Paperback
Published May 26, 2018 by PAN MACMILLAN U.K, Pan.
Radical Candor is a simple idea: to be a good boss, you have to Care Personally at the same time that you Challenge Directly. When you challenge without caring it's obnoxious aggression; when you care without challenging it's ruinous empathy. When you do neither it's manipulative insincerity.
This simple framework can help you build better relationships at work, and fulfill your three key responsibilities as a leader: creating a culture of feedback (praise and criticism), building a cohesive team, and achieving results you're all proud of.
Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Taken from years of the author's experience, and distilled clearly giving actionable lessons to the reader; it shows managers how to be successful while retaining their humanity, finding meaning in their job, and creating an environment where people both love their work and their …
Radical Candor is a simple idea: to be a good boss, you have to Care Personally at the same time that you Challenge Directly. When you challenge without caring it's obnoxious aggression; when you care without challenging it's ruinous empathy. When you do neither it's manipulative insincerity.
This simple framework can help you build better relationships at work, and fulfill your three key responsibilities as a leader: creating a culture of feedback (praise and criticism), building a cohesive team, and achieving results you're all proud of.
Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Taken from years of the author's experience, and distilled clearly giving actionable lessons to the reader; it shows managers how to be successful while retaining their humanity, finding meaning in their job, and creating an environment where people both love their work and their colleagues.
I don't know if I'll ever go into management but this was still a useful read. I don't think I've ever had a great manager. At least now I know what a great manager looks like.
Generally, the practical advice in Radical Candor is solid. As someone who is relatively new to management work, much of the common mistakes the book mentions was very revealing. I noticed a lot of things that I can improve in my work and the book gave me some good techniques to do so. For this I would recommend it.
However there’s a few things that stuck out badly. When talking about issues around gender, Kim Scott brings up the term “gender politics” without really explaining what she means by that and after one short anecdote concludes that “We must end gender politics”. Without any explanation this term encompasses a lot of things. For example I’d say working towards equal pay, unbiased hiring and promotion processes as well as access to reproductive and gender affirming healthcare are all issues of “gender politics”. Claiming that all those efforts should end with such …
Generally, the practical advice in Radical Candor is solid. As someone who is relatively new to management work, much of the common mistakes the book mentions was very revealing. I noticed a lot of things that I can improve in my work and the book gave me some good techniques to do so. For this I would recommend it.
However there’s a few things that stuck out badly. When talking about issues around gender, Kim Scott brings up the term “gender politics” without really explaining what she means by that and after one short anecdote concludes that “We must end gender politics”. Without any explanation this term encompasses a lot of things. For example I’d say working towards equal pay, unbiased hiring and promotion processes as well as access to reproductive and gender affirming healthcare are all issues of “gender politics”. Claiming that all those efforts should end with such a strong generalization is very strange.
The book also draws a false equivalence when describing “anti-gay jokes” and “anti-conservative jokes” in the workplace as both being equally inappropriate. Political affiliation is a person’s choice as opposed to one’s sexuality and discrimination as well as violence targeting people for their sexuality is a very real threat while this is not the case for conservative politics (which in fact are directly responsible for much of the discrimination against LGBT people).
