Name: Chad McElligott's review of Radical Candor by Kim Scott
Item: Radical Candor
Rating: 3.5
Author: Chad McElligott

Kim Scott

"I raced through RADICAL CANDOR--It’s thrilling to learn a framework that shows how to be both a better boss and a better colleague. RADICAL CANDOR is packed with illuminating truths, insightful advice, and practical suggestions, all illustrated with engaging (and often funny) stories from Kim Scott’s own experiences at places like Apple, Google, and various start-ups. Indispensable."--Gretchen Rubin author of NYT bestseller THE HAPPINESS PROJECT "Reading Radical Candor will help you build, lead, and inspire teams to do the best work of their lives. Kim Scott's insights--based on her experience, keen observational intelligence and analysis--will help you be a better leader and create a more effective organization."--Sheryl Sandberg author of the NYT bestseller LEAN IN "Kim Scott has a well-earned reputation as a kick-ass boss and a voice that CEOs take seriously. In this remarkable book, she draws on her extensive experience to provide clear and honest guidance on the fundamentals of leading others: how to give (and receive) feedback, how to make smart decisions, how to keep moving forward, and much more. If you manage people?whether it be 1 person or a 1,000--you need RADICAL CANDOR. Now."--Daniel Pink author of NYT bestseller DRIVE From the time we learn to speak, we’re told that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. When you become a manager, it’s your job to say it--and your obligation. Author Kim Scott was an executive at Google and then at Apple, where she developed a class on how to be a good boss. She has earned growing fame in recent years with her vital new approach to effective management, Radical Candor. Radical Candor is a simple idea: to be a good boss, you have to Care Personally at the same time that you Challenge Directly. When you challenge without caring it’s obnoxious aggression; when you care without challenging it’s ruinous empathy. When you do neither it’s manipulative insincerity. This simple framework can help you build better relationships at work, and fulfill your three key responsibilities as a leader: creating a culture of feedback (praise and criticism), building a cohesive team, and achieving results you’re all proud of. Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Taken from years of the author’s experience, and distilled clearly giving actionable lessons to the reader; it shows managers how to be successful while retaining their humanity, finding meaning in their job, and creating an environment where people both love their work and their colleagues.

Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

Radical Candor

Cassandra Tang

Sometimes, the greatest gift you can give your team is to let them go home.

While we know our subject matter, we may fail to know how the person to whom we are explaining the subject, and therefore may fail to get our idea across.

Make sure that you are seeing each person on your team with fresh eyes everyday. People evolve, and so your relationships must evolve with them. Care personally, don’t put people in boxes and leave them there.

I often thought of these people as shooting stars — my team and I were lucky to have them in our orbit for a little while, but tying to hold them there was futile.

A good rule of thumb for any relationship is to leave three unimportant things unsaid each day.

Teerakit Chantrakul

Say “that’s wrong,” not “you’re wrong.”

* New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller multiple years running * Translated into 20 languages, with more than half a million copies sold worldwide * A Hudson and Indigo Best Book of the Year * Recommended by Shona Brown, Rachel Hollis, Jeff Kinney, Daniel Pink, Sheryl Sandberg, and Gretchen Rubin Radical Candor has been embraced around the world by leaders of every stripe at companies of all sizes. Now a cultural touchstone, the concept has come to be applied to a wide range of human relationships. The idea is simple: You don't have to choose between being a pushover and a jerk. Using Radical Candor—avoiding the perils of Obnoxious Aggression, Manipulative Insincerity, and Ruinous Empathy—you can be kind and clear at the same time. Kim Scott was a highly successful leader at Google before decamping to Apple, where she developed and taught a management class. Since the original publication of Radical Candor in 2017, Scott has earned international fame with her vital approach to effective leadership and co-founded the Radical Candor executive education company, which helps companies put the book's philosophy into practice. Radical Candor is about caring personally and challenging directly, about soliciting criticism to improve your leadership and also providing guidance that helps others grow. It focuses on praise but doesn't shy away from criticism—to help you love your work and the people you work with. Radically Candid relationships with team members enable bosses to fulfill their three core responsibilities: 1. Create a culture of Compassionate Candor 2. Build a cohesive team 3. Achieve results collaboratively Required reading for the most successful organizations, Radical Candor has raised the bar for management practices worldwide.

