Radical Candour: The Problems With Feedback and Imposter Syndrome [Episode 58]

Speaker 1 (00:00)
Welcome to episode 58 of the Ditching Imposter Syndrome podcast with me, your host, Clare Josa. And today we're talking about radical candour and the problems with feedback and imposter syndrome. This episode is for you. If you want to be able to help people to improve their own performance, or if you want to be able to do that for yourself, whether you are, for example, a line manager, business leader, HR professional, or an external coach or consultant, you know that imposter syndrome is the secret elephant in the room. You're not sure what to do to help that person to learn and grow without the fear and the self-sabotage. And maybe you've come across this concept of radical candour, of speaking your truth, sharing your opinions, giving people really direct feedback coming from the heart, and you want to know what happens with that if imposter syndrome is at play. By the end of this episode, you'll know what the latest research says. The risks of radical candour in an organisation where typically 62% of people are struggling with imposter syndrome daily or regularly to an extent that's affecting their well-being, productivity, and performance. I'm going to share with you what you can be doing instead to properly turn things around.

Speaker 1 (01:15)
So that has been quite a break between seasons. Apologies, I have no idea where the last few months have gone, but we are back with the Ditching Imposter Syndrome podcast. Thank you for still being here with us. And today I want to talk about radical candour. It is a concept from the book of the same name by Kim Scott. And the concept is actually a great idea. Implemented properly the way that Kim teaches it. It can really improve performance and it can really shift companies' dynamic and performance. But here's the problem. Some of my imposter syndrome first aider and imposter syndrome master coach students and graduates have been seeing huge issues with the concept of radical candour and how it's actually being implemented by organisations. And they specifically asked me to create a podcast episode on it for you because this is becoming such a big issue. So radical candour is where you don't feel afraid to speak your truth, to give feedback, to be really direct as long as it's coming from the heart and it's coming from caring about the other person and wanting to help them improve. In a world where psychological safety is the norm, where managers and colleagues never get cross, let alone toxic, where everyone has had training in how to give feedback that actually improves performance rather than destroying confidence, and no one is carrying trauma baggage around with them, this can actually help to improve performance.

Speaker 1 (02:44)
But this is a bit of a utopia, and it's not where most organisations are yet. What we're seeing instead is a lot of organisations, C-suites, getting really excited about the idea of radical candour and the benefits bits it can bring. I'm going to call it direct feedback because I really want to be clear, I am not attacking Kim's work here. I am, though, highlighting some serious psychological safety and even mental health issues with the way it's being implemented by organisations who are using it as a shortcut to fix performance and business performance issues. So what's actually happening is a lot of C-suite people are getting really excited about the concept, telling everybody, you just got to speak your mind, you just got to share your truth. As long as you care about the other person, it's fine. It is causing trauma. It's causing anxiety. It's causing toxic workplaces, workplace bullying, people quitting their jobs. The negative impacts of this not done properly are huge. And that's before we look at the impact of imposter syndrome on all of this. The reality when people are sharing their radical truth, is they might well have the best of intentions, but they're secretly scared and the other person is suffering, too.

Speaker 1 (04:01)
So whilst this can be seen as a quick fix for performance issues or people being scared to speak up with their own opinion or company performance and competitiveness, it is an example of companies taking shortcuts to fix all of these problems at the surface level, symptom level, rather than looking at the root causes, addressing those so that people feel safe and competent, as well as confident to share their opinions and their views in ways that don't harm others. So here's the thing. I've been researching this field for over 10 years. We've just completed our 2024 research study for imposter syndrome, which has included a lot of research into feedback and performance reviews. Here's the thing. Only 4% of line managers have actually had training in how to give people feedback beyond that classic feedback sandwich, which we could call the brown stuff sandwich. I'm not going to swear on air in case anybody's offended by swear words, but I really wish we could lob the feedback sandwich in the bin. So here you have senior business leaders and influencers saying, go and just share your feedback with people. Tell them what you think. Be direct.

Speaker 1 (05:20)
Only 4% of line managers have actually had training in how to do that in ways that are safe and effective. Another stat, 97% of people worry about having to give negative feedback and how the other person will take it, with 66% actively avoiding it. So only 3% of leaders and line managers feel truly confident about giving negative feedback in ways that will improve performance. So telling them to just go out there and share this feedback when that many of them are feeling worried about doing so is going to create an internal reaction for them that is going to negatively impact the outcome of that feedback as well. And what's it like being on the receiving end? I found in our research study, 73 % of people are wobbled by praise. Okay? Not negative feedback, positive feedback. We have double-checked this stat over and over again, and it's been consistent over the last couple of years. 73 % are wobbled by praise, with 44 % actively volunteering a but, contradicting that praise. Finding a reason to publicly criticise themselves when they're told that they've done well. And a lot of this comes down to imposter syndrome.

