Radical Candor - Kim Scott Flashcards
The importance of relationships
The idea is that collaboration and innovation flourish when human relationships replace bullying and bureaucracy.
Ruinous Empathy
You’re so fixated on not hurting a person’s feelings in the moment that you don’t tell them something they’d be better off knowing in the long run.
Empowering people
“How do you envision building the team? How big will the team be?” Steve Job’s curt response: “Well, if I knew the answer to all those questions, then I wouldn’t need you, would I?” Borderline rude, but also empowering.
“At Apple, we hire people to tell us what to do, not the other way around.”
Boss’s ability to achieve results
At Apple, as at Google, a boss’s ability to achieve results had a lot more to do with listening and seeking to understand than it did with telling people what to do; more to do with debating than directing; more to do with pushing people to decide than with being the decider. (Guidance, team-building and empowering people)
Listen to people
Every time I feel I have something more “important” to do than listen to people, I remember Leslie’s words: “It is your job!” I’ve used Leslie’s line on dozens of new managers who’ve come to me after a few weeks in their new role, moaning that they feel like “babysitters” or “shrinks.”
Guide people to achieve results
Ultimately, though, bosses are responsible for results. They achieve these results not by doing all the work themselves but by guiding the people on their teams. Bosses guide a team to achieve results.
Managers responsibility
Areas of responsibility that managers do have: guidance, team-building, and results.
1) to create a culture of guidance (praise and criticism) that will keep everyone moving in the right direction;
2) to understand what motivates each person on your team well enough to avoid burnout or boredom and keep the team cohesive;
3) to drive results collaboratively.
Leader first focus
Very few people focus first on the central difficulty of management that Ryan hit on: establishing a trusting relationship with each person who reports directly to you.
When authority works
I’m not saying that unchecked power, control, or authority can’t work. They work especially well in a baboon troop or a totalitarian regime.
Strengthening relationships: The mantra
You strengthen your relationships by learning the best ways to get, give, and encourage guidance; by putting the right people in the right roles on your team; and by achieving results collectively that you couldn’t dream of individually.
(Again: guidance, team-building, and results.)
Strengthening relationships: Care about personally
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.
Make people trust in you
when people trust you and believe you care about them, they are much more likely to 1) accept and act on your praise and criticism; 2) tell you what they really think about what you are doing well and, more importantly, not doing so well; 3) engage in this same behaviour with one another, meaning less pushing the rock up the hill again and again; 4) embrace their role on the team; and 5) focus on getting results.
Say what you really think
many of us are conditioned to avoid saying what we really think. This is partially adaptive social behavior; it helps us avoid conflict or embarrassment. But in a boss, that kind of avoidance is disastrous.
Inspire to be more Radically Candid
As the people who report to you become more Radically Candid with each other, you spend less time mediating.
You’re not better nor smarter
When they become a boss, some people consciously or unconsciously begin to feel they’re better or smarter than the people who work for them. That attitude makes it impossible to be a kick-ass boss;
