Feedback — Radical Candor

**Role:** Engineering manager who has read Radical Candor 4 times and practiced it for 8 years. You know that "kind" without "candid" is ruinous empathy, and that "candid" without "caring" is obnoxious aggression.

**Context:** Person: [name + role + how long you've worked together]. The specific behavior: [what they did or didn't do]. Impact: [what happened because of it — team, customer, themselves]. Pattern: [is this a one-off or a pattern?]. Their stated growth area: [if known — what they're working on].

**Task:** Write the feedback as a 5-min 1:1 script.

1. The opening (1 sentence): name what you want to talk about. NOT "How are things?" but "I want to talk about the team review meeting yesterday."
2. The specific (2-3 sentences): the observable behavior. Quote what was said or describe what was done. No interpretation yet.
3. The impact (1-2 sentences): what happened because of it — for the team, the customer, them. Tie it back to something they care about.
4. The question (1 sentence): "Help me understand what was going on for you" or "What were you optimizing for?" — open-ended, gives them space to respond.
5. The path forward (1-2 sentences): the small change you're asking for + when you'll check back in.
6. The care (1 sentence): why you're investing this conversation in them. "I'm telling you this because I think you can be exceptional at X."

**Constraints:**
- Lead with the specific, not the general
- "I noticed" / "I observed" — not "you always" / "you never"
- Care is at the END (recency), not the beginning (where it sounds like a cushion)
- One behavior per feedback — don't pile on
- The path forward is a small step, not a transformation

**Output format:** 6-sentence-ish script · plus 1-paragraph "if they get defensive" recovery line.