designed to get things moving.