Radical Candor: Fully Revised & Updated Edition

Retaining people who are doing bad work penalizes the people doing excellent work.

are expectations clear enough? Is the training good enough? If the problem is that you have not explained the role or the expectations clearly enough, you should invest more time to do so if you think the person can become a kick-ass employee.

When a highly successful person takes a job with a new company and the “fit” isn’t right, it can be painful for everyone. If neither the culture nor the individual can change, it’s best to part ways.

Being a great boss involves constantly adjusting to the new reality of the day or week or year as it unfolds.

Being a great boss involves constantly adjusting to the new reality of the day or week or year as it unfolds. But you can’t adjust if you haven’t been paying attention or if you don’t know the person well enough to notice that something significant has shifted.

Make sure that you are seeing each person on your team with fresh eyes every day.

Make sure that you are seeing each person on your team with fresh eyes every day. People evolve, and so your relationships must evolve with them. Care personally; don’t put people in boxes and leave them there.

even if you work at a place that allows you to act in a more authoritarian way, you’ll get better results if you lay your power down and work more collaboratively.

“I didn’t say Steve is always right. I said he always gets it right. Like anyone, he is wrong sometimes, but he insists, and not gently either, that people tell him when he’s wrong, so he always gets it right in the end.”

Steve got it right by being willing to be wrong and by insisting that the people around him challenge him. There is no doubt that his style didn’t work for everyone. He hired people who were not afraid to argue with him, and then he pushed that fearlessness further.

efficiency is not what people cared most about,

Trying to solve a problem that hasn’t been clearly defined is not likely to result in a good solution;

Trying to solve a problem that hasn’t been clearly defined is not likely to result in a good solution; debating a half-baked idea is likely to kill it. As the boss, you are the editor, not the author.

while ideas ultimately can be so powerful, they begin as fragile, barely formed thoughts, so easily missed, so easily compromised, so easily just squished.”

Take the time to help your direct reports explain what they mean, so that they can do something about fixing the problem or pursuing the opportunity rather than just complaining about

Take the time to help your direct reports explain what they mean, so that they can do something about fixing the problem or pursuing the opportunity rather than just complaining about it.

It’s not just important to understand new ideas clearly; it’s equally important, and often more difficult, to understand the people to whom your team will have to explain the ideas clearly.

I was doing this all wrong when I told my team at Google not to bring me problems; instead, I told them, bring me three solutions and a recommendation. “But then you’re not helping people innovate,” Russ explained. “You’re asking them to make decisions before they’ve had time to think things through. When do they get to just talk, brainstorm with you?”

Poking holes in new ideas doesn’t necessarily kill them—it can push people to clarify their thinking.

You’ll be heard more accurately if you take the time to understand the people you are talking to. What do they know, what don’t they know? What details do you need to include to make it easy for them to understand—and, more importantly, what details can you leave out?