Speaker 1 (06:36)
And I will explain exactly why in a moment. So when we come to criticism, and I don't personally believe there's any such thing as constructive criticism. Criticism is always a pretty negative thing. You can give feedback that tells people that there's something they need to change or improve without actually saying anything negative. I know that sounds counterintuitive. It's one of the things I teach. If that's making you go, I don't quite believe that or I'm super curious, make sure you listen to the end of the episode because I'm going to be sharing with you something that you can do to join me for a half day workshop to learn how to do this. So, 81 % seriously wobble when they receive constructive criticism or negative feedback. 52 % put a lot of time and energy into worrying about it, sometimes weeks and months afterwards. And 57 % strongly agreed with the statement, Negative feedback makes me crumple like wet tissue paper. So how does all of that tally up with the cultural shift we're seeing where business leaders are demanding that people share their opinions and feedback, often publicly and very strongly. You can imagine the internal pain this is causing.

Speaker 1 (07:58)
And the vast The vast majority of people are not going to sit there and suddenly cry or walk out of the room. They're going to push that pain down. They're going to internalise it. If it's happening often enough, it's actually going to create a culture and an environment where people are terrified to stand up and be visible for fear of that criticism, which for 81% of them is going to make them seriously wobble. One of the things that's causing this is imposter syndrome. The 2024 research study has found that it's gone up by a fifth since the last major white paper we published in 2019. 62% of your colleagues are struggling with imposter syndrome daily or regularly to an extent that's affecting their well-being, their performance, Their productivity, team dynamics, creativity, and ultimately business profit. But it's also a huge factor in staff retention. We found that one in 10 people in your team will be thinking of quitting their job due to imposter syndrome today. Just let that sit for a moment. One in 10 of your team will think about quitting today due to imposter syndrome. Now, not all of them will, but some of them will be like I was back in 2001, where I took a sabbatical to go travelling, actually to escape imposter syndrome.

Speaker 1 (09:22)
I quit the engineering career I loved due to imposter syndrome because I thought I was the only one struggling with it. And I just couldn't handle that fear of being found out as not good enough anymore, so I ran. One of the problems with imposter syndrome is the secret definition, as I call it. Imposter syndrome is the secret fear of others judging us the way we judge ourselves. So you need to know a little bit of neuroscience to understand why this is such a problem. I promise you, it's going to be painless. You are not back at school doing biology here, okay? The more often we have a certain thought or a series of thought habits, the more likely it is to create philtres in the brain in an area called the reticular activating system. These philtres govern what we notice from the outside world. So for example, if you buy a red car, it's why suddenly every other car on the road is red when yesterday they weren't. So it governs what your brain pays attention to at a conscious level. It's really, really useful because right now you probably don't need to know what the air pressure is in your left ear or the blood pressure and flow is in the little toe on your right foot.

Speaker 1 (10:32)
We would be overwhelmed if these philtres weren't there. The problem is, though, when you're running imposter syndrome and you've been judging yourself and beating yourself up and I'm not good enough and what if they find me out? It means that you've accidentally trained those philtres to spot evidence of people doing that. So when somebody comes along with a nice little bit of radical candour of, let's call it direct feedback, then not only is that going to get your philtres, but it's going to tally with that internal self-judging. And it is going to be amplified. So even the tiniest little bit of negative feedback of, Oh, you weren't good enough on this, or, You didn't do that well enough, is going to have a much more serious effect than it would do for somebody who's not experiencing imposter syndrome. Effectively, that internal self-judgment, that fear of others judging us the way we judge ourselves, is suddenly confirmed by the outside world experience, and it is going to fire off alarm klaxons. When we add into this that 89% of people from my research study don't feel fully confident speaking up with their ideas, just imagine how much worse this would be if their ideas were going to be met with such direct and unfiltered feedback.

