Radical Candor - Kim Scott

Intro

• Her anecdote about Larry was that he loved candor whenever he detected it. He craved it because he thought it was productive.
  • (The anecdote made him seem like a gracious leader: when she criticized his motivations in an email thread to the L-team, and she was gravely mistaken, but he didn't reprimand her for it.)
• High quality relationships with your direct reports trickles down into the general culture. Relationships don't scale, but culture does.

Overview of the framework (chap 1)

• There's a four quadrant image in the book:

              (care personally)
                    |
    Ruinous empathy | Radical candor
                    |
    —---------------------------------- (challenge directly)
                    |
    Manipulative    | Obnoxious
    insincerity     | Aggression
                    |
  

• "It's called management, and it's your job." It requires a lot of "emotional labor."

• Kim prefers the label "boss" to manager or leader.

• The boss is responsible for results. A boss guides a team to achieve results.

• Framework

  • Dimension 1: "care personally". Past work — care for them as a human being.
  • Dimension 2: "challenge directly". Hard feedback, high standards.

• Both together build trust.

• Bosses can easily make reportees feel inferior, as pawns on a chess board. Being a boss is a job, not a value judgement.

  • All leaders should regularly be doing "some of the dirty work". They're not above other people in the company. Like doing the dishes when you see them piled up in the office kitchen.

• Avoid "robotic professionalism": "bring your whole self to work". Don't repress feelings because of the "keep it professional" mantra.

• Care about the "whole person": what motivates them in and beyond work. What scares them.

• "When what you say hurts, acknowledge the other person's pain. Don't pretend it doesn't hurt or say it 'shouldn't hurt' — just show that you care. Eliminate the phrase 'don't take it personally' from your vocabulary — it's insulting."

• What radical candor is not:

  • Gratuitously harsh. This isn't caring personally; it's being a jerk.
  • License to nitpick. Only communicate critically and deeply on the important stuff.

• When delivering hard feedback or decisions, voice to yourself and possibly to the other person how you think they may feel, so your recognition of their emotions is explicit. E.g. "You have a new manager over you... you may feel X, but really I think Y of you."

Encourage guidance (chap 2)

• Anecdotes from the book:
  • "You sound stupid": how Sheryl Sandberg told Kim she sounds stupid when saying "uhm" too much, and got Kim a speech coach.
  • "It's not mean, it's clear!": what a stranger said when showing a dog owner how to make the dog sit when near traffic.
• Giving praise
  • Be specific, and say why you feel this way. E.g. "it makes me want to work harder, and I can see it improving the team.".
  • (See also the concept of "descriptive praise" from the book "How to Talk So Kids Will Listen")
• Don't personalize. Externalize and criticize the behavior, not the person's core. Very hard and important to do in spousal relationships.
• Obnoxious aggression
  • This is the second best style, besides radical candor, and is why competent assholes can still be effective bosses.
• Manipulative insincerity
  • This is selfish. Don't hold your punches because you desire to be liked. It's insincere.
• Ruinous empathy
  • Only giving positive feedback is suspect. It does not build trust, and creates an environment where people feel there are things which are going unsaid, below the surface, with both their boss and peers.
• Benefits of radical candor
  • Broadcasts humility, if you frame it as "I know I"m wrong a lot and want to know when, so tell me."
  • You will get lots more data.
  • It builds trust with your team.
• Balancing praise and criticism: try to have more praise, because it's motivating and reinforces good direction. But avoid padding in weak/trivial praise. It comes off as insincere.
• Criticism: must make it clear that the work itself is not good enough, while still reinforcing your confidence in the person's abilities.
• "In my experience, people who are more concerned with getting to the right answer than with being right make the best bosses."

Understand what motivates each person on your team (chap 3)

