“That’s the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard”
“Am I the only one who cares about what we are doing here?”
I’m sure you’ve met a few people who like to “tell it like it is”. They seem to need to state the unfiltered truth at all costs, regardless of the consequences. Dropping truth bombs everywhere and often mistake blast radius for impact. It often comes from a good place, driven by a high value on integrity, and usually with the intent of doing things for the greater good. Although others use “I’m just telling it like it is” to rationalise behaviour that is simply abrasive. This article is for the first group, and for people trying to help them.
The desire to speak the truth is generally what drives this behaviour. But often the way it is executed can be at best ineffective, and worst have negative impacts even if they have positive intent.
Over the years I’ve seen many people with this behaviour struggle to improve on it. Often any attempt to explain to the Truth Bomber that they need to rein in their communication, or find ways to communicate the same message that don’t offend people, is not only met with resistance, but seems to grind against the internal values of the Truth Bomber. The internal monologue goes something along the lines of one or more of the following:
If I water down my message, then I’m not being fully honest
People should care only about the content of the message, not the way in which it is delivered
If they are getting upset about my message, it’s because they don’t want to learn how to improve
One way of understanding this behaviour is through Gerald Weinberg’s concept of survival rules (described in his book Becoming a Technical Leader). These survival rules can block them from seeing a problem, so modifying them can be a key way to overcome the blocker.
As an example, he originally had a Survival Rule:
“Don’t trust people who say they want to help you”.
Over time, he gradually transformed that to:
“You can trust some people who say they want to help you, because even if you trust someone by mistake, you can probably take care of yourself and survive”
The transformation unblocked and enabled him to be more effective.
We can use his six-step process to help unblock Truth Bombers to communicate more effectively.
Step 1: State the rule clearly and explicitly.
I must always speak up and state the truth completely unfiltered.
Note that the above rule is not the absolute rule for all Truth Bombers. So, you will need to work out the specific rule for that person.
Step 2: Acknowledge the rule’s survival value
Being fact-based and speaking the truth has helped me grow as an engineer, but I can evolve to be just as truthful but communicate differently.
Step 3: Give yourself a choice, Step 4: Change from certainty to possibility, Step 5: Change from totality to non-totality
I must can always sometimes speak up and state the truth my opinion completely unfiltered (if I choose to).
A key thing here is that the term “the truth” may be what the Truth Bomber feels, but often what they are stating is an opinion. It may be an opinion based on a set of facts, but it is still an opinion. The Truth Bomber often isn’t actually saying: “I have facts”; they are saying: “I have facts + an interpretation + a conclusion, and I’ve collapsed all three into ‘the truth’.”
Step 6: Change from general to particular
Here you can add caveats to the rule about how and when to apply it.
I can speak up and state my opinion when:
There will be something catastrophically bad if I don’t
The other speaker has asked for people’s thoughts
It is for the benefit of the other speaker, and they seem ready to receive it.
I can speak up and state my opinion in a way that:
Gives the recipient a reason to engage with it
Acknowledges their point of view
Maintains their dignity even when the message is uncomfortable
So in the end you may go from:
I must always speak up and state the truth completely unfiltered.
To:
I can speak up and state my opinion directly when there’s a clear need to raise the issue, while choosing how I communicate it based on what will make the conversation most productive.
This rewriting enables you to still honour the intent of the original survival rule, but not be blocked by it. Now that the blockage is removed and we are in a position to help the Truth Bomber to evolve, we need some techniques to do this.
Kim Scott introduces a concept called Radical Candour. Radical Candour combines Caring Personally with Challenging Directly. Truth Bombers often have the second part but neglect the first.
Many Truth Bombers’ Bombs fall into what she calls Obnoxious Aggression: they Challenge Directly, but don’t always demonstrate that they Care Personally.
The example that Kim Scott gives is after a presentation, her boss came to her, and after trying a few times to get her to understand that saying “um” in the presentation too many times was problematic, she eventually said, “You are one of the smartest people I know, but saying ‘um’ so much makes you sound stupid”. She showed that she cared personally, but then challenged her directly.
But Radical Candour is not enough.
One of my biggest career failures was when I applied Radical Candour.
A senior leader (let’s call them Buck) I worked with was really struggling with their team, but had refused to acknowledge it. I had heard many complaints from the team members, peers, etc about them. Most of those people had mentioned to me that they had already given Buck feedback, as had I. All with no significant impact on Buck’s behaviour.
I decided I needed to do something more impactful to get the message through to Buck. Just giving feedback wasn’t enough. Much like Kim Scott’s manager, I wanted Buck to have an epiphany. A metaphorical slap in the face.
So I did that. I did my Radically Candid intro to ensure that I was Caring Personally: “In general, I think you are a great person, with great empathy, and so many great leadership qualities. You have such incredible influence and have done, and can continue to do, great things at our company. I want you to continue to succeed and to help you go to the next level as a leader. I care about you and the company, and I really want us to succeed, which is why I’m having this tough conversation with you, rather than just living with these concerns and then just moving on.”