Speaker 1 (11:54)
Now, I'm not saying that we should special Snowflake everybody and pussy foot around and pretend that everything's fine when it's not. But there are ways of giving this feedback that are safe, effective, and healthy, and ways that are dangerous. But unfortunately, most of what most people have picked up, either from the Internet or friends or how they've been given feedback in the past, which is actually the only training most people get in this, are actually high risk of causing harm and making performance worse. So actually reducing performance and productivity for somebody experiencing imposter syndrome. One of the reasons for this is the link between imposter syndrome and trauma. The vast majority of people that I've worked with, particularly in senior roles over the last 20 years, to help them with imposter syndrome have had some suppressed trauma running. I'm not necessarily talking about the big stuff that we all know about, the horrible things that can happen to somebody in childhood or as adult experiences. I'm talking about something that is now called complex PTSD, complex post-traumatic stress disorder. This is where the trauma comes from a series of repeated smaller events rather than one or two big ones.

Speaker 1 (13:13)
And the absolute classic one is a toxic manager. The vast majority, particularly of women that I've worked with at senior levels to help them to ditch imposter syndrome over the years, had a previous toxic boss. They suppressed it. And it was often 10 years ago. And this client might seem outwardly confident and they're high achieving, but at huge personal cost because they have had to push on down those trauma memories. And every time somebody talks to them in that particular tone of voice or using that wording, it refires off the body's trauma response as a memory. So if you are giving this direct unfiltered feedback and somebody has got suppressed trauma, which is a huge portion of your workforce, by the way. I'm not saying that we need to turn work into a therapy session, but we do need to consider this when we want true psychological safety and thriving teams, you really need to know how to give that feedback in ways that is not going to subconsciously provoke the trauma response. Because most of the time the person won't show you. They will have spent years or even decades hiding it and masking it.

Speaker 1 (14:27)
But the impact for them, and then the knock-on for their work, their team, and the organisation is hidden but huge. So this unfiltered, direct, often public feedback is the fastest way to kill innovation and creativity. There are neuroscience reasons behind that that I might discuss on another episode, and to create a culture where there is a huge fear of failure and public humiliation. And there is a problem as well for the person doing the giving. There's a beautiful Native American saying that all criticism is born of someone else's pain. So unless the giver of that feedback is pain-free, it risks them projecting their own inner pain onto that recipient. It risks causing harm no matter how much they say they care about the person and how positive their intentions were. And if the person giving the feedback is scared or worried, remember, up to 97 %, this can trigger a stress response for them that can fire off the body's automatic fight/flight freeze response. And this is all unconscious. And we don't actually get to choose which one of those three we go for. And in fact, there's a fourth, which is called fauning now, which is tied in with people-pleasing.

Speaker 1 (15:41)
So how does this impact this unfiltered direct feedback, this level of candour. If it's the fight response, the person is likely to be giving the feedback coming across as aggressive. That can really, really trigger the unconscious trauma response in the recipient, particularly if it's public. It's the thing that can make someone quit their job, no longer want to be visible, go off long term sick. If it's triggering the flight response for the giver, they are going to be filling their time with busyness. They're going to be filling the feedback with busyness, dancing around the edges, but never quite making the point they wanted to. The freeze response means they will do anything to avoid giving that feedback. They might even do what I think is a really big crime, which is waiting until the annual performance review before they give that negative feedback or that performance improvement needed feedback. It always needs to be timely. And if they are falling into the fauning response, the people-pleasing, they're likely to give the feedback in a way that will have no impact at all because they'll be doing whatever they can to help the person feel okay, that then softens and even completely negates the message.

Speaker 1 (16:52)
So bringing in this feedback, trying to create a culture where it's normal just to stand up and tell somebody they're wrong or publicly criticised them or share your views without really understanding how to do this in a way that is safe, positive, and effective, it can lead to burnout, anxiety, trashed performance, the conflict that comes from the stress response, struggling with staff retention, leave of absence requests, mental health issues can reach crisis point. Instead, yes, people need feedback, but it needs to be done the right way. When I was a kid, I loved ballet, and I was really good at it. No idea why. I just loved it. I would dance for hours and hours and hours. I quit completely when I was 13. The teacher was really surprised because I could potentially have gone to ballet school I could have auditioned, at least. She couldn't understand why I gave up her classes. I'd been going to them since I was about four. My mum asked me why because I didn't have the courage to tell the teacher directly. I said it's because I never get feedback. She tells all the others what they need to improve, but she never says anything to me.

