Radical Candor summary

“Hey, do you have a minute?” 

Actually, Kim Scott didn’t. She had just stepped out of the elevator at Juice Software’s headquarters, where she was CEO. And that morning, she felt stressed. She needed to make an important pricing decision, and she needed to do it now. But the employee who’d approached her, asking if she had a minute, looked distraught – and for good reason. It turned out that he was having a serious health issue, and it was really weighing on him. They ended up talking for an hour, and Kim managed to reassure him that it was OK to take the time away from work he had to focus on his health. 

OK — now! If she rushed to her desk immediately, she might be able to make that pricing decision in time. But – surprise, surprise – a second colleague was soon standing in front of her with another urgent topic.

After a morning of nothing but “distractions,” Kim was frazzled. She called Leslie Koch, her CEO coach, to get some advice: “What am I, a CEO, or some kind of emotional babysitter?” she asked. Leslie answered, “This is not babysitting, it is called management, and it’s your JOB!”

Those words have guided Kim in her career ever since. Because what she did that day was exactly what she was supposed to be doing: building relationships with the people she was leading, showing them that she cared about them not just as employees but as human beings. These conversations were not distractions, they were core to her job.

Relationships are essential when trying to succeed as a leader. No matter whether you’re a CEO or a first-time manager, your job is to create a culture of guidance, to build a great team, and to achieve the best possible results. If you think you can do those three things without building good relationships, you’re kidding yourself.

To cultivate these strong relationships, you need to build trust with your colleagues. But trust is not something you can build by snapping your fingers, and voilà! You actually – pardon our French – need to give a damn about the people who work for you. You need to care about them personally. But you also need to be candid with colleagues about what you really think – which often means challenging directly. 

These two dimensions – Care Personally and Challenge Directly – are at the heart of Radical Candor (®). It’s radical because it’s fundamental to being a good colleague – whether you are the boss, a peer, or an employee. It’s radical because it’s rare that we both care and challenge at the same time. It’s candid because you'll be communicating clearly and with humility.

In this Blink to Kim Scott’s book, Radical Candor, we’ll show you why this concept should inform all of your actions as a leader – and as a peer and an employee. Radical Candor isn’t just for bosses! At the end, you’ll know how you can use it to strengthen your professional relationships, give your team good guidance, motivate them to do their best work, and of course, get stuff done.

If you feel you are learning a lot from this Blink and want to buy the book, click here.

Let’s talk about Kim’s experience with her boss again. It’s a great example of how a manager can make someone feel appreciated and give them the guidance they need at the same time. We don’t have to choose between caring and challenging–we can do both at the same time. 

Kim’s boss focused on the good stuff – praised her specifically and sincerely, not in the feedback sandwich kind of way. But she didn’t shy away from bringing up what she perceived as a problem – a problem that might stop Kim from advancing in her career. And she did all that with real compassion. This two-minute encounter – yep, it was only two-minutes long – changed Kim’s outlook on how to guide her own team.

How had her boss done this? She had applied the two principles of Radical Candor: Care Personally and Challenge Directly. But she also avoided the three behaviors that you can easily fall into when you don’t apply those principles or when you misunderstand them: Obnoxious Aggression (®), Ruinous Empathy (®), and Manipulative Insincerity(®).

Let that sink in for a moment. Maybe you’re already protesting: “I’m not a manipulative manager! Ruinous Empathy – that doesn’t sound like me.” Remember, it’s not about who you are, but how you act. Separating those two things will help you identify the areas that you actually can improve in and adopt a growth mindset to improving how you deliver feedback at work – and in your personal life.

Let’s take a closer look, then, at those three less-than-ideal behaviors to understand how you can avoid them.

First, Obnoxious Aggression. This is what happens when a person challenges directly but forgets to show they care. Maybe you’ve had a colleague who’s criticized you harshly, or as a means to establish dominance rather than to help you grow. You didn’t feel like they cared about you – not in the least. Well, that person behaved with Obnoxious Aggression. Brutal honesty is a form of Obnoxious Aggression, not Radical Candor. The problem is that people often confuse the two. Even worse, some people prefer someone who seems like they are a “competent asshole” – someone who, though unpleasant, at least isn’t “nice but incompetent.” That is a false dichotomy. The thing is, you don’t have to be obnoxiously aggressive to show your competence. You can be direct and kind, like Kim’s boss was in the “um” story.

