Radical Candor, by Kim Scott

Part 1: The theory

Chapter 1: The role of the boss and radically candid relationships

The responsibilities of a boss:

• Providing guidance to your direct reports
• Building your Team
• Producing Results

Your relationships with your reports determine whether you can do that. And they are what will give your work meaning beyond the results you achieve

Radical Candor is a framework for building good relationships. It consists of Caring Personally and Challenging Directly (i.e. not shying away from hard feedback)

You have to, HAVE TO relinquish unilateral control over your team, over decision making

Chapter 2: giving and getting feedback in a radically candid way

You want your team to criticize you, you want to be able to criticize your team, and you want your team to be able to criticize each other. Same for praise.

Give feedback as soon as you can, make it tangible, don’t personalize it (make it about the action not the person).

Start by asking for feedback, then transition into giving it.

Chapter 3: Your teams motivations and growth trajectories

You need to understand how your direct reports work life fits into their life goals, what motivates them

Forget potential as a measure, focus on growth trajectory

You have Rockstars and Superstars: people on gradual growth and rapid growth trajectories

Paths are not permanent, people can switch

Chapter 4: Collaborate for results

Don’t tell people what to do. Use the Getting Stuff Done wheel to help your team decide what to do for themselves.

Don’t dive right into doing, cycle through the steps quickly (but don’t skip any)

1. Listen: Embrace awkward silences. Let people fill silences, or throw out points of view for people to push back against
2. Clarify: create a safe space for people to flesh out and think through their ideas before taking it to others
3. Debate: a rock polisher, remove rough edges through friction. Keep ego out of it.
4. Decide: not necessarily you but the best person. Make sure they get facts, not recommendations
5. Persuade people who weren’t in the loop. explaining isn’t enough, you have to sell it.
6. Execute: Make sure your team is blocking out time to actually work. Make any meetings effective
7. Learn: be disciplined and dispassionate about admitting mistakes.

Part 2: Tools and techniques

Chapter 5: Relationships

Sort yourself out first. If you’re not happy, you can’t build good relationships. Find what de-stresses you and calendarize it

Always be looking for places where you can give away direct control, to give your teams agency You build relationships away from the desk, but in working hours: picnics, walks, coffees. (Mostly) Avoid ‘optional’ after hours stuff - it can feel mandatory Make sure you know peoples boundaries individually, and respect them, physically and emotionally Trust is built over time, don’t assume too much right off the bat. Start with 1:1 meetings.

You don’t need to agree with others values, but you do need to respect them Acknowledge others emotions, don’t ignore them, and don’t try and manage them. Don’t tell people how to feel. Ask questions and listen Keep a box of tissues near, but not at, your desk - the walk to fetch them will give a useful pause if things get emotional Walk, don’t sit, when you’re having tough conversations.

Chapter 6: giving and soliciting feedback

Soliciting feedback

• Never get defensive when you are criticised, never criticise the criticism
• You criticise your team in private, they criticise you in public. Find the person who criticises you most and encourage them to do it in team meetings.
• Have a go to starting question. Something like ‘is there anything I could do or stop doing that would make me easier to work with?’
• Getting your team to criticize you can be hard at first. The uncomfortable silence is your most powerful weapon. It will start off ‘everything is fine, thanks for asking’. Don’t say ‘I’m glad to hear that’. Count to six. Ask again and again
• Look for body language clues, point out when what they are at odds with what is being said.
• Clarify what was said: ‘so what I hear you saying is…’
• Reward criticism, make changes as quickly as possible.
• If you disagree with the criticism, find something in it to agree with to show you’re open to it. Check for understanding, then explain what you think. You must MUST Schedule time to talk about it again
• Explicitly gauge the guidance you receive. Keep a tally of praises and criticisms (no criticisms is bad)
• Create a concrete mechanism for people to criticise: a box with a slit, and address the items at meetings. You can phase this out as people get better at standing up and just saying it
• Never allow backstabbing, never let someone criticise someone else behind their back. INSIST they talk to each other, in person, preferably without you there. You can help them come up with a solution