Speaker 1 (18:04)
My mum mentioned this to the teacher, and she said, Yeah, but Clare's great. But the thing is, I knew I was great, but I also knew I could be better. So that lack of feedback caused me to give up a hobby I loved. There's another example. There's a senior executive in a large multinational that I was coaching to get her ditching imposter syndrome. She'd been promoted into a C-suite role, and it was 12 months since she'd had any feedback. She had spent 12 months worrying that she wasn't good enough, that they weren't saying anything because they wanted to get rid of her, that she was going to fail her probation, that she was going to get demoted. She was losing sleep. It was causing anxiety. It was affecting her performance. When she finally got to her annual performance review, the CEO said, But you're doing great. I thought you knew. Now, when someone's running imposter syndrome, what's happening is their internal reference referencing system goes out of kilter. The internal referencing system is how we know for ourselves whether or not we've done a good job. And ideally, you want a balance of internal referencing and external referencing.

Speaker 1 (19:11)
So you know you've got your own opinion on how you performed, but you're also open to feedback correctly delivered from others. So you want a nice balance in there. You get too dependent with imposter syndrome on external feedback. You become externally referenced, and that means you end up on the praise criticism roller coaster. Now, on my coaching certification programme, so the imposter syndrome, first aider, imposter syndrome master coach, we look in detail how to help people redevelop that internal referencing system so they can get off the praise criticism roller coaster. But actually somebody experiencing imposter syndrome, remember, 62% daily or regularly, actually needs more feedback, but it needs to be delivered in the right way. And blurting out your unfiltered thoughts on someone's performance or capabilities, particularly in public, is not the right way. I talk about there being three pillars of psychological safety for performance improving feedback that is imposter syndrome safe, and we need to address all three. You might have heard me talk about them before because they're also the three pillars of imposter syndrome. They are the culture, the environment, and the habits. The culture, that's the organisational It might be a national culture.

Speaker 1 (20:32)
It might be a national culture, it might be faith-based, it might be a family culture. It might be an industry culture. The environment, that is the practical embodiment of the culture. What does it look like on a day-to-day level? And the habits are the personal habits of the individual. Now, when we're addressing and clearing out imposter syndrome, I start this work with the habits to empower that person to be able to set themselves free from the secret fear of being found out as a fraud or not good enough stuff, whatever is going on around them. And then in parallel, we address the culture and the environment. When it comes to feedback, though, and particularly with performance reviews, we need to start with the culture and the environment. There is no point in giving people the skills to be able to do fantastic performance reviews if the person on the receiving end is so terrified by the cultural and environment expectations in their organisation that they're going to receive it and perceive potentially as a threat and an attack. So you have to start with creating a psychologically safe culture and environment, as well as giving people the habits to both give and receive that open, candid feedback rather than just starting with the individuals.

Speaker 1 (21:46)
And you have to do this before you bring in this new policy. You have to start with psychological safety. And the fact that I and my certified coaches and master coaches are seeing so many organisations who are bringing in this feedback without having first addressed those three pillars, without having created that psychological safety, without having done the proper training for people on how to give this feedback in ways that really works, is a great example of why organisations who want to create this depth of cultural change need expert support on this thing, not just DIY-ing it from a book or a podcast or a Google search for an article. Cutting corners these quick fixes, these easy solutions, actually make things worse longer term. Feedback done badly, which is how most people are accidentally doing it, can quickly turn teams toxic. A team cannot thrive in a toxic work environment and culture. I take this so seriously that a few years ago, I actually terminated someone's employment contract during their probation because of the way they were giving feedback. Because I could see they were going to be in a leadership role in our team. And it didn't matter how great they were, the skills we'd hired them for, their behaviour and their attitude was going to destroy the team's psychological safety.

Speaker 1 (23:07)
For example, they were eye rolling in meetings when people made suggestions. They were sighing when people shared their ideas and opinions. And then live during the meetings, they would try and persuade others to join in with criticising the idea or even criticising the person. And the thing was this was very clearly the way they were. We did try and do a bit coaching to help support them, but it was clear they weren't going to be able to change this behaviour. And I couldn't have anybody in my leadership team that would cause those around them to feel judged and criticised when sharing their ideas. I could see it would kill innovation. I would quickly have people quitting. It would create a toxic work environment. The culture and the environment are so important when you want to bring in this direct, candid feedback. The psychological safety has to come first, both for the receiver and for the giver. Remember, one in 10 of your team members will consider quitting due to imposter syndrome today. Just imagine how much more likely they are to enact that and actually quit. If you've brought in a culture to an environment of candid unfiltered feedback without creating the psychological safety, without supporting people in clearing out the suppressed trauma and the imposter syndrome, mind's philtres and body's philtres as well.