• Vocab used: rockstars (people with a gradual growth trajectory), superstars (people with a steep growth trajectory)
  • People fall into these categories at different times in their lives.
  • A good team needs both kinds of people.
  • It might be due to life events, like an infirmed relative, having a kid, needing money for a house.
  • Recognize the whole person: in total, they may be growing a lot (e.g. having kids) even if they are on a gradual trajectory at work.
• General strategy: "help everyone move in the direction of their dreams."
  • Don't feel like you need to provide purpose as a boss. It's over-stepping, and will feel like BS.
  • Get to know each direct report well enough to understand how each one derives meaning from their work.
• Be a partner, not an absentee manager or micromanager
  • Help them make their work better.
  • Don't ignore your good people, giving them complete autonomy.
  • "Managers often devote more time to those who are struggling than to those who are succeeding. But that's not fair to those who are succeeding — nor is it good for the team as a whole. Seeing what truly exceptional performance looks like will help those who are failing to see more clearly what's expected of them."
• The top performers probably crave recognition the most
  • This does not mean promotion. That often puts people in roles they're not a top performer at.
  • Ways to provide recognition: compensation, domain expert designation, teaching role.
  • Avoid an "up or out" framing. You want long-tenured domain experts, and they should feel recognized for accumulating experience. E.g. tenure awards, guru status.
• Don't get overly dependent on top-performers. "I often thought of these people as shooting stars — my team and I were lucky to have them in our orbit for a time, but trying to hold them there was futile." So ensure they're working on making themselves replaceable.
• Management and growth should not be conflated. Recognize "potential", not "leadership potential." You need a strong IC ladder to handle superstar ICs.
• Managing the middle players
  • "Your job as a boss is to set and uphold a quality bar." Lowering it is "ruinous empathy."
  • "Generally, by the time one of your direct report's poor performance has come to your attention, it's been driving their peers nuts for a long time."
  • A common lie managers tell themselves is "it will get better". But ask yourself in detail: "how? And will it be enough?"
  • When firing, try reframing the problem to both you, and the person you're firing: "it's not the person who sucks, it's the job that sucks — at least for this person. What job would be great for that person? Can I help by making an introduction?"
    • E.g. a good "launch and iterate" person from Google joining Apple and failing there.

Drive results collaboratively (chap 4)

• Relentless focus on "getting it right": "I didn't say Steve Jobs is always right... I said he always gets it right in the end."
• Kim has a framework of "get stuff done" with phases: Listen, clarify, debate, decide, persuade, execute, learn.
  • She argues that this non-autocratic style allows people to collaboratively solve big problems, and it's how Google and Apple operate.
  • (To me, it sounds inefficient and bureaucratic.)
• Creating a culture of listening: give the quiet ones a voice, especially in meetings dominated by a few vocal speakers.
• Clarify: when an idea is nascent, it can die easily if it moves into the debate stage. Instead, require that it be "clarified" (fleshed out) so it can stand up to debate.
  • "You need to push them to communicate with such precision and clarity that it's impossible not to grasp their argument."
• Keep the conversation focused on ideas, not people. Avoid phrases which attribute ownership to ideas.
• Create an "obligation to dissent"
  • In heated debates, ask each team to argue the other's side, so they can see both sides of the argument.
  • "When people know that they will be asked to argue another person's point, they will naturally listen more attentively."
  • Consider even funny props like an "ego coat check" outside the door of the meeting room that people can use as they enter.
• Be clear when debate will end. It can reduce stress and improve clarity of the process to separate the debate meeting from the decision meeting, or to time-box the debate.
• "Kick-ass bosses often do not decide themselves, but rather create a clear decision-making process that empowers people closest to the facts to make as many decisions as possible." This improves both decision quality and morale.
• The decider should get facts, not recommendations. Asking for a person's recommendation carries the risk that the person's ego gets tied to it, which can lead to a political situation.
• Go to direct sources of facts. Deep dive on some decisions, to stay connected to the org.
  • Stevve Jobs would often go straight to the engineer who had the fact, rather than through their boss.
• Persuading
  • This part of the work is necessary because only a small subset of the broader group were part of the "listen, clarify, debate, decide" portions. For the whole org to execute the decision, they must believe in it.
  • Aristotle, basic requirements of rhetoric:
    • "To be legitimately persuasive, a speaker must address the audience's emotions, but also establish the credibility and share the logic of the argument. These are the elements of persuasion that have stood the test of time."
  • Logic: show your work.
  • Keep the "dirt under your fingernails" to remain credible. Always maintain some IC work.
• Answering questions at all-hands meetings
  • How well you answer these has huge leverage on the culture.
  • For Dick Costello, improv classes were a great way to equip him to find a way to have fun answering all the awkward questions at all-hands meetings instead of dreading them.
• Avoid the pressure to be consistent. "When the facts change, I change my mind."

Relationships (chap 5)

• "Work-life integration"
  • Work and life both improve each other. It's not a balance or a zero-sum game.
  • "A very successful entrepreneur I know went to the gym both before and after work during crunch times."
• Stay centered:
  • Being rested, balanced, and fulfilled at home and at work allows you to spare the energy to care about others personally.
  • Don't blow off those meetings with yourself or let others schedule over them any more than you would a meeting with your boss.
• Trust needs to be built: with new reports, have frequent 1:1s, annual career conversations. Don't start off by assuming there's lots of trust.
• Allow for mental-health days
  • If you have a terrible emotional situation in your life, stay home for a day. You don't want to spread it around any more than you would a cold.
• Walk, don't sit, for difficult conversations
  • "When planning a difficult conversation, try taking a walk instead of sitting and talking. When you're walking, the emotions are less on display and less likely to start resonating in a destructive way. Also, walking and looking in the same direction often feels more collaborative than sitting across the table."