Anton Sten

Chad McElligott

Great book that all managers should read, shame that the book could have been written in a much more concise manner without so much repetition and drag. 

matej yangwao

** spoiler alert **
           So far book feels how to control opinion within your subordinates.

Overall felt bit basic managerial book, just another perspective to manage your team and make them efficient, better relationships and alignment on company goals

>Your relationships and your responsibilities reinforce each other positively or negatively, and this dynamic is what drives you forward as a manager — or leaves you dead in the water.

>Since trust is an expensive commodity in the management business, you must strive to establish it among the people you entrust with the running of your business.

>False praise and reserving criticism will only destroy the business you’re trying to protect.

>ruinous empathy, an offshoot of manipulative insincerity, happens when bosses have a hard time criticizing underperformance but condone and encourage it instead. This behavior is the mark of ruin for a company because it prioritizes being nice over being direct, hence guaranteeing poor performances. Your desire to be liked or seen as nice is unhealthy and, unlike radical candor, will ensure that trust has eroded and the staff is comfortable being lazy.

>there are primarily two types of people in your employ: the rockstar and the superstar. The rockstar is a worker whose inspiration has peaked, and they need little or no pep talk from you. They are comfortable and happy doing their jobs because they’ve found their rhythm. Conversely, the superstar requires massive challenges to force them out of their slumber and bring their great potential to light.

>When managing a team, you should establish a personal relationship with those who directly report to you, identify each person’s unique qualities, and use this information to position them in roles they are suited for. If you apply the same management style to everyone, you’ll push some away because they feel underappreciated.

>Once you have assessed and placed your employees, draw closer to your top performers. Don’t make the mistake of thinking they don’t need you because “they’re doing so well already.” They need your guidance even more now that they’ve hit their stride.

>When your rockstars perform well, recognize and reward their efforts but don’t promote them to a new role or challenge right away. You’ll only cause them to crash fast.

>And lastly, don’t be afraid to let go of the perpetual underperformers but make sure that before you do this, you have been radically candid with them, offered guidance, and tried to readjust their focus and roles.

>The “middle” workers just don’t realize their potential in the right field. They could easily be rock stars in another position.

>When you have a vision for a project or a new idea, communicate it to the various teams or people involved in a way that they understand. Explain why they must do what you want them to.

>He succeeded because he encouraged his staff never to let him assume he was right. If something he said or did or intended to do was wrong, it was their job to tell him and convince him.

>The former refers to taking long moments of silence just to listen, and the latter is the practice of throwing out a provocative statement to incite a response. Just remember, it is imperative to clarify your thoughts to yourself first before you air them to your team.

>...try to strengthen your awareness of how your style makes your colleagues feel and work on improving that dynamic.

>Once you have listened and clarified, you must now seek a debate. A debate here will ensure that you don’t rush into an idea that your whole team isn’t in agreement with. After bringing most of the team to the decision–making table, there’s a chance some will be left out, so now you must persuade them to join the bandwagon.

>Your team must be part of the decision–making process, or you risk setting up an autocratic system where the staff will feel left out and displeased.

>As you are raking in the successes of the listen – clarify – debate – decide – persuade technique, you must not get complacent and keep learning to do better with the next project and the next. You must first appeal to the listener’s emotions to pass your message across and then show credibility with humility and expertise as you share your logic with the team. Lastly, you must ensure that you recognize the need to take a break and afford your team the same luxury too in the day–to–day of the job.


>Firstly, you must establish a relationship with yourself; you can’t care about others if you don’t care about yourself. So, make time to prioritize your well–being. Then you should delegate more tasks and authority so that there is less autonomy in the workplace. You should also create avenues where the staff can socialize outside the workplace, have a few drinks, and have fun.

>In your bid to foster better relationships, though, you must remember to respect boundaries and build trust using genuine openness, shared values, respect for emotional differences, and personal space.

>Once you’ve successfully established the relationship with the staff, especially those who directly report to you, the next step is to offer proper guidance through radical candor and challenge them directly. You must make this activity safe and natural among the people that report to you so that they’re comfortable with trashing issues that you overlooked.

>Say “that’s wrong,” not “you’re wrong.” Never criticize a person but the approach to the job or task.