Giving feedback

• Situation, behaviour, impact: describe what you saw, what the person did and the impact you observed. This avoids sweeping statements, abstractions.
• State your intention: “I’m going to describe a problem I see; I may be wrong and if I am I hope you’ll tell me, if I’m not I hope my bringing it up will help you fix it’
• Finding someone else to help (like a training course) is better than helping yourself. Just make the intro and help your DR structure the conversation.
• Give feedback immediately - in the 2-3 mins between meetings. Don’t save it up for catchup meetings
• Feedback in person is by far the best, video call is next best, then phone. Never email or text. You need to see or hear the feedback to your feedback, read the body language
• But immediacy trumps method: if they’re in another city VC them rather than wait a week until you see them in person
• Praise in public, criticise in private. Generally.
• Don’t personalise your feedback, criticise the behaviour never the perceived personality trait
• Get guidance on your guidance: just ask for it. Ask people whether they feel you are moving towards radical candour.
• Be careful about being radically candid with your boss, don’t get yourself fired over it. Same as with your team, start by soliciting. Ask for permission to give guidance.
• There should be no surprises in a formal performance review, nothing new for the recipeints. Start with your direct report giving feedback on you. Write down what you’re going to say before you go in. Give it to them, either before or during the meeting. Spend half the time looking back, half forwards. THEY should come up with the goals. Give ratings after you’ve talked. Give comp info after and separately - otherwise they won’t be able to concentrate

Gender and guidance

• The Abrasiveness Trap: Behaviour which is perceived as competence in men is perceived as abrasiveness in women (by both genders)
• Catch 22: women either change their behaviour and become less effective or don’t - either way they will be less likely to be promoted
• Men manging women: don’t pull punches. Explain the radically candid framework. Basically follow the above guidance for men and women in the same way
• Women being managed: demand criticism. Don’t be the angel of the office to try to show you care personally: baking cookies, getting the copies and suchlike. Don’t write men off if they fall into the trap: point it out to them
• How to avoid the Abrasiveness Trap: Imagine a man doing the same thing and how you would react. Don’t use gendered language: abrasive, shrill, bossy

Chapter 7: Careers and growth

Caring personally in 3 conversations

• Convo 1: life story - goal: learn motivations. Get them to tell you their life from kindergarten up. Respect boundaries, back off if necessary. Focusing on their stories will tell you what they value and their motivations.
• Convo 2: dreams - goal: turn dreams into skills. NOT ‘long term goals’ or ‘career aspirations’, too clinical. Don’t let it turn into a promotion discussion. ‘What do you want the pinnacle of your career to look like’ Turn it into a table with dreams as headers, skills as rows.
• Convo 3: an 18 month plan - how they will get the skills. This is an intimidating step, help them take it.

Challenge directly with a growth management plan once a year

• Match up individual aspirations with team goals, then have conversations to fix misalignments
• Classify people into boxes: good not great, poor but improving, poor and not improving. Do it in 20 minutes. Get one outside perspective
• Write the growth plans: give superstars tough things to stretch them, give rockstars projects, skills to develop
• For the bad who can improve: wrong role? Unclear expectations? Training?
• Bad and not improving: fire them as soon as possible.
• Growth plans should not take more than 15 mins per person if you are thinking about growth regularly enough.

Chapter 8: Results - meetings to make your team more effective

• People’s time is divided between meetings and execution time. You need to make sure the first help and don’t impede the second.
• 1:1’s - these are must do’s, once a week. It’s where you get to know people, listen to them and help them clarify their ideas. They aren’t criticism sessions - criticism is done ‘live’. Keep them informal: coffee or lunch. The agenda is theirs to decide, but you can set expectations (e.g does it need to be a written agenda)
• Staff meetings with your direct reports: how things went last week, share important updates, clarify decisions that need to be made (but don’t actually debate or make the decisions)
• Think time for you: block your calendar, encourage everyone to do the same thing.
• Debate meetings: where your team debates things. Clarify you won’t make a decision here. The product of these is a summary of the facts and issues, and a recommendation to continue the debate or have a …
• Decision meeting.
• Meeting free zones: make sure your team has blocked time to execute
• Walk arounds: spend an hour a week walking round and talking to people. Get in the weeds of what they are doing, helps avoid ‘that’s beneath me’ attitude in you and others.

Getting started - a checklist

• Explain Radical candour to your team. Do it yourself, use stories
• Start soliciting criticism use chapter 6 techniques
• Start the career conversations from chapter 7
• Get your 1:1s running well, get to know your team personally
• ONLY THEN start giving feedback.
• After a while step back and assess, make sure you’re giving and getting good feedback
• Then start staff decision and debate meetings (Chapter 8)
• Start focusing on guidance between team members
• Fight meeting proliferation
• Start growth management plans
• Start your team gauging each other’s guidance
• Start expanding to other areas: hiring, firing, promotions, performance reviews