The Culture of Candor: Building Trust, Unlocking Performance

What do the Space Shuttle Challenger explosion, Penn State's cover-up scandal, Quaker's $1.4 billion Snapple loss, the Obamacare rollout debacle, and even Watergate all have in common?

At their core, each one was a failure of candor.

In aviation, we had a saying: "See something, say something." In high-stakes environments, candor isn't just preferred; it's a matter of survival. Matt Kincaid, Ph.D. and Doug Crandall capture this truth in Permission to Speak Freely: How the Best Leaders Cultivate a Culture of Candor, showing how the absence of open, honest communication can tip the balance between success and failure.

Yet candor isn't only about avoiding disaster. It's about unlocking the trust, engagement, and ownership that allow teams to thrive. At its core, candor relies on trust, both the trust you establish with others and the trust you cultivate within yourself to speak authentically.

Candor isn't a nice-to-have. It's a human and business imperative.

In Permission to Speak Freely, Kincaid and Crandall build a powerful case for why candor matters. They reveal how silence erodes performance and wellbeing, explain the real inhibitors that make open dialogue feel risky, and share practical ways leaders can embed candor into the very fabric of their culture.

The absence of candor, they warn, becomes a silent enemy.

The Archenemy of True Leadership

Crandall and Kincaid describe "anesthetic soft talk" as the arch-enemy of true leadership. It's the kind of muted, cautious language that creates the illusion of harmony while silently eroding trust.

In 2012, they surveyed hundreds of leaders with a simple question: "The last time I held back from speaking candidly, it was because…" The expected answer was fear of consequences.

The top response? "I don't believe it will do any good."

That’s the slow suffocation of engagement and trust. It keeps teams from reaching their potential and organizations from thriving.

Research shows that 85% of employees feel unable to voice their opinions at work, resulting in a cost of $2 trillion annually to businesses. Workplace injuries even rise by 80% in low-candor environments, indicating that suppressed communication not only threatens performance but also physical safety.

And the toll isn’t just organizational, it’s deeply personal. In low-candor cultures, 39% of employees report emotional exhaustion, more than double the rate in high-candor environments. When people feel silenced, stress rises, wellbeing declines, and health suffers. Leaders and employees alike absorb the hidden cost of communication breakdowns in the form of burnout, anxiety, and disengagement.

Permission to Speak Freely, Matt Kincaid and Doug Crandall

So how do leaders reverse this trend? The shift begins with three practices that rebuild trust from the inside out: unconditional positive regard, curiosity over judgment, and transforming BCD into wisdom.

We’ll be discussing that directly with one of the book’s authors, Matt Kincaid, on August 28th at 1 PM during The Healthy Leader Expert Forum.

In the meantime, here’s how each practice helps leaders replace suffocation with candor.

Unconditional Positive Regard 

One powerful starting point is practicing what psychologists call unconditional positive regard, choosing to see the people you lead through a lens of respect and value, regardless of the circumstances.

As Crandall and Kincaid emphasize in Permission to Speak Freely, candor depends on trust. When trust is absent, even well-chosen words can be misinterpreted. When trust is strong, even imperfect words are often received with generosity and the benefit of the doubt.

This mindset applies both outwardly and inwardly. Extending unconditional regard to yourself builds self-trust, the confidence that your perspective has value. So your communication becomes more grounded and authentic.

Extending it to others builds relational trust, the assurance that their voice matters and will be received with curiosity rather than judgment. Together, these two dimensions of trust create the conditions where candor can thrive.

Unconditional regard doesn’t excuse poor performance; it reframes it. It allows you to deliver feedback in a way that builds instead of breaks, creating a climate where people feel safe to contribute, grow, and speak up. This is how leaders begin to create cultures where people truly have Permission to Speak Freely.

Curiosity Over Judgment

Another essential practice is cultivating curiosity over judgment. This is no easy feat. Our brains are wired with a negativity bias, constantly scanning for threats to our safety and productivity. That instinct kept our ancestors alive, but in leadership today, it often manifests as criticism or quick judgment. Curiosity interrupts that reflex. It takes practice in meta-awareness to catch ourselves in that moment and choose curiosity instead.

In coaching, we train leaders to ask authentic questions, not to trap or test, but to invite.

Think about it personally: your teenager comes home late. Judgment says, "You're grounded." Curiosity asks, "What happened?" That simple shift creates space for truth to surface; maybe even something they wouldn’t have shared if you hadn’t asked. And it doesn’t mean there won’t be consequences. It means you’ve modeled respect and curiosity first, showing that accountability and understanding can coexist. That combination is not only great parenting; it’s also the essence of great leadership.

Professionally, the same applies. When leaders replace judgment with curiosity, they unlock ideas, innovation, and trust. Curiosity fosters psychological safety, which in turn fuels engagement and creativity. Cultivating curiosity is also an act of self-trust. It's sustaining confidence that even if you don't have the answer, you have the strength to explore the question.

Candor isn't about lowering standards or ignoring accountability.

It’s about creating an environment where people are both supported and challenged to reach their goals.

The real mastery is doing both at once, holding high expectations while also extending curiosity and respect. That’s a powerful meta-skill, and it begins with self-leadership: managing your own emotions, directing your own thoughts, and practicing candor internally so you can model it authentically with others.

From BCD to Wisdom

You know that person—the one who is always BCDing: blaming, complaining, or defending. What’s really happening in those moments isn’t just poor attitude; it’s a neurochemical reaction. When feedback feels threatening, the brain floods with stress hormones like cortisol and adrenaline. The amygdala fires, and self-protection takes over.

Crandall and Kincaid describe this as the natural “ouch” of feedback. Our default defense is BCD. But great leaders learn to interrupt that loop. Instead of reacting, they pause, regulate, and ask: “What can I learn from this?”

That shift doesn’t just change the conversation; it rewires the brain. Neuroscience reveals that when leaders regulate rather than react, they engage the prefrontal cortex, the seat of wisdom, problem-solving, and growth.

And that’s the true move from BCD to wisdom: transforming defensiveness into discernment, turning feedback into fuel, and modeling for others that courage and growth are possible in the very moments that sting the most. Self-trust is a strong hinge; it creates the resilience to choose wisdom over reaction, and in doing so, gives others permission to do the same.

A Call to Candor

Candor is contagious. When you trust yourself to be authentic, you model the courage for others to do the same. And when candor takes root in a culture, trust grows, ideas flourish, and performance follows.

That's why I'm inviting you to join Matt Kincaid at The Healthy Leader Forum. Together, we'll unpack what it means to move from command-and-control to a culture of candor, one built on trust, curiosity, and authentic communication.

Because candor doesn't just change organizations. It changes lives.

www.thehealthyleadergroup.com/expertforum

Traci Fisher, founder of The Wellness Coach and The Healthy Leader® Group, helps executives and teams cultivate healthy leaders—leaders who align self-leadership with trust, wellbeing, and performance. At the core of this work is strengthening communication and candor, equipping leaders to model authenticity, influence culture, and drive measurable ROI in engagement, retention, and results.

Join Traci at the upcoming Leadership Academy Conference—an intimate, transformational experience hosted by The Referent Group in Indianapolis this September 4–5. This immersive event combines leadership frameworks with rigorous skill development to help you lead authentically, foster innovation, and create a lasting impact. Seats are limited, so secure your spot here: [Learn more and register here].