Radical Candor Is a Love Language
I used to soften everything.
Not because I was dishonest. Because I cared. Because I didn't want to hurt anyone. Because I'd grown up learning that keeping the peace was the kind thing to do — and somewhere along the way I confused kindness with cushioning.
It took me years to understand that those aren't the same thing at all.
Real candor — the kind that actually helps someone — isn't harsh. But it isn't soft either. It lives in this uncomfortable middle place where you care enough about a person to tell them the truth, and you trust them enough to believe they can handle it.
That's not easy. Especially for people who lead with heart, which most of the coaches and leaders I know do.
But here's what I've watched happen when honest feedback gets withheld: the problem doesn't disappear. It just goes underground. It shows up in a team that stops trusting each other. A leader who keeps making the same mistake because no one ever named it. A relationship that slowly hollows out because both people are too careful to say the thing that matters.
Silence isn't kind. It just feels that way in the moment.
I think about the leaders who've changed my life — the ones who really moved the needle for me. Not one of them did it by telling me what I wanted to hear.
They told me what I needed to hear. And they did it in a way that made me feel seen rather than attacked. That combination — honesty wrapped in genuine care — is the thing that actually creates growth. It's what I try to practice now in every coaching relationship I have, and honestly, in every relationship that matters to me.
Kim Scott calls it Radical Candor. I call it a love language.
Because at its core, it's an act of love. It says: I see you clearly enough to tell you the truth. And I believe in you enough to think it's worth saying.
The leaders I work with who struggle most with candor usually aren't struggling because they don't care. They're struggling because they care too much — about being liked, about causing pain, about the relationship surviving the conversation.
What shifts things is realizing the relationship is actually more at risk without the conversation.
The teams with the most trust aren't the ones where everything is smooth. They're the ones where people know they'll get the real story — from their peers, from their leader, from the person across the table who's willing to say the hard thing because they're invested in the outcome.
I still catch myself softening sometimes. Old habits don't vanish just because you've named them.
But I've gotten better at pausing before I cushion and asking myself: Am I being kind right now, or am I just being comfortable?
Those are very different things.
And the leaders — and humans — who learn to tell the difference are the ones who build something real.
Nancy Girres is an executive coach and Vistage Chair based in Fort Collins, Colorado. She works with leaders who are ready to trade comfortable for honest.