Guidance (chap 6)

• "You are the exception to the 'criticize in private' rule of thumb."
• "The bigger the team, the more leverage you get out of reacting well to criticism in private."
• If you ask for feedback and the person didn't see it coming, they may brush you off. If someone says "nothing comes to mind", give them 15 seconds to think of something. "I'm going to wait for 15 seconds while you think."
• Beware of explaining yourself after hearing criticism. It cheapens the feedback.
• Idea: "management fix-it weeks." People log annoying management issues, they're voted on, and these bugs are assigned to managers.
• Be humble. It disarms their defenses. Acknowledge that you may be wrong.
• Situation, behavior, impact: this feedback construct is helpful in that it's not categorical, and so doesn't question the person's intelligence. Comes across as less arrogant.
• Don't personalize: say "that's wrong", not "you're wrong".
• As part of criticism, "find a way to help them clarify the challenge they're facing — that clarity is a gift that will enable them to move forward." This alone is very helpful; you don't have to do the work for them.
• Give feedback immediately
  • "Putting criticism off is simply daunting and exhausting. It's much more effective and less burdensome to just say it right away!". Because both sides lose hold of the concrete example, and so you can't use the "situation, behavior, impact" framework.
  • Give the feedback in 2-3 minutes between meetings, so that you don't need an explicit meeting. It should feel like brushing your teeth.
• "Avoid black holes": if someone is doing research for you or building you a deck, that they won't present themselves, funnel feedback/praise about the deck to the person who made it.
• Give guidance in-person
  • "The clarity of your guidance gets measured at the other person's ear, not at your mouth." In-person allows you to confirm, via body language, their level of understanding.
• Praise in public, criticize in private.
• Biasing feedback for women
  • "If you're a boss, it's your job to manage your fear of tears and not pull your punches when criticizing women. Criticism is a gift, and you need to give it in equal measure to your male and female direct reports." Holding back or softening criticism disadvantages female workers.
  • Don't use gendered language: do you use words like "abrasive", "shrill", "screechy", or "bossy", that are rarely used to describe a man?
• Prevent backstabbing: before being an intermediary, ask the person who is giving critical feedback about someone to first have a discussion with that person directly, without you involved.

Team (chap 7)

• How to understand what motivates each person: have three 45m conversations:
  • 1. "Tell me your life story starting from kindergarten." Inquire about the reason they made decisions in their big moments of change. This reveals motivators much better than abstract discussions. This is all personal, but to "care personally", you must know each other personally. Respect boundaries as needed.
  • 2. "What are your dreams." Their description of work/life at the ideal. This is more telling and human than "what are your professional aspirations?" Challenge inconsistencies with their stated values. Break down which skills are needed for each dream, and action items for developing them.
  • 3. 18-month plan: the translation of current work to future dreams is inspiring. Focus on the next area to master or lesson to be learned, and how the role can be changed to get there quickest.
• Reward your rock stars
  • Avoid promotion/status obsession
    • Announcing promotions breeds unhealthy competition for the wrong things: documentation of status rather than development of skill.
    • She recommends only announcing changes in role, so there's clarity throughout the org.
    • Focus on the work the person is doing, not on the status.
  • Gurus: give people opportunities to teach their mastery.
  • Public presentations: give people opportunities to be visible.

Results (chap 8)

• "You can think of collaboration as 'mental prostheses' for each other. What one person doesn't enjoy and isn't good at is what another person loves and excels at."
• Staff meetings
  • Having up-to-date status prepared before meetings is generally unreliable if it requires getting people to fill in notes sometime prior to the meeting.
  • Idea: "study hall": everyone writes their snippets into a shared doc for 5m, and everyone reads them for 5m. This is more efficient and reliable.
• "Big debate" meetings
  • Encourage the debate part by removing the pressure to converge on a decision by the end of the meeting.
  • "Make it clear that everyone must check their egos at the door. The goal of debate is to work together to come up with the best answer. There should be no 'winners' or 'losers'. A good norm is to ask participants to switch roles halfway through each debate."
• Kanban boards: makes workflows visible so it's clear what teams are doing, and where the bottlenecks are. Otherwise, outsiders tend towards thinking the team does little. It fosters more respect between teams.
• Ensuring that people focus on the details
  • Focus on them yourself. It shows that the standard is worth upholding.
  • Tell people when they complain about doing something that's not part of their job: "if something's in your way, it's always your job to fix it!"