But beware – don’t let your kindness prevent you from voicing criticism. Because then you’ll slip into Ruinous Empathy. This is what happens when a person remembers to show they Care Personally, but fails to Challenge Directly. We often slip into this mode because we don’t want to hurt someone’s feelings, so we fail to tell them something they’d be better off knowing. After all, you don’t want to risk your relationship with someone by offending them with your criticism. You want to avoid conflict and discomfort. But this mode is dangerous, both for the quality of your team’s work and for your relationships. If you don’t give candid feedback to your colleagues, their work will suffer, and you will harm your relationship eventually.

Manipulative Insincerity, the worst behavior, is what happens when the person neither cares nor challenges.  It looks similar to ruinous empathy on the outside: you don’t tell people what you really think, and you hold back with criticism. But you do this not because you care about other people’s feelings, but because you don’t care enough. You manipulate them just because you want them to like you, or because you’re more focused on your reputation than on what is best for them. If Obnoxious Aggression is “front-stabbing,” Manipulative Insincerity is back-stabbing. This is not a great way to build trust.

So, now that you know what to avoid, how can you actually give good – radically candid – guidance to your team? We’ll cover this in the next section.

Want to go deeper? See Chapter 2 of the book! 

At Google, Kim once witnessed a discussion between Larry Page, Google’s cofounder, and software engineer Matt Cutts. They were debating a policy, and the discussion got heated. Matt, usually calm and composed, started shouting. Kim was afraid that Larry would be infuriated by this behavior, but instead, he got a big grin on his face. Why? Because he enjoyed being challenged. To him, it proved that, at Google, employees felt comfortable enough to criticize their bosses and even the company's cofounders. 

This is what’s at the core of radically candid guidance: a culture where leaders encourage people to give them feedback. As a result, everyone feels safe saying what they really think. Soliciting and giving, both praise and criticism is usually called feedback, but Kim prefers to call this guidance. Feedback is screechy and makes us want to put our hands over our ears. But guidance, both praise and criticism, is something most of us long for. 

So, how can you make sure you foster this culture where people know how to solicit criticism and know it is their responsibility to give both praise and criticism in a way that is specific and sincere, kind and clear? 

As a manager, you have to lead by example. Start soliciting criticism by openly talking about the things you’re working on improving. Tell your employees, “These are the things I want to become better at. Would you help me with this?” When they tell you, make sure you reward the candor. This invitation to give you criticism and your positive response when they take you up on it will make it easier for people to let you know when you are screwing up. This will help you grow as a leader. It will also inspire the people around you to reflect on their own areas for growth, and to be open to guidance when they get it. 

When soliciting criticism, prepare a go-to question like, “What could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me?” Most people won’t respond to this immediately, so be prepared to remain silent until they think of something to say. Count to six in your head, slowly. . When someone does respond, be prepared to listen with the intent to respond. To manage any defensive feelings you may have, try to make sure you understand it correctly. Ask some follow-up questions, or offer up a story of something you said or did that might be an example of what they are talking about. –. Finally, you have to do more than thank the person for their candor. If you agree with the criticism, fix the problem. If you disagree, have a respectful conversation about why.

When it comes to giving guidance to your team, first, focus on the good stuff. Make sure you are giving more praise than criticism. And with both praise and criticism, be HHIIPP. Be humble. State your intention to be helpful. Offer guidance immediately, don’t save it up for a 1:1 and definitely don’t wait for a performance review. Have the conversation in person if possible. If you’re working remotely, do it synchronously – over the phone or a video call, not text, email Slack, etc. Praise in public. Criticize in private. Don’t give praise or criticism about personality. This last point is crucial. Use the Context-Observation-Result-Next Steps framework: “In the meeting (context), when you said um every third word (observation), it made you sound stupid (result). I can introduce you to a presentation coach who can help (nExt stEp). This will help you make sure you are focused on behavior instead of jumping to conclusions about the person or falling prey to the fundamental attribution error.”  

Remember, these guidelines apply to praise as well as criticism. Kim’s boss praised Kim by saying, “In the meeting when you offered both sides of the argument you earned credibility” and criticized Kim by saying “in the meeting when you said um every third word it made you sound stupid.” She did not say “Kim, you’re a genius” or “Kim, you’re dumb.” 

In all of this, keeping your employees’ preferences in mind is important. Public praise might motivate one person, another person might be shy and prefer to avoid the spotlight. Keeping people motivated and knowing their preferences is part of your job. This is why it is so important to get to know the people who you work with. We’ll take a closer look at this in the next section.

If you want to read more about creating a culture of radically candid guidance, please see chapters 2 and 6 of the book. 