Speaker 1 (24:29)
It's a recipe for Chaos. And above all, the missing element with all of this is permission and privacy. I was really shocked in my latest research study to find that 52% of line managers and business leaders believe that you don't need permission before giving feedback. You absolutely do. In fact, when I made this statement in a LinkedIn comment a few months ago, I actually got trolled by a guy who was adamant that if I have to have permission to tell them what they've done wrong, then I'm never going to be able to improve their performance. And what's the point in being a line manager? But you do need permission. You don't know what's going on for that person. Most people are really good at keeping their private lives and their working lives separate. And if you dive in and give them that candid, radical feedback without their consent, especially if you haven't had training and there's not psychological safety running, you actually risk causing proper harm. Now, if you've got somebody who's underperforming, who you think is perhaps doing so intentionally, and you need to get into a performance improvement process, that's a whole other thing, and that would hopefully be managed with support from your HR team.

Speaker 1 (25:42)
But day-to-day feedback, you always need to ask permission, and it always needs to be in private. If you're looking at things like praise, do you remember the percentage of people who wobble with praise? It was 73 %. So you You actually also want to be aware of the potential impact of publicly praising people. You still need permission and privacy. And as you're getting to know somebody, you can ask them in your one-to-one sessions, If I see you doing something really well, and I want to give you a shout out, is that okay with you? You get their permission for future praise. But if there's somebody who is one of the 44% that will actively volunteer a but, you're potentially, without that mission, putting them in a position where they will publicly criticise themselves in response to that praise. So navigating the world of performance improvement is a bit trickier when team members are running imposter syndrome. It requires you to address all three pillars of psychological safety, the culture, the environments, the personal habits of both the giver and the receiver. And there are ways that you can give feedback that don't actually have to contain anything negative that can skyrocket performance performance and confidence, even for somebody who's experiencing quite major imposter syndrome.

Speaker 1 (27:05)
This is something I teach in-depth in my coaching certification programmes, both at imposter syndrome first aiders, so the natural resilience method practitioner level and at the imposter syndrome master coach level. It's also something I touch on briefly in my new book, Coaching Imposter Syndrome. There'll be a link in the show notes for you to find out how to get a copy of that, to read it or listen to it. And I I really, really want to be able to help. So I'm actually running a workshop. If you're listening to this episode when it comes out, it is on the first of November 2024 on how to make imposter syndrome-safe feedback part of your performance review process. So you actually create those shifts and leaps in performance. You're creating the psychological safety. It's a half day workshop with me online, so you can join us from anywhere in the world. And you get three months of support afterwards to implement what you cover in the workshop. I am launching this at a crazy, crazy early bird rate. Details are on the link in the show notes. Look for feedback workshop and click that link. And I'm going to limit it as well on the number of places so that you really get direct support.

Speaker 1 (28:18)
As I say, it's four hours via Zoom. There's going to be a couple of coffee breaks. There can be breakout discussion rooms, a workbook, additional resources. You're going to learn live from me as I teach you exactly What you need to do, both for yourself as an individual, for the recipient, and for your organisation, to mean that performance reviews finally work, they're imposter syndrome safe, and you can start bringing in a culture of people no longer feeling terrified of feedback and open discussion in your team so that they can really thrive. Look for feedback workshop in the show notes for this episode. And I'd love to hear from you on this. I'm going to put my contact details in the show notes so that you can actually get in touch. I actually mean it. I properly want to hear from you. What are your thoughts on the topics we've covered in this episode? What has your experience been of candid direct feedback? And how might it benefit your teams, yourself, your organisations, if you are able to make this type of feedback, imposter syndrome safe, so it can be delivered in ways that are safe, effective, and maybe even fun.

Speaker 1 (29:26)
I'll be back soon with episode 59, where we're going to be talking about how to get a thank you from the future you. And hanging out in my old beloved home of Cologne a couple of weeks ago taught me about this. I want to fast track your journey on this. It's one of the key elements for changing your life, and it's really, really fun and exciting. To make sure you catch that, make sure you subscribe to Ditching Imposter Syndrome, the podcast, wherever it is that you love to get your podcast. And then it will show up in your podcast app or I'll put a link in the show notes of how you can sign up for my newsletter to get a notification each week when a new episode is published, absolutely free, as my gift to you, your future, and the difference you are here to make in the world.