I enjoy reading about real life experiences, how they panned out and lessons learnt. This book contains a lot of great examples to learn from including senior Google and Apple experiences. ( )

I loved this article when it came out in First Round, and read and shared it a bunch of times. So I was excited to see the book .... but the intro alone started giving me HIVES. It felt like a terrible remix of a song I used to love -- dialing up the aggression and nastiness, the Steve-Jobs-iness of "radical" candor, without hinting there might be ways to use candor that weren't simply to be an aggressor, to "win" a meeting. I am plowing along and hope it changes but right now I'm a bit weirded out. ( )

Really good book for people who think they have to be an asshole to get ahead in management.

If you don't think that to begin with, then it's more motivational. ( )

Must read for every manager

This book is a gust of fresh wind in the world of management books. While there are other books with great advices, some of them fail to deliver value by being written in really dull manner or diving too deep in theoretical stuff. In the meantime Radical Candor delivers carefully selected insights from nowadays top software companies where author was working. It is also very relatable: most of the key points have an example from author's career and I believe many managers can recognize themselves and sometimes and compare how they handled the situation and what they learned from that. All in all, it is a great start to become better manager. ( )

I loved this book! Radical Candor is so much more than just a single communication technique. It's a mindset which can be applied to all of management, and in this book, Kim Scott applies the idea to many different aspects of leadership.

Radical candor denies a false dichotomy that, I think, is applied by many people to communication, both in and out of work: that communication is either nice/respectful or it is honest/direct. You see this mindset, for example, when people act as if respecting others means that you have to censor yourself or that being honest means you don't have to be respectful. The radical candor perspective says that not only is this false dichotomy wrong, but that by falling into either of its extremes, you are doing harm.

Divide communication into four types, by the axes of caring personally about the person you're communicating with and challenging them directly. If you care personally but don't challenge directly — what some people assume is required to be nice — then you fall into the ruinous empathy quadrant. You save their feelings in the short term (maybe; people often know when they've failed), but in the long term you damage their growth, your relationship, and effective communication more generally. If you challenge directly but don't care personally — what some people assume is required to be honest — then you fall into the obnoxious aggression quadrant. You may be giving feedback that's valuable, but if it doesn't come along with caring, then it's not going to be heard. Many comments on internet fall into this category :-) You can also fail to either care personally or challenge directly. This quadrant, which Scott calls manipulative insecurity, has no advantages.

Radical candor is what you get when you both care personally and challenge directly. It's clear while also showing that the person giving the feedback understands the needs and context that prompted the context. You can help people achieve what they need to achieve more effectively than the obnoxiously aggressive feedback giver because your feedback won't just be honest; it will be more likely to be listened too and it will be less generic.

The bulk of the book applies this mindset to various leadership challenges: developing the people on a team, recognizing individual performance in individually meaningful ways, collaboration (including the great "Get Stuff Done" wheel[0]), establishing productive working relationships, how to give and get guidance, career conversations, and meeting structure[1]. There's tons of practical advice, well presented.

I'll need to read it more than once before I've really internalized and been able to apply all the tips though. :-)

[0] https://www.radicalcandor.com/our-approach/results/
[1] Including my new go to method for running those status update meetings that are necessary: spend 15 minutes silently updating and reading a shared notes document and then only talk about the status updates that people have questions on. You get higher quality notes and discussions. ( )

Informative and plain-spoken primer on how to effectively lead people in a modern workplace, especially new media or technology companies.
If this book weren’t so focused on the tech sector and its unique demographics, it would be more useful to the average reader. For a company that is more age- and experience-diverse, some of the recommendations seem inapplicable. Also, at the tech companies the author has worked for, there seems to be endless time for meetings, plentiful paid time off, and a seemingly limitless pool of applicants from which to pick and choose the very best team members.
It’s hard to feel like the author knows - let alone can make sound recommendations about - the struggles of an auto body shop, school, restaurant: workplaces that are more representative of where most people work.
That deficiency aside, I appreciate what Scott has to say in this book, and she does so with humor and humility. ( )

Excellent advice and tips in here. Very practical takeaways and helps you think through a lot of sides and facets of giving and receiving feedback ( )

As a product of Silicon Valley, which has turned "failing up" into a science, Kim Scott is humble about being a good manager. Even here in the real world, odds are that half of our bosses will turn out below average. Her advice is simply to be straight with the people you work with. Naturally this is a business book, and her coaching philosophy is embedded in the golden quadrant of a chart so that executives take it seriously. Still, has the ring of truth. I've learned that if you tell people what you're doing and what you need to succeed, things tend to work out. A boss that doesn't have time for all that is headed for trouble.

Although I'm no longer managing people, I've heard enough people mention this book that I wanted to check it out. The focus is around communicating clearly with people and teams as the way to be the most effective. Opting for empathy over insincerity and candor over aggression. The goal is to actually CARE while challenging people directly. ( )

If you have not read business books from Silicon Valley, this is not the one to start with. It has content and some excellent implementation advice but it is hidden beneath buzzwords, name drops and (earned) boasting about personal achievements that you may not be used to/reject if this is the first you read.

( )

Some great concepts and really gets you thinking about how to give (and get) honest feedback in a constructive way. Some of the suggestions at the end of the book will vary in usefulness based on your level (e.g. running an all hands isn't that useful to someone nearer the start of their journey). ( )

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. ( )

Radical Candor was assigned reading for work. While I'm glad I read it, had it not been assigned, I'm not sure I ever would have otherwise. The book is too long, and there's a lot of name dropping. The personal anecdotes with Tim Cook, Larry Page, and Dick Costolo come off as heavy-handed. The message: be a real person. Be empathetic. Expect excellence. Provide real feedback. Don't be a jerk. End of book.

Except this one has a "Preface to the Revised Edition: Radical Candor on Radical Candor section. And an "Introduction" (why books need an in introduction with roman-numeraled pages, detracting from my integer-paged progress annoys me). And a "How to Use This Book" section. And a "Getting Started" section after the end of the book. And an "Afterword to the Revised Edition: Rolling Out Radical Candor." And a "Bonus Chapter: A Radically Candid Performance Review." I'm not kidding.

In addition to being the author of this book, Ms. Scottt is also the co-founder of the executive education firm Radical Candor. It would appear that she would like, a la Google, to pry "radical candor" into the business lexicon via blunt force trauma. ( )

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 ( )

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). ( )

Really could have been covered in a brief article. ( )

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. ( )

There were a few things that bugged me about this book—the name dropping, the use of emoticons—but overall it was excellent. I'm kind of on the cusp of moving into management/leadership in my career, so the first half was extremely relevant and helpful. The second half focuses more on how to put the Radical Candor principles in place. I'd recommend this book to anybody, whether they're a boss or not. ( )

I really struggled on how to rate this. There is a LOT of advice and the sheer volume of it makes the book impractical as it is difficult to imagine incorporating all the elements, as well as recalling them all. However for the concept of radical candour as depicted but the 4 quadrant graph it is worth 5 stars alone. To be fair there are many good ideas you can implement here - it has an excellent and eye-opening section on gender differences - but would be great if it were much shorter with more practical ideas on implimentation. ( )

I like the message, but this could have been a blog post. ( )

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. ( )