>Talking about discomfort in criticism, when it involves gender, male bosses usually have trouble dishing out criticism to female subordinates, and the females shy away from demanding any appraisal. Don’t be caught up in gender politics. If your female staff performs poorly, don’t refrain from offering criticism, and, as a female in a firm, always demand it.

>Formal performance reviews are a welcomed addition, and if you do them correctly, they will give your team the boost to perform better. Shun backstabbing and never encourage gossip; you’re a manager, not a monster diplomat.

>Never be too scared to let go of people who are stuck and continue to underperform. But when you do so, never do it with contempt, and ensure that you set up a follow–up to ensure that they can find new opportunities.

>Promote those who deserve it and ensure they survive in their new roles. Avoid being a distant manager and try to be present for “peer guidance.” These are all effective team motivation techniques that, when followed, will ensure you are kickass at being a manager.

>One–to–one conversations are the boss’ way to know what’s really going on with individual team members regarding their successes and struggles.
• Staff meetings are avenues to review previous work, appraise the current efforts, proffer updates, and establish techniques for the coming future.
• Think time and take regular breaks from the thoughts about others.
• “Big debate” meetings allow the team to amicably debate without malice and with the mindset of a unified goal at the end.
• “Big decision” meetings create an avenue for the team to chip in with decisions that will affect the whole firm.
• All–hands meetings make you enlist the ENTIRE team into the process, persuading the non–believers to join the wave.
• Kanban is a system where the staff fills in work to be done, work in progress, and work done on a display board where everyone can observe the process.
• Walk around; find time to learn from and solve minor problems as you attempt to tackle major ones.
• Being conscious of culture — the attitude and mindset prevalent in the company — will go a long way to either making or marring the company’s success trajectory. If the staff is accustomed to slacking, they’ll continue to sink lucrative ideas.

>Allow an employee to feel safe with you, and they will open up.

>However, don’t forget about yourself while taking care of others. You don’t want to experience emotional exhaustion caused by neglect of your needs. Always take some time during the day to think about yourself. Concentrate on your sensations — do you feel tense, frustrated, happy, irritated, inspired? Try to find out the reasons for these emotions because it will help you handle the situations better in the future.

Featuring a new preface, afterword and Radically Candid Performance Review Bonus Chapter, the fully revised & updated edition of Radical Candor is packed with even more guidance to help you improve your relationships at work. 'Reading Radical Candor will help you build, lead, and inspire teams to do the best work of their lives.' Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In. If you don't have anything nice to say then don't say anything at all . . . right? While this advice may work for home life, as Kim Scott has seen first hand, it is a disaster when adopted by managers in the work place. Scott earned her stripes as a highly successful manager at Google before moving to Apple where she developed a class on optimal management. Radical Candor draws directly on her experiences at these cutting edge companies to reveal a new approach to effective management that delivers huge success by inspiring teams to work better together by embracing fierce conversations. Radical Candor is the sweet spot between managers who are obnoxiously aggressive on the one side and ruinously empathetic on the other. It is about providing guidance, which involves a mix of praise as well as criticism – delivered to produce better results and help your employees develop their skills and increase success. Great bosses have a strong relationship with their employees, and Scott has identified three simple principles for building better relationships with your employees: make it personal, get stuff done, and understand why it matters. Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Drawing on years of first-hand experience, and distilled clearly to give practical advice to the reader, Radical Candor shows you how to be successful while retaining your integrity and humanity. Radical Candor is the perfect handbook for those who are looking to find meaning in their job and create an environment where people love both their work and their colleagues, and are motivated to strive to ever greater success.

How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean

Sarah Schumacher

A must read for anyone who manages people.

Tuago

The idea of radical candor was impactful to me, as someone with a tendency to have trouble saying ‘No’ and in dealing with conflict. If you feel like this as well, you’ll benefit a lot from the ideas of this book.

Matthew Royal

Whispering "Your fly is down!" to someone who needs to know, may be a bit hard, but it shows your concern and helps the person. This book is about how to maximize your "radical candor" with others at work.

Kim Scott talks about how to build effective relationships at your job -- especially with people you manage. They don't need to be fake-friend and they don't need to be coldly inhuman, but if you manage a team, talking with people about personal goals will help the team achieve its goals more efficiently and build a place where people want to bring their best.

