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Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
Audiobook10 hours

Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

Written by Kim Scott

Narrated by Kim Scott

4/5

()

About this audiobook

Now a New York Times bestseller

This program is read by the author.

"Radical Candor is packed with illuminating truths, insightful advice, and practical suggestions, all illustrated with engaging (and often funny) stories from Kim Scott’s own experiences at places like Apple, Google, and various start-ups. Indispensable."--Gretchen Rubin author of New York Times bestseller The Happiness Project

"Reading Radical Candor will help you build, lead, and inspire teams to do the best work of their lives. Kim Scott's insights...-will help you be a better leader and create a more effective organization."--Sheryl Sandberg author of the New York Times bestseller Lean In

From the time we learn to speak, we’re told that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. When you become a manager, it’s your job to say it--and your obligation.

Author Kim Scott was an executive at Google and then at Apple, where she developed a class on how to be a good boss. She has earned growing fame in recent years with her vital new approach to effective management, Radical Candor.

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.

"Kim Scott has a well-earned reputation as a kick-ass boss and a voice that CEOs take seriously. In this remarkable book, she draws on her extensive experience to provide clear and honest guidance on the fundamentals of leading others: how to give (and receive) feedback, how to make smart decisions, how to keep moving forward, and much more. If you manage people--whether it be 1 person or a 1,000--you need Radical Candor. Now."--Daniel Pink author of New York Times bestseller Drive

LanguageEnglish
PublisherMacmillan Audio
Release dateMar 14, 2017
ISBN9781427283139
Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

Related to Radical Candor

Leadership For You

Related categories

Reviews for Radical Candor

4/5

258 ratings14 reviews

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  • 5/5
    Great insight on how various different company cultures can still benefit from some common best practices.

    1 person found this helpful

  • 5/5
    Really good book, a lot of excellent ideas. I advise!
  • 2/5
    I’m sure there is some beneficial content to be gained in this book, however, it is difficult to get past the ignorant and immature use of expletives used to deliver this material.
  • 5/5
    This is just not about principles and theory about how to evolve as a better engineering leader with care and guidance for the team, but they walk through the real life examples and derive the principles from it. Highly recommend for personal development for every engineering leader.
  • 3/5
    Similar to another review, I felt this could have been more succinct. There are some useful charts that are described here, which naturally loses some of its effect.
  • 5/5
    Must read for any leader. Continue to be an understanding human being while holding to high expectations/ accountability.
  • 5/5
    Radical Candor by Kim Scott touches on common, specific issues faced by people in management that are not discussed in business school or in the workplace. Reading Radical Candor will not only make you a better boss, but also a better employee if you are not currently a manager. This is a great read if you aspire to be a manager. Scott offers easy, in-depth yet simple to understand ways to be a better boss, create an engaged, high performing team and improve team morale.
  • 5/5
    This book broke down great leadership skills, the benefits of them and how to action then. Quick read with huge benefits !
  • 5/5
    I totally took my time with this book, which was a COVID blessing since the closed libraries extended the due date to beyond ample time. There is so much in this book that it was good to read it in short digestible sections and then sit with those sections for a while before moving to the next one. I suspect that not everyone can become a radically candid boss fully, that though the steps and processes are well laid out in the book, personality and circumstances will also play a large part. However, just having an interest in this book in the first place suggests one will be able to make much of it happen.
    One criticism I have read of the book is all the name dropping. "At Goggle this...at Apple...." I believe you can see those anecdotes as name dropping, or as personal stories that hold credibility because they happened in famous and hugely successful companies. If they were all stories about CEOs and small businesses one has barely heard of, it would be harder to believe the methods can work. That said, there are still a lot of big businesses that do not have cultures like those found in Silicon Valley which may make it challenging to get buy in for this approach.
    Either way, much of this book resonated with me. It is direct, punchy, practical and concise in ways that most business self-help books are not. There is no padding or needless repetition. Diagrams help rather than add gimmick. Sections are accurately titled and subtitled AND There is an index.
    A how-to and reference useful now and in years to come.
  • 5/5
    For years I’ve been referencing and sharing Kim Scott’s Fast Company article about Radical Candor, yet put off reading the book for years. I wish I had read it earlier! About halfway through I decided to stop underlining since I was underlining 80% of the book.It’s the balance of caring personally to earn real trust that allows for a level of candidness that I think is hard for most workplaces to achieve. She has lots of good examples and data as well as very specific ways to implement
  • 5/5
    I read this book based on a recommendation that stated that it is not just empty Silicon Valley chatter, and this recommendation was mostly proven right. While it was not able to completely loose the over-the-top style of all US self-improvement books ("Do this and your whole life will benefit from it! Your work will be better, your relationships will be improved, and your dog will like you more!") and contained a moderate amount of Silicon Valley name-dropping, I found it quite interesting and helpful. (And, in fairness, the name-dropping was mostly in the context of telling stories about the observed behaviour of other managers, so it was actually a useful part of the book).

    I'm not a manager, but as a PhD student, I supervise a number of student theses each year, so I read this book with the intent of seeing which of the techniques may be transferrable to my situation. In my situation, establishing a good relationship with the "direct reports" (i.e., students) is both easier (we are almost the same age, and my supervision style is fairly informal and non-authoritarian to begin with) and harder (the students are only around for half a year).

    I have taken a few of the tips about meetings and feedback style to heart, and it has actually already proven helpful with one of my students. On the other hand, many parts of the book were irrelevant to my situation (I don't write yearly performance reports, I grade a thesis) and in some cases, the hints were impossible to do (at a certain point, I am discouraged from working directly with the students to find a solution for their problems, as their problem-solving skills are what I am supposed to grade - so there's a fine balance between being helpful and being able to gauge their problem-solving skills).

    In the end, I'm going to go with 4.5 stars (half a star deducted for the over-the-top style and a few other nitpicks), rounded up to five stars for the simple reason that the book describes the sort of boss I would want to have (and I would hope to be, if I ever end up being a boss / manager somewhere).
  • 4/5
    This is a pretty solid leadership/management book. The main premise is to "care personally and challenge directly". Lots of good advice on how to communicate with your team. FYI there is also a podcast that covers the info in this book and I find it even more effective than the book.
  • 2/5
    I like the message, but this could have been a blog post.
  • 5/5
    I... don't know why I keep reading/bookmarking management books--I'm not a manager--but this one was pretty interesting. "Radical candor" involves "caring personally and challenging directly" -- being open and honest with your co-workers and the people you manage, and encourage them to do the same, instead of keeping things impersonal and avoiding conflict. (With all sorts of buzzwords and charts; this is a management book after all).You want to get to know the people you manage: their goals, their values, their "trajectories" (job goals), etc. People should be able to bring their whole self to work (something I wouldn't be able to appreciate until now, because I really do feel more like my normal-not-at-work self at my current job than I ever have. It's almost weird.)It sounds stupidly obvious, but actually implementing something like that is tricky. The one-on-one meetings she kept mentioning seemed ridiculous and unwieldy until the very last chapter: "I quit thinking of them as meetings and begin treating them as if I were having lunch or coffee with somebody"... suddenly, yeah, duh, that's how all the best planning happens, and the best way to check in with someone.I'd highly recommend this for any sort of manager, really.