“Radical Candor puts building good relationships at the center of a boss’s job,” Scott said. “In fact, my favorite lines in the whole book are these: ‘Relationships are core to your job. If you think that you can [fulfill your responsibilities as a manager] without strong relationships, you are kidding yourself,’” (p. xiii-xiv).

Good relationships are characterized by “Radical Candor,” Scott said, which exists at the intersection of “caring personally” and “challenging directly.” Too little of both leads to “Manipulative Insincerity.” A deficit of caring results in “Obnoxious Aggression,” while a lack of challenging directly ends in “Ruinous Empathy.”

Radical Candor is not only powerful, but scalable, as it possesses the potential to transform the culture of the organization.

Taking the leadership mantle for a mightily struggling organization, Bachelder and her leadership team began by committing to a leadership philosophy that would guide everything they did.

“We quickly agreed that this servant leadership notion would guide us going forward. But there was one more thing. We believed that servant leadership would deliver superior results. The performance of the enterprise would be the evidence that we had served others well,” (p. 18).

The results were as clear as they were dramatic.

Sales had increased by 45 percent, and profits had doubled. Popeyes’ share price rose to $61.31 by the end of 2016, and the company’s stock outpaced the S&P 500 restaurant sector and the overall S&P 500.

As a result, Bachelder proved that servant leadership could drive superior performance, even in a highly competitive environment like the food service industry.