Templates
Skill

Co-founder Candour

"Easy choices, hard life. Hard choices, easy life.” Great businesses are built on a foundation of great relationships, which in turn, rely upon candour. Candour is the ability to communicate openly, honestly and with respect for the other person.

Co-founder Candour

Level 1

Communicates with candour when prompted or requested

  • Talking about emotions and mood: You recognise your own emotional state and discusses when prompted.

  • Challenging your co-founder's thinking: You challenge a co-founder's thinking when it is in area of personal domain expertise.

  • Giving and receiving feedback: You provide honest feedback when prompted.

Level 2

Comfortable being candid in day to day interactions

  • Talking about emotions and mood: You are comfortable discussing your own and other's current mood and emotional state as part of regular co-founder check-ins.

  • Challenging your co-founder's thinking: You are comfortable challenging your co-founder across a wide range of topics.

  • Giving and receiving feedback: You give and request honest feedback as a normal part of communication.

Level 3

Encourages candour in the company

  • Talking about emotions and mood: You pro-actively discuss your own and other's emotions when you or your co-founder seem to be showing signs of being unwell e.g. stress, anger, despondency or malaise.

  • Challenging your co-founder's thinking: You are comfortable challenging your co-founder's strongly held opinions and bring in data, values and mission to back up challenge. You invite your own beliefs, opinions and ideas to be challenged.

  • Giving and receiving feedback: You encourage others to give and request feedback. You reassure team members that honest, negative feedback is preferable to no feedback.

Level 4

Actively facilitates candid communication and applies candour to high tension or emotional situations.

  • Talking about emotions and mood: You recognise more serious emotional / mood conditions such as burnout, depression and anxiety in others and self. You provides support and compassion over the medium and long term and assists with finding external solutions in the form of counselling or medical help.

  • Challenging your co-founder's thinking: You recognise when the idea or opinion you are challenging is critical to the future of the company and / or emotionally charged. You take steps to make sure the idea is properly challenged over a period of time and from different angles, ensuring the challenge is made with tact and empathy.

  • Giving and receiving feedback: You recognise when feedback may be difficult or awkward to receive and make extra effort to ensure the feedback is clear, understood and delivered with compassion.

Level 5

Pro-actively builds candour into the company culture.

  • Talking about emotions and mood: You coach others on the importance of open and honest discussion of emotions and mood in the workplace. You proactively builds process and tools to support discussion of emotional wellbeing.

  • Challenging your co-founder's thinking: You coach others to better challenge ideas and opinions. You proactively builds "empathic challenging" into the company culture.

  • Giving and receiving feedback: You coach others to give and receive feedback more effectively. You build open, honest and frequent feedback as a company habit.

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