1-Sentence-Summary: Radical Candor will teach you how to connect with people at work, push them to be their best, know when and how to fire them, and create an environment of trust and innovation in the workplace.
Read in: 4 minutes
Favorite quote from the author:
I’ve had nearly 20 different jobs since I was 14-years-old, and even more managers and bosses than I can remember. Each one was different, but I learned something from all of them.
Some let me do whatever I wanted and I had to deal with the pitfalls of my own oversight. Others were too mean and demanding, which brought me down, hindered my progress, and ultimately made me leave.
The best leaders, though, have always been those who helped me get closer to reaching my full potential by frequently lifting me up and offering constructive criticism.
Now as I transition to becoming a leader in various avenues myself, I have to ask myself, maybe just like you do now, “how can I be kind and help people improve?”
Well, we’re in luck because Kim Malone Scott’s book Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity will teach us exactly that! You’ll be amazed by how helpful this new outlook on leadership is, and how it can even make managing people a little easier, too.
Here are 3 of the most insightful lessons about leadership from the book:
- To develop radical candor, you must learn to be honest and direct without offending people.
- Collaborative leadership is far more effective than just barking orders.
- Get to know your employee’s real motivations by having honest conversations.
Let’s dive right into these lessons and discover how you can start becoming the boss you always wished you had!
Lesson 1: Radical candor means being direct and honest with people while taking care not to offend them.
If you’re like me you might be wondering what radical candor even is. Let’s see what the definitions are, according to Google:
Radical: far-reaching or thorough.
Candor: being open and honest in expression.
In other words, radical candor is the quality of being thoroughly open and honest with others. When it comes to work and management, this means balancing care for your team members with helping them know where they need to improve.
Developing this skill starts with building a personal relationship with each person you work with. Show that you care by being open and talking about things other than business.
As you continue working with individuals, having radical candor will require you to challenge them to do better when they’re not doing what they should. It means being honest with them about where they are at, even if it’s not easy.
An example from the author’s experience working for Google perfectly encompasses how to do this right. Scott had just given a presentation and her boss came up afterward to compliment how well she did and give some feedback.
Interestingly, the way her boss delivered the constructive criticism was to wrap it within a compliment. She told Scott to not say “um” as much, explaining that it can make people sound stupid.
But she added that this would be a shame in Scott’s case because she was so smart.
Lesson 2: Barking orders doesn’t work; you must collaborate with your team members if you want to be efficient.
Have you ever thought about how exciting it is that you get to work around so many brilliant people? And if you’re a leader it’s really fun to get to lead the discussions and work closely with each individual.
The best leaders know that this is how to get stuff done. Bad managers, on the other hand, just try to boss people around.
Steve Jobs gave us the perfect example of what the author calles collaborative leadership. He knew that he wasn’t always going to be right, so he challenged his employees to speak their mind when they disagreed with him.
He even got angry once because an employee who had given up on convincing Jobs to change his mind ended up being right! Jobs had to let the man know that he was hired to make sure that Jobs didn’t make mistakes.
Here’s the author’s four steps to reproducing this collaborative leadership yourself:
- Listen to people’s ideas and create a safe space for them to speak openly.
- Let your team have the time to refine their ideas.
- Have debates to let all options come to the table and then decide on one.
- You as the manager must present the idea to your superiors to have it implemented, then make it happen once they do.
Lesson 3: Honest conversations with your employees are the best way to get to know their real motivations, which will allow you to support them.
Most people have big aspirations. If you as a leader aren’t harnessing the powerful motivation these can provide, you’re not reaching your team’s full potential.
To be the kind of boss that people really care about and that makes a difference, you need to learn what people want out of life and help them get it. This means talking with and listening to them so you can become invested in paving the way for them to reach their dreams.
When he was director of sales at Google Russ Laraway would have career talks with employees. In one of these, Russ could tell that his employee Sarah wasn’t being fully open with him.
After asking what other visions for the future she had, Sarah revealed she wanted to own a farm. Now they could re-focus on what would really inspire her and bring out her full potential.
The author teaches a few types of conversations you can have to bring out people’s true motivations:
- The life story, in which you ask about people’s entire life up to this point.
- The dream job, to let individuals express their biggest career aspirations.
- The 18-month plan, which involves exploring with people where they want to be in the near future.
Try each of these and with the power of radical candor your whole team wil be reaching new heights in no time!
Radical Candor Review
As one who’s had both good and bad bosses in the past, I really liked Radical Candor and wish that more people knew about it. I think the core of this book is that it’s really important to just be open with people. Having that skill, combined with truly caring, is the real secret to getting the most out of everybody.
Who would I recommend the Radical Candor summary to?
The 37-year-old that just became a manager and feels lost, the 53-year-old executive that’s losing employees faster than they can blink and wants to keep people on for longer, and anybody that wants to become a great leader whether at work or elsewhere.
Last Updated on January 27, 2023
