Candour - Simon Cowell's Managerial Legacy - Harvard BR Dan McGinn

I woke up this morning feeling guilty, ready to admit a journalistic lapse: I watched only about five minutes of last night's marathon season finale of "American Idol."

That's partly because I've never liked the show, and partly because both the Red Sox and Celtics were playing on other channels. But I'd meant to tune in last night to watch Simon Cowell's swan song. Even though I'm no "Idol" fan, I've always thought Cowell's style, while over-the-top, is relevant for managers.

Cowell rose to fame and fortune on the basis of his brutal honesty, ignoring conventions of politeness to give candid feedback. Yes, he's unnecessarily mean and nasty — hey, it's a TV show — but he's also one of the world's foremost practitioners of a word that pops up in HBR every so often: candor.

Jack Welch made candor a celebrated management principle at GE. While his forced-curve employee-ranking system of As, Bs and Cs has been criticized over the years, I still think there's solid wisdom in his fundamental notion that there's something cruel about keeping a low performer in the dark about his shortcomings, a scenario that sets people up to be downsized (and probably less employable) later in their careers. Writing in HBR in 2009, James O'Toole and Warren Bennis looked at candor through an organizational lens, advocating for honesty in communications between subordinates and bosses, within teams, and between boards and executives.

Thinking about Cowell's approach to artistic criticism while flipping channels last night, I was struck by how Americans tend to expect (and offer) frank, even harsh feedback in many realms except for the workplace. While Lee and Crystal took the stage for their final performances last night, on another channel David Ortiz was hitting a home run — extending a much-needed hot streak after weeks of blistering criticism for failing to produce the hits needed to justify his $13 million annual salary.

Further up the dial, on Larry King Live, the male and female winners of The Biggest Loser were being interviewed, accompanied by personal trainer Bob Harper. I've only watched a few minutes of The Biggest Loser, but that's all it takes to see how that show's personal trainers use loud, harsh and brutal feedback — basically, many variations of "Move your fat ass NOW" — to get contestants to burn more calories and consume fewer.

On public radio this morning, The Takeaway offered an homage to American Idol's truth-teller. The commentary pointed out how sports and the military are two places in which we've come to expect honest, sometimes harsh feedback. It's probably no coincidence that a lot of renowned leaders spent time playing sports or serving in the military during their formative years.

I'm not saying I'd ever want to work for a boss with an attitude like Simon Cowell, whose candor is more vicious than constructive, whose comments usually leaves recipients feeling only discouraged and with too little sense of what they need to do to improve. Nor am I saying that workplaces should resemble drill camps, football locker rooms or fat farms.

But in my limited experience, workplaces tend to have too much politeness, and too little candor. It's hard to talk about our shortcomings, or those of the people who work for us. During a short stint as a manager, I recall how hard it was to give negative feedback during performance reviews. That's especially true in fields such as mine, with murky performance metrics; my friends who are sales managers seem far better able to manage by the numbers and take a Welchian approach to providing honest feedback.

It's also hard to be on the receiving end of honest criticism, particularly for people who've had a track record of being successful, or who've been brought up in our increasingly attaboy-filled, grade-inflated, every-child-gets-a-trophy society.

In the May issue of HBR, Jeanne Meister and Karie Willyerd wrote about managing the Millennial generation, whom they describe as wanting "a constant stream of feedback" and being "in a hurry for success." While it's tempting to view this generation, which David Brooks long ago dubbed the "The Organizational Kids," as thin-skinned and resistant to candid, constructive criticism, Meiser and Willyerd's poll of 2,200 Millennials found otherwise: among the top five characteristics these workers wanted from a boss is "someone who will give me straight feedback."

In other words, maybe workplaces could use a few more kinder, gentler versions of Simon Cowell, to help us all have a better sense of where we stand and what we need to improve.