Here’s a story about Sir Christopher Wren, the seventeenth-century architect who oversaw the reconstruction of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. One day, he was walking around the construction site when he encountered three bricklayers who were building a wall. He asked them what they were doing. The first one said, “I’m working.” The second one mentioned that he was building a wall. The third bricklayer, though, gave an astonishing response: “I’m building a cathedral to the Almighty.”

This story is often used to exhort leaders to “provide purpose” to their employees. But to Kim, the anecdote actually reveals something else: people can do the same job but find meaning in different ways. It’s not a manager’s job to provide purpose. It’s a manager’s job to understand what motivates each person. A manager's job is to recognize the differences and make sure there is an environment in which everyone can find their own sense of meaning.

Radical Candor (®) applies here too. As a manager, it’s your job to care enough about each employee to understand what motivates them;, it’s not your job to tell them what gives their lives meaning. That would be a giant over step. Sometimes people are doing great work because they want to put food on the table and to pay the rent, not because they have a “passion” for the job. A good boss will recognize the dignity in that motivation to work.

As a boss, your job is to understand each person who works for you well enough to make sure you’re putting them in the right roles, and helping them take a step in the direction of their dreams.

To do this well, you’ll need to understand when people are in superstar mode and when they are in rock-star mode.

When people are in superstar mode, they need to be challenged and encouraged to grow quickly, so they can achieve their ambitions. It can be useful to realize that superstar mode sometimes feels to a manager like shooting star mode–the person may outgrow their role more quickly than you wish.

When people are in rock-star mode – as in “rock-solid” – they are a source of stability on a team. They are great at their job, but they are not necessarily gunning for a promotion. They will keep doing a great job as long as you don’t mess things up by disrespecting them for not wanting the next job or, worse, promoting them when they are not ready, or don’t want a promotion.  

To balance growth and stability, you need people in both rock-star and superstar mode on your team.  And you need to know each person well enough to understand when they are shifting out of one mode and into another.

So, let’s move on to the practical part: How can you find out what motivates each person on your team, and which mode they are currently in?

If you want to learn more about how to understand the difference between managing people when they are in superstar mode vs rock-star mode, please see chapters 3 and 7 of Radical Candor.

Russ Laraway, who worked for Kim at Google, once sat down with Sarah, one of his employees. When he asked about her aspirations, she initially hesitated, then said she hoped to one day be a boss like Russ. But Russ sensed that Sarah wasn’t being completely honest with him, so he asked her if she had any other visions for her future. Sarah paused for a moment and then shared her actual dream with him: she wanted to own a farm that grew spirulina, an algae-like superfood. She did want to be a boss – she hadn’t lied to Russ about this – but in a field she really cared about.

What a revelation! Russ was now able to talk to Sarah about her upbringing and identify her main motivators, such as helping the environment, working hard, and being a financially independent leader.

Knowing this, together they could focus on developing Sarah’s management skills rather than her analytical skills – and make sure her current job selling ad servers was preparing her for running that spirulina farm.

The conversation was successful because both parties had been radically candid with each other. Russ cared about Sarah, so he wanted to find out what really motivated her. And Sarah had openly shared with Russ that she didn’t want to stay at Google forever – which, ironically, helped both of them define a clear career plan for her at the company.

Based in part on that experience, Russ taught everyone on his team how to have three conversations with each employee. The goal is to come out of these conversations knowing what motivates each person, whether they are in rock star or superstar mode, and to help each person take a step in the direction of their dreams. 

The first is the life story conversation. Here, you discuss – you guessed it – a person’s life story with them and look at the choices they’ve made. Try to understand why they made them. Maybe someone dropped out of grad school to work on Wall Street because they wanted to become financially independent. Great – you’ve just identified one of their key motivators: financial independence. Continue like this, and you’ll find out what people really care about.

Then there’s the dreams conversation, where you invite your employee to describe what their career might look like at its apex. But don’t talk about just one dream. Talk about three or four different dreams. Remember, very few of us know what we want to do when we grow up. Encouraging people to talk about their aspirations, however lofty they might be, can actually help both of you map out a concrete career action plan.

Finally, there’s the 18-month plan conversation. This is where both of you look into the immediate future and identify how to help your employee take a step in the direction of their dreams. Are there introductions you could make to experts or mentors? Are there classes they might take? Can you tweak their job responsibilities? 

These three conversations will help you put the right people in the right roles, and keep everyone motivated. Remember, though, your ultimate goal is to achieve results collaboratively.

