Home > Work > Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
161 " love stories, so my whole interview technique is just to ask people to “give me the oral version of your résumé. "
― Kim Malone Scott , Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity
162 " Be humble, helpful, offer guidance in person and immediately, praise in public, criticize in private, and don’t personalize. "
163 " 1S ARE YOUR must-do meetings, your single best opportunity to listen, really listen, to the people on your team to make sure you understand their perspective on what’s working and what’s not working. "
164 " Take notes and project them. Project the notes you take during the meeting, and let people know that you will share them with the manager. Encourage people to say something if they find the notes inaccurate. When people speak up, be sure to change the notes and double check they are OK before proceeding. "
165 " One of the most common mistakes bosses make is to ignore the people who are doing the best work because “they don’t need me” or “I don’t want to micromanage.” Ignoring somebody is a terrible way to build a relationship "
166 " expecting others to execute on a decision without being persuaded that it’s the right thing to do is a recipe for terrible results. And don’t imagine that you can step in and simply tell everyone to get in line behind a decision, whether you have made it or somebody else has. Even explaining the decision is not enough, because that addresses only the logic; you have to address your listener’s emotions as well. And you must establish that the decider, whether that’s you or somebody else on your team, has credibility if you expect others to execute on the decision. "
167 " Imagine if I went home and told my wife, ‘I don’t want to micromanage you, so I’m not going to spend any time with you or the kids this year. "
168 " will get better. But of course it won’t get better all by itself. So stop and ask yourself: how, exactly, will it get better? What are you going to do differently? What will the person in question do differently? How might circumstances change? Even if things have gotten a little better, have they improved enough? If you don’t have a pretty precise answer to those questions, it probably won’t get better. "
169 " Credibility is one of those things that is hard to articulate but you know it when you see it. Part of it is obviously knowing your subject and demonstrating a track record of sound decisions. But it also requires a third component—humility—which is sometimes in short supply. "
170 " You don’t want to be an absentee manager any more than you want to be a micromanager. Instead, you want to be a partner—that is, you must take the time to help the people doing the best work overcome obstacles and make their good work even better. This is time-consuming because it requires that you know enough about the details of the person’s work to understand the nuances. It often requires you to help do the work, rather than just advising. It requires that you ask a lot of questions and challenge people—that you roll up your own sleeves. "
171 " Your mind-set will go a long way in determining how well the 1:1s go. I found that when I quit thinking of them as meetings and began treating them as if I were having lunch or coffee with somebody I was eager to get to know better, they ended up yielding much better conversations "
172 " There is a virtuous cycle between your responsibilities and your relationships. 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. Of course, there can be a vicious cycle between your responsibilities and your relationships, too. 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. "
173 " That is what happens in 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. "
174 " Managers often devote more time to those who are struggling than to those who are succeeding. But that’s not fair to those who are succeeding—nor is it good for the team as a whole. Moving from great to stunningly great is more inspiring for everyone than moving from bad to mediocre. "
175 " When your direct reports own and set the agenda for their 1:1s, they’re more productive, because they allow you to listen to what matters to them. "
176 " Empathy is not compassion. Connection, resonance, and concern might not lead to action. But empathy is a component of compassion, and a world without healthy empathy, I believe, is a world devoid of felt connection and puts us all in peril. "
177 " When you fire someone, you create the possibility for the person to excel and find happiness performing meaningful work elsewhere. Part of getting a good job is leaving a bad one, or one that’s bad for you. "
178 " Most people expect that the “logic” part of persuasion will be easiest, since it doesn’t present the personal awkwardness of establishing credibility or require the psychological finesse of addressing the collective emotions of a group of people. And yet it contains its own traps. Sometimes, the logic may seem self-evident to you, so you fail to share it with others. When you know something deeply, it’s hard to remember that others don’t. The good news is that you learned the secret to sharing your logic in high school math class: show your work. When Steve Jobs had an idea, he wouldn’t just describe the idea; he’d share how he got to it. He showed his work. This signaled that if there was a flaw in his reasoning, he wanted to know about it. And if there wasn’t, people would be more likely to accept his idea. Showing his work was what strengthened his logic and ultimately made him not only persuasive but “always getting it right. "
179 " I also try to reframe the problem, for both me and the person I’m firing: it’s not the person who sucks, it’s the job that sucks—at least for this person. What job would be great for that person? Can I help by making an introduction? "
180 " Work-life integration "