Then I Challenged Directly by calling out Buck’s problematic behaviours. I went into detail explaining his biases towards some people over others, how he didn’t put enough stock into what the experts around him were saying, and how he was disempowering his team by being in too many of the details in a way that didn’t scale. The feedback was harsher and more direct than I would often do, but still constructive and behaviour-based. But, in delivering it, I became the Truth Bomber, dropping bombs on Buck.
Unfortunately, I did not succeed in giving Buck the epiphany. He argued almost all of the points and did not change his behaviour. Worst of all, it created a rift between us.
Radical Candour gave me a useful answer to one question: “Am I caring personally while challenging directly?” But it didn’t force me to ask another question that turned out to matter just as much: “Does the other person feel safe enough to participate in this conversation?” And as a result, I could have approached it differently.
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High provides a framework for this: make it safe for both people to stay in dialogue. Part of that starts with being honest about your own motivations: feedback often comes from wanting someone’s behaviour to change because it affects you. That doesn’t make the feedback illegitimate, but it does mean establishing that you care about their goals as well as your own. Two key elements of doing this are Mutual Purpose and Mutual Respect.
Mutual Purpose: Both people believe the conversation is aimed at something they genuinely care about. Ask yourself: What do I want for me? What do I want for them? What do I want for the relationship?
Mutual Respect: Both people believe the other respects their basic worth and dignity, even when they disagree. Once someone feels disrespected, the conversation can quickly become about defending themselves rather than solving the original problem.
Mutual Respect doesn’t mean you have to respect every element of another person’s character before we can talk. It means finding a way to honour and regard another person’s basic humanity.
I can’t know if this would have worked, but here’s how I’d approach it differently.
In my example, my preamble tried to establish a mutual purpose by explaining that I was trying to help him succeed, his team succeed, and the company succeed. But the purpose wasn’t really mutual. Looking back, I’d had the wrong objective. I wanted Buck to accept my conclusion. I’d confused directness with certainty. I was so sure I was right that I stopped being curious about whether I might be missing something. The goal shouldn’t be making someone see things exactly as you do. It should be creating enough safety that both people can contribute what they know and work out what is actually happening.
I could have started with something like this:
“I want to talk about some concerns I have about how your team is operating. My goal isn’t to criticise you or tell you how to run your team. I want you to be successful, I want your team to be successful, and I think some things are getting in the way of that. I also want to understand your perspective, because I may not be seeing the whole picture.”
That last sentence changes the nature of the conversation. I’m no longer presenting a completed case for Buck to accept or reject. I’m inviting him to help work out what is actually happening.
The same applies for Mutual Respect. I told Buck that I respected him, cared about him, and wanted him to succeed. But telling someone you respect them isn’t the same as making them feel respected.
My intent was: “I respect you enough to tell you something very uncomfortable.” But my approach was closer to: “I’ve already decided what’s wrong with you, and I’m now going to explain it to you.”
The harder I pushed for an epiphany, the more likely Buck was to experience the conversation as an attack on his competence and dignity. And once that happens, the conversation stops being about the original issue, causing Buck to defend himself.
Therefore, the message I delivered after the preamble could have gone something like this:
“I’ve had concerns raised with me by a number of people about how your team is operating, and I’ve noticed some of the same things myself. I don’t want to make this about who has said what; I’d rather focus on the things I’ve actually observed and hear your perspective on them. There’s a pattern of three things: you’re deeply involved in the details, some people get more of your attention and influence than others, and you’re sometimes dismissing advice from people with relevant expertise. I want to walk through each of these and hear your take as we go, rather than just handing you my full assessment.”
Then, for each point individually: state the specific observation, give the concrete example, and stop. “Here’s what I’ve seen on the details side. Does that match what you’re seeing?” Let Buck respond before moving to the next point.
This changes the mechanics without changing the substance. In my actual delivery, all three points were laid out in full before Buck had any opening to respond. By the time he got a turn, he was replying to a completed case, not participating in building one. Breaking it into three checkpoints keeps the same content and the same directness, but turns three accusations into three discussions.
The more threatening the message is to someone’s identity, status or competence, the more important safety becomes. The important distinction is that safety doesn’t mean making the message softer. It means making the conversation safe enough for the other person to disagree with you. A person can feel uncomfortable, embarrassed, challenged and even angry while still feeling respected and genuinely listened to.
There’s no guarantee that this approach would have changed the outcome. But it would have given us a better chance of discovering whether my assessment was right, rather than simply trying to convince Buck that it was.
When the cost of silence is immediate and severe (for example, a safety violation about to occur, or a critical bug about to ship), directness is the correct tool, and there’s no time to build Mutual Purpose and Mutual Respect first. This is the “catastrophically bad” condition from Step 6 of rewriting survival rules. The skill isn’t choosing safety over directness. It’s recognising what level of safety is appropriate to apply for the situation.
Not every piece of feedback deserves a Crucial Conversation. Radical Candour and other feedback frameworks are a good starting point for most situations. But when the stakes are high, take the time to create enough safety for both people to stay in dialogue. The test is: Does the other person believe I care about their goals, and do they believe I respect them? Answering that honestly requires the shift this article is really asking for: not from blunt to soft, but from certain to curious, while staying just as direct.