Radical Candor

Our Main Take-Away:

The idea of building radically candid relationships through personal caring and directly challenging your team is explained in great detail in this book.

Reasons to Read:

Radical Candor is a how-to guide on building honest, respectful and straightforward relationships with your team. The first half of the book focuses on the main components:

1. Build Radically Candid Relationships (bringing your whole self to work) 2. Get, Give and Encourage Guidance (creating a culture of open communications) 3. Understand What Motivates Each Person on Your Team (helping people take a step in the direction of their dreams) 4. Drive Results Collaboratively (telling people what to do doesn’t work)

In discussing radical candor, Ms. Scott categorizes feedback into four separate quadrants: Radical Candor, Ruinous Empathy, Manipulative Insincerity and Obnoxious Aggression. Her description of these quadrants is uncomplicated and helps the reader understand the gift of feedback, and how to effectively administer as well as solicit and receive it effectively.

The Author also defines and illustrates the differences between a “Rock Star” – that stable, content, fulfilled team member who loves and does their job with excellent performance yet low growth trajectory, and a “Super Star” – that ambitious change agent looking for new opportunities and challenge. It’s important to have both in you organization.

The second half of the book provide tools and techniques for establishing relationships of trust, ideas for getting, giving and encouraging praise & criticism, techniques for avoiding random burnout and things you can do to get stuff done together and faster.

All of this is wrapped up with real-life examples of when the Author has had successes as well as failures. It is a book filled with useful and practical content and unfolds in a very down-to-earth way.

*Caution – the author uses a few cuss words from time-to-time to illustrate her points.

Amazon Summary:

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.

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.