Radical Candour
Speaking truth with care: how we navigate difficult conversations together
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Speaking truth with care: how we navigate difficult conversations together
Last updated
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In social care, difficult conversations are often part of the work: moments that call for honesty, vulnerability and bravery. These can involve sensitive topics, personal boundaries, or situations where something isn’t working as it should. While the instinct might be to avoid these conversations, naming things clearly - with care - is essential to building trust and ensuring high-quality, respectful care and support.
At Equal Care, we use an approach called Radical Candour to help us do this well.
Radical Candour is a communication approach developed by Kim Scott, which asks people to do two things at once:
Care Personally – to show real, human concern for the other person
Challenge Directly – to be honest, specific and clear in offering feedback or raising concerns
It’s about offering support and speaking up. It’s about building relationships where people can grow, make mistakes, and hear what they need to hear - not just what they want to hear.
The main things to bear in mind when using radical candour:
Ask for feedback before offering it Listening creates space for mutual growth.
Be specific and sincere Vague praise or criticism doesn’t help anyone.
Keep the focus on care and growth The goal is not to win the argument, but to strengthen the relationship and the work.
Make the intent clear Explaining that Radical Candour is being used can help ease tension and open up understanding.
Speak in service of the shared purpose Whether it’s improving support, resolving tension, or clearing the air - it’s always with the wider aim in mind.
The model maps four different communication styles based on the balance of care and challenge:
Radical Candour: High Care + High Challenge Honest and respectful feedback. Saying the difficult thing because it matters.
Obnoxious Aggression: Low Care + High Challenge Blunt or harsh delivery without concern for the other person.
Ruinous Empathy: High Care + Low Challenge Avoiding honest feedback to spare feelings, which often causes more harm in the long run.
Manipulative Insincerity: Low Care + Low Challenge Saying what’s convenient or expected, not what’s true. Can lead to mistrust and unresolved issues.
Radical Candour works with small numbers of people. Two is best, four is generally a maximum before it stops being useful.
We work with Radical Candour Agreements, which is a simple, private and personal agreement made between two people which lays out:
The principles of how we will work together. The more specific and the weirder the better, for example, "sarcasm is okay".
A table with What's Okay in one column and What's Not Okay in the other column. For example, 'What's okay' could include 'Taking a day to get back to me on the chat'. What's not okay could include 'drunken text messages unless they're just to say how much you love me' (really!).
A radical candour agreement is not 'HR'. They are best made where conflict is not present or has been fully resolved through normal problem-solving channels. They are private documents shared only between the people who made the agreements together. Sometimes it can be useful to have another person there to facilitate the agreement and write it out, but it's not necessary.
They are an opportunity for people to be real with one another, to lay out what really annoys them and what kind of situations they'll be their best and worst selves in. It can be quite a cathartic and vulnerable process and is an incredibly useful preventative tool to avoid conflict and collaborate together well.
Across Equal Care - from team dynamics to circle governance to 1-to-1 support - Radical Candour helps us to be more honest and more human. It supports strong working relationships, better outcomes, and a shared sense of trust. Difficult conversations are still difficult, but we don’t shy away from them. Instead, we approach them with clarity, compassion and care.