I recently read  some chapters from Radical Candor, and i wanted to share some thoughts regarding the book.

I personally haven’t read the  whole book but  from what I have read it has some good foundation truths that I  would like to practice and  it makes easier to describe concepts that I also share with the author.

Build Radically candid relationship

• Relationships not Power  ,drive forward success.
• The ability to build trusting real connections with your direct reports will determine the quality of effort that follows
• Care Personally – shed the arrogance, be humble and follow a servant leader model

Get,give and encourage guidance

Radical Candor Care Personally +  Challenging Directly. This breaks out into 4 quadrants

• Manipulative insincerity  – tells you
• Obnoxious Aggression – the office jerk, tells you your faults but not invested so you don’t trust him.
• Ruinous Empathy – the boss that needs to be liked
• Radical Candor – team leader is invested in the team members , so much that he is accountable as if they were one in the same
• Worry more about praise giving and less about criticism- always be sincere.

Understand what motivates each person on your team

• Rockstars vs Super stars.  Former are rock solid, latter need a path to the next step.
• Growth Management – its necessary to transfer from talent management mindset to a growth management mindset
• Find out what motivates  each team member personally.
• You aren’t responsible for finding purpose in their work ,but rather to create a working environment which allows people to discover it. Invest in your
• Keep your top performers  moving forward
• Gradual Growth Trajectory for rock stars: Find a way to recognize and reward rock stars without necessarily promoting them
• Steep Growth Trajectory: don’t make management the only path to  higher compensation, less the quality of management will suffer and the lives of those who work under them will also suffer.
• Identity those that are stuck in the road. Finding a path back to their amazing may take a step or 2 back.
• When to Fire? Have you given radically candid guidance? how is this person’s performance affecting the rest of the team? Have you sought a second opinion , spoekn to someone you trust about the problem? If its time, make sure not to distance yourself from the person you will be firing.

Drive Results Collaboratively

Telling people what to do doesn’t work
The Art of getting stuff done is  without implicitly telling people what to do.

• Listen  – create an environment where you and others will listen
• Clarify -have you and direct reports understand and convey thoughts and ideas more clearly.
  • Become  an editor not an author. Not just in understanding problems & solutions but understanding the people whom we will have to explain the ideas to.
• Debate : Debate is necessary to get everyone on the same page and lack of consensus will cause mass dissension.
  • keep conversations focus on ideas
  • create an obligation to dissent  (related)
  • Pause for emotion\exhaustion;
  • pick a decision when the debate is over; don’t pick it because the debate got difficult
• Decide: good bosses create a decision-making process that empowers the most knowledgeable people to make as many decisions as possible
• Persuade : it is necessary to not only inform but persuade those  invested in your decision that it is the best decision. Find who will have the biggest credibility  in the decision process
  • consider credibility , humility , by showing your work  (share how you came to the idea\decision)  and consider the room ( the people’s emotion)
• Execute:  empower the team by dealing with the colab. tax with other groups .
• Learn: don’t deny failures, learn from them them and improve. be careful with the need to consistent and watch out for signs of burnout.

 

Part 2 : tools & Techniques

Relationships: An approach to establishing trust with your direct reports

• Centered and Balanced life : ensure you have a stable life so that you can bring that to work.
• Extend to your team: create the opportunity so they can bring their best selves to work.
• Respect individual boundaries:  be open, and allow them to open up. Each person is an individual and it will be your responsibility to balance between respecting their boundaries and allowing them to be all they are at work.

Guidance

• get,give and encourage both praise and criticism
• Make sure you are giving them the opportunity to give real  feedback about your self, ask for it.
  • Some ideas to move it forward:    allow yourself to be publicly criticized initially,  listen with the intent of understanding not action. Reward criticism to get more of it.
• Give others guidance
• Gauge your guidance, create a baseline and track improvements
• Radically candid with your boss:  proceed with caution , first allowing them to be candid. A strong leader has the humility to listen, the confidence to challenge, and the wisdom to know when to quit arguing and get on board.
• Prevent backstabbing by ensuring communication first happens with the person you having the issue with first.
• Peer guidance : encourage your group to gauge their guidance and ensure we are all using the same vocabulary
• Skip meetings can be useful to getting feedback directly. (Skip meetings skip 1 level of managers and directly talks to the groups)

Well I enjoyed this book quite a bit.