Radical Candor

Books · Management

(Read this in May 2019, adding to Notion in Feb 2021)

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Radical Candor

CHAPTER 1: Radical Candor

Everytime you think that you have something more “important” to do than listen to people, always remember that it’s your job. Being the boss constitutes a lot of emotional labour.

What do bosses (or leaders/managers) do?

• They’re responsible for results. They achieve these results not by doing all of the work themselves, but by guiding the people on their teams. Bosses guide a team to achieve results.

A. Guidance (Praise and criticism)

• Guidance is often called feedback. People dread feedback. Both praise (which can feel patronizing) and specially criticism (what if the person gets defensive/bursts into tears? What if the person refuses to acknowledge the criticism? What if she can’t figure out how to solve the problem? What if there isn’t any simple way to solve the problem?)

B. Team-building (keep team cohesive)

• Building a cohesive team means finding the right people for the right roles. Hiring, firing, promoting.
• But once you have the team built, how do you keep them motivated?

C. Results (drive results collaboratively)

• It’s harder than it should be to get things done
• Sometimes, things move too slowly and other times things move too fast
• OR, teams are on auto-pilot. They seem to be doing the same things quarter to quarter, even when the results suck

How do you establish a trusting relationship with each person who reports directly to you? Here’s what gets in the way:

1. Power dynamics
2. Fear of conflict
3. Worry about what’s appropriate/professional
4. Fear of losing credibility
5. Time pressure

Radical Candor: Care Personally and Challenge Directly. Only works when the receiver thinks it’s made in good faith

1. Care Personally: Be more than just professional – give a damn! Show more than just your work self and encourage everyone else who works for you to do the same. Care about people are humans, not just as workers
2. Challenge Directly: Clearly tell people when and why their work isn’t good enough. Delivering hard feedback and holding a high bar for results is the obvious job of any manager. But it’s hard – because challenging people generally pisses them off. But challenging people is the only way to show people that you do care as the boss (if you didn’t care, you would just fire them)

The key to getting everyone to get direct enough is by communicating the results and feedback clearly enough so that there is no room for interpretation. Implicit with candor is that you are simply offering your view of what’s going on, and that you expect people to offer theirs. If it turns out that you’re the one that got it wrong, you want to know.

Why Care Personally?

What you can do and a faceless corporation/state can’t do is give a damn. Part of your job is to figure out how to create more joy and less misery at work. Make sure that everyone feels comfortable with who they really are at work. Bring your whole self to work. Show some vulnerability to the people who report to you (just admit when you’re having a bad day and create space for people to do the same).

If you feel that you’re better or smarter than those who work for you - it’ll kill the relationship. There are few things more damaging to a human relationship than a sense of superiority.

Only when you care about the whole person (and not just their work) can you build a relationship

Why Challenge Directly?

If no-one is ever mad at you, it means that you’re probably not challenging them enough. The key is in how you handle the anger. When what you say hurts, acknowledge the other person’s pain. Eliminate the phrase “don’t take it personally” from your vocabulary - it’s insulting. Instead offer to help fix the problem, but don’t pretend that it’s not a problem just to make someone else feel better.

—> Invite people to challenge you just as directly as you are challenging them

“You think we’re fighting, and I think we’re finally talking”

NOTE: don’t nitpick. Challenge directly only for things that matter

CHAPTER 2: Get, Give, and Encourage Guidance

Create a culture of open communication. Operationalize good guidance by being very direct with what you mean. (Care Personally and Challenge Directly).

Care Personally + Challenge Directly = Radical Candor —> leads to growth (profound change)

Only Challenge Directly = Obnoxious Aggression —> leads to defensiveness (little change)

Only Care Personally = Ruinous Empathy —> leads to ignorance (no change)

None = Manipulative insincerity —> leads to mistrust (no change)

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Offer radically candid praise (I admire that about you) and criticism (to keep winning, criticise the wins)

When you criticise someone without taking some time to establish that you care, your guidance feels obnoxiously aggressive

Obnoxious aggression gets great results in the short term, but leaves a trail of dead bodies in the long run

Never personalise either criticism or praise. Talk about what went wrong/well. Not internal attributes (because internal attributes are often immutable)

When giving praise, be specific and thorough so that you understand who did what. Be as specific with praise as you are with criticism. Dig into the details.

When a tough decision has to be made – ask people to be radically candid with you, first. Start by getting feedback, not by dishing it out. Then, when you do start giving it, start by praise not criticism. When you do get to criticism, make sure you understand where the perilous border between radical candor and obnoxious aggression is.

“Don’t dish it out before you show that you can take it“

Just as important as soliciting criticism is to encourage it among your team-members.

