Home > Work > Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
61 " Colin Powell once remarked that being responsible sometimes means pissing people "
― Kim Malone Scott , Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
62 " When managers have too much unilateral decision-making it’s bad for results, and it is a disaster for a boss’s ability to have a Radically Candid relationship with their employees. There are few things worse for a relationship than unilateral power. Also, when your boss’s boss requests you give feedback on your boss, it sends a clear “speak truth to power” message, which is also important to a culture of Radical Candor. When these reviews are transparent, 360s can also reinforce a culture of direct, caring feedback. "
63 " IT SEEMS OBVIOUS that good bosses must care personally about the people who report directly to them. "
64 " author Mike Robbins devoted a TEDx talk to it in 2016, and Stewart Butterfield, Slack’s CEO, has made it a priority for his company. "
65 " Part of the reason why people fail to “care personally” is the injunction to “keep it professional. "
66 " Giving space for people to talk about dreams allows bosses to help people find opportunities that can move them in the direction of those dreams. This makes work more satisfying and more meaningful and ultimately improved retention. But retention was the by-product—satisfying, meaningful work and productive relationships with the boss were the primary goals of Russ's 'career conversation' process. "
67 " They may never repay you, but they are likely to pay it forward. The rewards of watching people you care about flourish and then help others flourish are enormous. "
68 " your job is not to provide purpose but instead to get to know each of your direct reports well enough to understand how each one derives meaning from their work. "
69 " there are several huge downsides to confidential feedback. One, it doesn’t force peers to have direct conversations with each other. Therefore, it is a missed opportunity to drive a culture of direct, open feedback. In the worst cases it encourages backstabbing behavior. Two, managers have to read and synthesize all the peer feedback for all employees, since it isn’t transparent to them. "
70 " Lack of interest in managing is not the same thing as being on a gradual growth trajectory, just as interest in managing is not the same thing as being on a steep growth trajectory. Management and growth should not be conflated. "
71 " In order to build a great team, you need to understand how each person’s job fits into their life goals. "
72 " Every minute you spend with somebody who does great work pays off in the team’s results much more than time spent with somebody who’s failing. Ignore these people and you won’t, in short, be managing. "
73 " To keep a team cohesive, you need both rock stars and superstars, "
74 " A grudge held from the last cycle may kill the promotion of an otherwise deserving person the next time around. Google’s engineering team solved these problems with promotion committees, which were assembled off-site for one day twice a year. They debated the promotions of other people’s direct reports, not their own, based on a packet of relatively objective information about each person’s accomplishments. "
75 " The essence of making an idea clear requires a deep understanding not only of the idea but also of the person to whom one is explaining the idea. "
76 " Don’t let your focus on results get in the way of caring about the people you work with. I made that mistake when I first got to Google. I was laser-focused on getting stuff done, and fast. That slowed me down in the end. "
77 " The best way to keep superstars happy is to challenge them and make sure they are constantly learning. Give them new opportunities, even when it is sometimes more work than seems feasible for one person to do. Figure out what the next job for them will be. Build an intellectual partnership with them. Find them mentors from outside your team or organization—people who have even more to offer than you do. But make sure you don’t get too dependent on them; ask them to teach others on the team to do their job, because they won’t stay in their existing role for long. I often thought of these people as shooting stars—my team and I were lucky to have them in our orbit for a little while, but trying to hold them there was futile. "
78 " to communicate clearly enough so that there’s no room for interpretation, but also humbly. "
79 " A lightweight review tool would look much like the 360 tool I described above. It would ask managers to rate their employees for each category, and ask them to input text when the employee is in the bottom or top two ratings. The overall rating would be automatically calculated, and the manager’s rating distribution would be compared to the expected distribution. If the manager’s distribution falls outside of what’s expected, the manager must explain. "
80 " JOBS: I don’t mind being wrong. And I’ll admit that I’m wrong a lot. It doesn’t really matter to me too much. What matters to me is that we do the right thing. In my experience, people who are more concerned with getting to the right answer than with being right make the best bosses. That’s because they keep learning and improving, and they push the people who work for them to do the same. A boss’s Radically Candid guidance helps the people working for them do the best work of their lives. "