While I do Scott naturally favors systematizing personal relationships to an excessive degree, the analytical tool of understanding where you fall on the 2-dimensional "caring personally" vs "challenging directly" axes helps ensure you're expressing concern in the most beneficial way to the most people, while avoiding the common pitfalls of seeing something but not saying anything ("ruinous empathy") or being a jerk without a purpose ("obnoxious aggression"). I like the evidence-based approach she uses in constantly looking for changes in others and yourself, and giving others a chance to address problems they see in anonymous or unthreatening ways.

This is definitely a chart I'm printing out and hanging at my desk so that I can more completely absorb it. There's wisdom and perspective changes to digest here that transcend your typical book on management or leadership. Putting this one on the "to re-read" shelf, so that I can check back again in a couple years to see if I've gotten it.

Arturo Hernández

A must for starting managers willing to learn about team Dynamics, feedback, praise, criticism and overall relationship development with your co-workers.

Alexandra Sklar

I tried to get into this...some of it I agreed with, some I didn't. The content felt very thin, like she stretched it out to meet a page count.

McKlayne Marshall

I love Kim Scott's perspective and the way she shares stories. My biggest takeaways were the following:
- Be direct!
- Take time for leadership development
- Rock stars vs. Super stars!

Dana Kraft

Meh! There was nothing wrong with this book, but I didn't see much new in it either. The title is appealing, but its your standard management book sprinkled with lots of praise for Google and Apple.

Irene Alegre

I got to 41% of this book, then finished it off with a summary from Blinkist that didn't shed new light onto anything I hadn't already found in the book, so I'm assuming the remaining 60% is either a repetition of the first 40% of the book, or whatever's there was not interesting enough to make it into the Blinkist summary.

A good book on management with a few too many examples, and not very applicable to my current career stage, although it never hurts to get a better understanding of a manager's point of view. I agree with most of what it preachers, however I don't know how well those ideas would work in practice at most companies – and not just the Googles and Apples of the world.

Colin Das

My general manager said it was one of the rare books that he loved and couldn't put down. For people who are kind and driven - and often torn by the two, RC helps navigate professional life to be kind and influential.

Paige Carter

Easy reading. Lots of name dropping. Interesting stories and great advice for building relationships at work (and even life??). I'm not a manager type so I read this more out of curiosity than anything and wow, I've never felt so seen as an employee. The way the author describes two categories of workers being superstars vs rockstars/ fast trajectory vs slow trajectory, was, well maybe this isn't a new idea in the business world, but I've never come across the idea before and it was great. I gained a lot of language about the kind of employee I can be for a company by reading this book.

Bradford Fults

A pretty solid overview of a compelling philosophy, rooted in real-world experience at Google and Apple. Scott has an engaging writing style and knows how to balance claims with anecdotes, rather than the all-too-common anecdote-until-submission strategy of many business book authors.

I learned some new things and found her perspective to be clear and helpful for things which which I already had experience or opinions. Recommended overall.

Omar

Kim does a great job in this book at a few things: 
* laying out the reasons why you should care about building radical candor in your team 
* discussing the challenges to accomplishing it
* giving you very tactical tools you can use to overcome the challenges

I expected the book to be OK, but found it to be much more than OK. It is filled with gems that are useful for all managers. Many times I could think back to the moments I hated a job or team I've been a part of and realized that the core reason of that would invariably go back to a lack of candor. This book, however, goes beyond just being candid and more generally discusses what it means to care about a person and how to manage people well, challenging them but with care and in the right way.

Christian Witts

A good book on management styles. Would read again.

Nikolay Bachiyski

Most versatile, yet simplest management book I’ve read. The main strategy is to put the relationships with the people you work with first – try to be clearer with them and care more.

In addition to the grand strategy of “challenge directly and care personally” the specific tactics Kim Scott offered made a lot of sense and in the months after finishing the book I’ve tried many of them with mild to great success.

Vijayasarathy Muthu

Definite read for Budding Managers 

Only if all my managers read this book. This is one of the finest books on managing people. 

Worth reading!

Adam

Although I'm no longer managing people, I've heard enough people mention this book that I wanted to check it out. The focus is around communicating clearly with people and teams as the way to be the most effective. Opting for empathy over insincerity and candor over aggression. The goal is to actually CARE while challenging people directly.

