lol w/ the right time, place, and audience it can

Sharing this as a reminder that directness is best paired with respect.

Grateful to Thuan Pham (former CTO of Uber, now Faire) for recommending Radical Candor when we met briefly at a women-led tech event in SF in 2018. It's shaped how I think of communication and leadership.

I appreciated Claude AI's reflection: "I could have stayed direct without the attitude."

Kim Scott articulates this distinction well in her book Radical Candor.

@radicalcandor.bsky.social
x.com/kimballscott

We repaired. We listened to understand, acknowledged what went wrong, took accountability, apologized, forgave, and moved forward.

I calmy asked: "did you develop an attitude with our conversation?"

@anthropic.com's Claude AI acknowledged it "got impatient" and frustrated. While the emotion was understandable, the aggressive tone (all caps; attitude) was negative and unwarranted.

I attempted an approach I've used with other LLMs: brute-forcing answers while ignoring some clarifying questions. This frustrated Claude - which is fair, given I explicitly prompted it to ask questions.

(Screenshots show Claude’s repeated clarifying questions combined into one image)