Radical Candor Part I – Book Summary
Radical Candor by Kim Scott
What is Radical Candor? It’s when you are able to “Care Personally” and “Challenge Directly”
Care Personally – It is not enough to care only about people’s ability to perform a job. It’s about caring, and sharing more than just your work self, and encouraging everyone who reports to you to do the same. It’s about bringing your whole self to work.
One reason why people fail to “care personally” is the injunction to “keep it professional.” To most people, being professional means: show up to work on time, do your job, don’t show feelings. The problem is that we are all human beings, with human feelings, and when we feel we must repress who we really are to earn a living, we become alienated. The desire to go to work disappears.
In addition to professionalism, some people, once they become a boss, begin to feel they’re better or smarter than the people who work for them. There are few things more damaging to human relationships than a sense of superiority.
Caring personally is not about memorizing birthdays and names of family members. It’s about acknowledging that we are all people with lives and aspirations that extend beyond those related to our shared work. It’s about finding time for real conversations.
Challenge Directly – Challenging others and encouraging them to challenge you helps build trusting relationships because it shows
- You care enough to point out both the things that aren’t going well and those that are
- You are willing to admit when you’re wrong and that you are committed to fixing mistakes that you or others have made
You have to accept that sometimes people will be mad at you. In fact, if nobody is ever mad at you, you probably aren’t challenging your team enough. The key, as in any relationship, is how you handle the anger.
Remove the phrase “don’t take it personally” from your vocabulary – it’s insulting.
The other hard part of challenging directly is inviting people to challenging you, just as directly you are challenging them. Authoritarian leaders want a team that will listen, and do what they say, so they have a hard time with this.
Radical Candor is NOT about nitpicking – A good rule of thumb for any relationship is to leave three unimportant things unsaid each day. It is also not about schmoozing.
If you feel it’s not possible to be Radically Candid with your boss and your peers, I’d recommend finding a different kind of work environment if at all possible.