Chris G

If you have not read business books from Silicon Valley, this is not the one to start with. It has content and some excellent implementation advice but it is hidden beneath buzzwords, name drops and (earned) boasting about personal achievements that you may not be used to/reject if this is the first you read.

Ilia Markov

Probably longer than it should have been because it delivers on more than the "radical candor" promise and goes into general managerial advice — what meetings to run, how to structure them, etc. Other reviewers are correct in that there's way too much namedropping and that some people are praised very highly.

But overall, it's better than I expected...

Les Reynolds

So much great stuff about management, especially in the tech world.

Revised Edition

James Bedford

Second read of this book. Took a lot more from it this time round than before, as when I first read it I was early in my journey of engineering management. Without doubt, one of the more impactful books I have read on leadership.

Artas Bartas

Radical Candor is a type of a book that is easy to describe but difficult to categorize. Perhaps because it's three very different books masquerading as one. First of all, you can read it as a self-help book wrestling with the question of how to be effective at work without succumbing to the psychological extremes of being a heartless asshole or a notorious people-pleaser. Kim Scott's prescription to care personally about other people, while challenging them directly offers a useful analytical framework for navigating this touchy-feely topic. 

The second part of the book, however, is about something else entirely. I would describe it as field notes of an extremely successful executive. Here Kim Scott uses the Growth/Performance matrix and the Listen > Clarify > Debate > Decide > Persuade > Execute > Learn circle as two concepts guiding successful managers through the turbulent waters of working in a startup. The writing is tedious, but the advice is sound, and Kim Scott shows very clearly how to use these approaches to organize your calendar and improve your leadership style.

One nice thing about this second part was that it helped me realize what a great boss I have at work. We already follow most of the prescriptions made by the book, be it 1:1 meetings to discuss personal stuff or brainstorming sessions to debate big ideas. 

And yet, there is also something depressing about this book. For context, Kim Scott is a highly decorated Silicon Valley veteran: she has worked at Google and Apple, closely advised Twitter and Dropbox, and is on the first name terms with some of the Valley's most prominent shakers and movers. As a result, when she describes workplace interactions, reflects on the business dilemmas she faced, and holds up practical examples, she is also taking us on an anthropological expedition into Silicon Valley's management thinking.

Some part of me says that there is no right or wrong when it comes to culture and Kim Scott is not accountable for the effect the Valley had on the rest of the world in the last several decades. But then there is another, more visceral part, which places Radical Candor in the context of the news and stories coming out of today's America. And the contrast between these two worlds could not have been more jarring. 

Take Dick Costolo, a former CEO of Twitter, who is featured prominently in the book and receives nothing but gushing praise from Kim Scott. It makes you wonder, how could such a likable, idealistic manager allow Twitter to evolve into a festering nest of bullies, misogynists, and neo-Nazis? Or take the working culture. Kim Scott holds up long hours and unforgiving schedules of the Valley companies as the norm but then points out how important it is for her to maintain her sanity by taking regular vacations. Or how much it meant to her to have special care and facilities for expecting mothers at the Google campus in Mountain View.

To put it differently, the type of organizational experience Kim Scott draws on is unique: a lot of problems that appear in the book are solved by simply throwing money at them. Need to build trust with your reports who are scattered throughout the world? No problem, just fly them in to Mountain View. Someone is dealing with family issues? Just put them on a paid leave, until they recover. Or, in a particularly comic example, what do you do when you discover stray underwear in the lounging area during a staff meeting? Just ban the lounging area! OK, I might be an insouciant European here, but if you create a workplace where people routinely spend 60-80 hours in the office, isn't it normal to expect that some of them will satisfy their passions right there in the office? I mean they hardly have any time to go on dates. 

To sum it up, Radical Candor puts forward a sound message, being honest and forthcoming in your dealing with colleagues leads to more effective teams and more satisfying work. It's just might be more challenging to implement this advice in practice if you are not working for a Valley-based unicorn company.

Chad McElligott &
Radical Candor by Kim Scott

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Chad McElligott &Radical Candor by Kim Scott

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Chad McElligott &
Radical Candor by Kim Scott