How long do you spend making sure all the facts are right before you criticise somebody?

How long do you spend making sure all the facts are right before you praise somebody?

Ideally, it should be the same for both.

“Your work is shit” - this is the border between radical candor and obnoxious aggression

• It’s not that you are not good enough. It’s that your work is not good enough
• Still, this is right on the border. Best not to say it

“Saying you are sloppy” is way less helpful than saying “You’ve been working nights and weekends, and it’s starting to take a toll on your logic and your ability to catch mistakes”

You have to give feedback in a way that doesn’t cause people to question your confidence in their abilities, but still leaves no room for interpretation

How to criticize

1. Focus on the relationship first
2. Ask for criticism before giving it, and offer more praise than criticism
3. Be humble, helpful, offer guidance in-person and immediately
4. Praise in public, criticise in private
5. Don’t personalize — make it clear that the problem is not due to some unfixable personality problem

“I don’t care about who’s right – I just care about getting to the right answer“

CHAPTER 3 - Understand what motivates each person on your team

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The people who want to be on a high growth trajectory are unlikely to do well in a “business-as-usual” job, and vice-versa. Play horses for courses. Also remember that high/low-growth is not permanent and will change as people’s priorities change.

Keep your top performers top of mind (both top “rockstars” and “superstars”)

• One of the top mistakes that bosses make is to ignore the people that do the best work (because they don’t want to “micromanage“ or the best people don’t need them)
• Time spent with the best people drives results much more than time spent with people who are failing

Designate rockstars as teachers and gurus —> best way to create leverage in your organization. Too many people hire people for training who they would never hire in an actual job. Or worse, they put people they would have otherwise fired as trainers.

Keep superstars challenged, and always be prepared for when they will move on. Give them more opportunities, even when they sometimes seem like more work than is possible for one person to do. But make sure you don’t become too dependent on them.

Lies managers tell themselves to stop firing low performers?

1. It will get better - to make sure that this is not a lie, as yourself - how will it get better. What are you/the person in question do differently?
2. Somebody is better than nobody - but it’s better to have a hole in your team than an asshole
3. Transfer is the answer
4. It’s bad for morale (it’s not!!)

CHAPTER 4 - Drive results collaboratively

Achieve collaboratively what you can never achieve individually

Telling people what to do doesn’t work

“If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up people to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks. Rather, end them to long for the endless immensity of the sea”

But this doesn’t always work.

Make sure anyone can suggest an idea. Then, make sure that the idea is framed in a way that most can understand. Next, debate the idea vigorously and refine it in a small team. Lastly, introduce it to the larger team.

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Cycle this quickly. Don’t skip a step (that’ll cause wasted time in the future). Also don’t allow a step to drag on too long.

Challenge others, and insist that they challenge you back. Strong opinions, weakly held. Explicitly invite people to poke holes in your ideas.

Create a culture of listening and openness. Explicitly ask people who don’t talk at meetings to speak up. Tell people who talk too much to stop hogging the limelight.

As the boss, you’re the editor. Not the author.

Help people nurture their ideas before they get bruised in debate

Debate takes time and emotional energy. But lack of debate takes more time and emotional energy in the long run

1. Keep the conversation about ideas, not egos
2. Create an obligation to dissent
3. Pause, when there’s too much emotion or exhaustion
4. Use humour and have fun — it sets the mood for what follows

Chapter 5: Relationships

Establish trust with your direct reports.

Stay centered — you can’t give a damn about others if you can’t give a damn about yourself

• health/fitness
• Sleep
• Food
• Family

Put the things you need to do for yourself on a calendar, just like you would an important meeting or deadline

Stay on an equal footing with people who report to you. Relinquish unilateral authority. You still have to break ties and set goals, but don’t try and be a dictator

Art and dangers of socialising at work. Big grand “retreats” are hardly useful. Having informal hikes and meeting each other’s families/significant otherwise does a much better job of team bonding. 2 dangers:

1. Even non mandatory events can feel mandatory
2. Booze can land you in dangerous territory

Chapter 6 - Guidance

Criticise yourself publicly. Ask for feedback publicly (is there anything I can do or stop doing to be easier to work with?)

Employees won’t feel safe to speak up unless you highlight that doing so is an expectation, and that they would be rewarded

Prove to the team that you will fix problems rather than shoot the messenger

Be humble — both with delivering praise and criticism.

Give impromptu guidance (in meetings). It’s far better than structured guidance because you give it as soon as an idea is raised. Guidance has a short half life

Keep slack times between meetings, or be willing to be late

If you keep feedback in for too long, it’ll eventually explode in a way that makes you look irrational, harm your relationship with the other person, or both

When praising, reply all. When criticising, reply only to one person and ask them to reply all