>> - psychological safety requires comfort with brutal candor
I would disagree with this. Candour and honesty do not have to be brutal to be effective in this context.
I would disagree with this. Candour and honesty do not have to be brutal to be effective in this context.
A mob mentality can also act as the "authoritarian" that retaliates against "inappropriate thought". The vagueness of terms is deliberate because it is culturally specific what their elephants in the room are. Even if you think it is worth risking them or they are objectively stupid it is important to keep them in mind for planning presentations. It is worth ignoring those who think eradicating a disease is playing god but know that some think that to prepare accordingly.
"Authoritarian" organizations fall into insanity obvious to fearless outsiders. For instance intelligence agencies fired people for being gay or otherwise sexually unorthodox. Now it is damn obvious - they created their own blackmail risk in the first place! Compare to a "tenured" system that said they don't give a damn so long as you aren't betraying secrets. So they could laugh off would be blackmailers. To give a colorful illustration of the effectiveness of such a policy. "The New York Times could print a full page spread of me sleeping with my brother in law and wife at the same time and I would still have a job!"
That this would be considered unthinkable to propose in that time period only demonstrates the depth of the problems.
> When it comes to innovation, the candid organization will outperform the nice one every time. The latter confuses politeness and niceness with respect. There is nothing inconsistent about being frank and respectful. In fact, I would argue that providing and accepting frank criticism is one of the hallmarks of respect. Accepting a devastating critique of your idea is possible only if you respect the opinion of the person providing that feedback.
It has done every time I've seen it.
Some may literally consider honesty more important than concern for feelings.
It is also a somewhat cultural thing - in some it is rude to ask politely to someone well known to "please pass" as opposed to "gimme". Etiquite is ironically very contextual.
"No."
"I expected better from you."
Which very much means that communication was not consistently open.
When you say "brutal candor," the ones who understand how to create psychological safety will understand it as the ability to give real criticism without fear of retaliation. That's rare and refreshing when I see it.
However, I can think of several cases of managers I know who really should learn to create psychological safety, but they would read this as validation for establishing a straight pipeline from reptile brain to mouth as opposed to giving actionable criticism.
In one case, that literally happened: the manager read a book that framed communication with similar connotations to "brutal" and took it as license that he should continue to say things the way he did and expect others to suck it up. Unsurprisingly, it got so bad that all of his direct reports threatened to leave.