If you want to learn more about Career Conversations, please read chapter 7 of the book. To go even deeper, read Russ Laraway’s book, When They Win, You Win. 

When Kim joined Google to lead an AdSense team, everybody was doing a little bit of everything – it was like a kid's soccer team, everyone chasing the ball. She noticed that people on her team often felt stressed and efficiency wasn’t what it could be. So Kim restructured the team into smaller units, gave each of them a well-defined responsibility with clear goals, and established clear lines of reporting. Everything should’ve run smoothly now, right? Well . . . no. The result was that people started complaining about Kim’s autocratic leadership style; a few of them even left the team.

Why? Again, Kim’s boss offered some insightful advice. It wasn’t that Kim’s ideas hadn’t been great. The problem was that she had started implementing her ideas before listening to her team’s ideas. 

This brings us to what Kim calls “the get stuff done” wheel.  

There are seven stages to keep in mind:

First, listen. Really listen to what the people on your team have to say. When you do this, your team will feel safe to speak their minds and have the kind of discussions that lead to brilliant ideas.

Second, clarify. Give your team the time to develop and clarify their ideas. Otherwise, they might end up being shot down before they ever have a chance to be clearly understood. New ideas are fragile. It’s your job as a leader to nurture them.

Third, debate. Allow for healthy debate so that the relevant team members can help each other improve their thinking.

Fourth, decide. The best bosses often do not decide themselves, but rather create a clear decision-making process that empowers people closest to the facts to make as decisions. Your job as a leader is not to decide, but to make it clear who the decider is, and when the decision needs to get made.

Fifth, persuade. The person appointed as the decider is responsible for persuading others that their  idea is worth pushing forward. It’s important to take time to get buy-in from everyone who must implement the decision.

Sixth, implement. After having secured buy-in, your team can get to work implementing   the agreed-upon decision.

And seventh, learn. This last step is really important. You have to learn from the outcomes of the implementation so you can adjust and improve next time. In order to learn whether what you are doing is working, it’s important to set measurable goals and track them regularly. There should be no shame in not hitting some goals–but there should be clear learning.

Once you’ve done all this, you start the entire process all over again! Your job as a manager is to keep the wheel spinning–make sure you don’t skip a step, and also make sure you don’t get stuck on one.

Most importantly, always keep the two dimensions of Radical Candor in mind: Care Personally and Challenge Directly. This means fostering a culture where everybody feels comfortable sharing their ideas –and also empowered to challenge each other. In the last chapter of this Blink, we’ll take a closer look at two key aspects of the get stuff done wheel that can help you create that culture.

To read more about how to get stuff done without telling people what to do, read chapter 4 of the book.

First, let’s talk about the art of listening because it’s the thing that will have the biggest impact on collaboration within your team. There are two types of listening: quiet listening and loud listening. 

Quiet listening suits leaders who prefer to let others do the talking. Quiet listeners don’t offer their opinions off the bat; instead, they sit back and listen attentively. You might be surprised by how much your employees share with you when you do this! For it to work, though, you need to have established an environment where people feel comfortable saying what’s really on their minds. 

If quiet listening involves being silent to give people room to talk, loud listening is about saying things intended to get a reaction out of them. Loud listeners start by making a strong statement, and invite an equally strong response to keep the discussion going. Since loud listening pushes people into talking, it’s an effective way to draw shy employees out of their shells – but only if they feel supported enough to speak up.

When you’ve managed to establish a great listening culture, you need to establish a great debate culture as well. How can you do this?

First, you have to remind yourself and your team that a discussion is about ideas – not egos. This means that no one should enter a meeting with the desire to win an argument. Instead, everyone should collectively look for the best outcomes. If your team has a hard time doing this, consider encouraging people to switch roles–to make the case for the idea they disagree with. You can also introduce an “ego coat check” where everyone is prompted to leave their ego at the door. 

If everyone seems to agree, introduce the obligation to dissent. Because if everyone in your team immediately agrees on a solution, they may have missed something important. To encourage debates,  buy a gavel with “obligations to dissent” written on it and pass it around. If your team is well-versed in the practice of Radical Candor (®), they will enjoy challenging and being challenged because they know their colleagues are trying to help them improve their thinking..

Establishing those two cultures – a culture of listening and debating – means laying the groundwork for healthy collaboration. It ensures that your team feels safe, supported, and motivated to reach its goals.   You’ll achieve results collaboratively!

To learn more about loud listening and quiet listening and also about how to have more radically candid debates, please read Chapter 8 of Radical Candor.