Radical Candor: Fully Revised & Updated Edition

I’d always focused on the people most likely to be promoted. I assumed that was how it had to be at a growth company. Then a leader at Apple pointed out to me that all teams need stability as well as growth to function properly; nothing works well if everyone is gunning for the next promotion.

If you lead a big organization, you can’t have a relationship with everybody. But the relationships you have with your direct reports will impact the relationships they have with their direct reports. The ripple effect will go a long way toward creating—or destroying—a positive culture. Relationships may not scale, but culture does.

a better approach may be less difficult than you fear.

Guidance is often called “feedback.” People dread feedback. They dread getting it, both the praise, which can feel patronizing, and especially the criticism.

Sometimes things move too slowly: the people who work for me would debate forever if I let them. Why can’t they make a decision? But other times things move too fast: we missed our deadline because the team was totally unwilling to do a little planning—they insisted on just firing willy-nilly, no ready, no aim! Why can’t they think before they act?

Guidance, team, and results: these are the responsibilities of any boss.

When you fail to give people the guidance they need to succeed in their work, or put people into roles they don’t want or aren’t well-suited for, or push people to achieve results they feel are unrealistic, you erode trust.

To have a good relationship, you have to be your whole self and care about each of the people who work for you as a human being. It’s not just business; it is personal, and deeply personal. I call this dimension “Care Personally.”

challenging people is often the best way to show them that you care when you’re the boss. This dimension I call “Challenge Directly.”

Why “candor”? The key to getting everyone used to being direct when challenging each other (and you!) is emphasizing that it’s necessary to communicate clearly enough so that there’s no room for interpretation,

you must also care deeply about people while being prepared to be hated in return.

Challenging others and encouraging them to challenge you helps build trusting relationships because it shows 1) you care enough to point out both the things that aren’t going well and those that are and that 2) you are willing to admit when you’re wrong and that you are committed to fixing mistakes that you or others have made.

if nobody is ever mad at you, you probably aren’t challenging your team enough.

A good rule of thumb for any relationship is to leave three unimportant things unsaid each day.

Radical Candor works only if the other person understands that your efforts at caring personally and challenging directly are delivered in good faith.

There are two dimensions to good guidance: care personally and challenge directly.

“It’s not mean. It’s clear!”

The secret to winning, he said, is to point out to great players what they could have done better, even when they have just won a game. Especially when they have just won a game.

most people would rather work for a “competent asshole” than a “nice incompetent.”

Time and again, I have seen that it was kinder in the long run to be direct, even if articulating my criticism caused some momentary upset.