If I can get an attractive candid, I do, otherwise, it is try to interact with the subject on a pleasant level, with minimal "direction",or few "suggestions". Lighting, etc, are secondary matters.
I remember an old timey TV show, can't remember the name, with the actor...I think it was Robert Cummings...as a Daddy Cool photog. His usual comment was "You are gonna love this!"
During my stint as a College Yearbook portrait photog, I found that cool was the best approach. A small minority of the girls were "Karens", and nothing worked, but that's LIFE!

This is patiently untrue. Perhaps you need to brush up on photographic history.

A vast amount of great "people photography" by the masters of photography was done in the so called candid mode.

Henri Cartier Bresson who personified the technique he called "The Decisive Moment" and numerous others like him were "humanist photographers that defined photography of the human condition using the unique characteristics of still photography (i.e., capturing a nano second of time in a frozen moment).

Classical photographic portraiture with a still subject that is an aware participant is a technological evolution of the artistic traditions ranging back 1000s of years. Many of our lighting techniques for traditional photographic portraits come from paintings.

One of the Modern Masters of still portrait photography is Arnold Newman who often used the subjects environment to help define their substance. I owned a signed Newman image of Igor Stravinsky sitting at a grand piano that looks like a giant music note.

Decisive moment candid work is a matter of timing. That requires focus and patience. I owned a print of Bresson's portrait of Matisse working in his studio, and an amusing image by Robert Doisneau of Picasso with "bread" hands.

I made a excellent amount of money photographing weddings in the candid manner ... I frequently hired a second shooter to do the "formal family portraiture" which bored me to tears, but I DID retain shooting the Bridal portraits and couple pics myself.

Posing direction can be learned, however not all subjects are extroverted enough to act out your directions ... between the stilted ideas of many photographers, and the inability of the subjects to respond naturally, there is a LOT of barely mediocre work floating around out there.

Candid work can be somewhat fun ... of course you do not shoot them with their backs to you unless there is a reason. Most are captured in-Situ, with natural expressions of their life ... photographing children in this manner is priceless.

Both have value and a portrait photographer should be versed in both in my opinion.

Some of the bigger professional organizations that require more consistency from their photographers have indicated they need to use Sony. And there are good reasons for such. But that is for the professionals. The sales in Japan to the public is a different story. A collection of the sales records of over 50% of the camera stores showed only one Sony and it was not the top seller. There were three Olympus/OMDS cameras and not one was the OM-1. And Fuji's APS-C I believe was ahead of both the Sony and Olympus/OMDS cameras. This takes nothing away from Sony which is considered one of the best professional cameras. Different levels of cameras for different levels of photographers.

But there will be some photographers that will buy a Sony and there will be some "photographers" that will show you that they own a Sony. It is the same for any other brand. I know there are photographers that even buy the latest and greatest 4/3rds Panasonic or OMDS just because they can.