Radical Candor

· 1109 words · 6 minute read

Chapter 1 🔗

Bosses guide a team to achieve results

Guidance: or feedback -> often we don’t give good guidance cause we don’t know how the other will receive it (fear of being socially awkward, I am being to nice or too mean? )

Team Building: Figuring out right people for the right role (hiring, firing, promoting). And when the team is set… how to have them motivated.

Results:

Relationship, and no power, drive you forward

Radical candor is based in two “sentences”: Care personally: Being more than a professional, to have good relationship you have to care as a human being not as a worker. Challenge directly: Tell the team, when their work is not good enough

Chapter 2 🔗

  • difference between radical candor and obnoxious aggression is:
    • it’s not mean, it’s clear
    • no belittle embarrass people in public
  • Most people prefer a challenging jerk than a nice incompetent.
  • How to start the wheel of feedback, start asking for feedback (give example) and when start giving it, start by praising
  • If a person is bold enough to give you feedback, do not critique their criticism
  • people who are more concern for the** right answer**, instrad if being right are better bosses.
  • Not personalize the feedback, instead of “When they are not good enough” say “When their work is not good enough”

Chapter 3 🔗

understand what motivates each person on your team

2 archetypes of persons:

  • Rock Star (is rock solid)
    • stability, ambitious outside of work, content in life, happy in current role
  • Super Start
    • change agent (cul inquiet), ambitious at work, want new opportunities

different type of learning:

  • step growth: learning/deeping skills quickly
  • gradual growth: mastered their work and making incremental improvements

we all have periods when professionally we are in different growth stages

How to treat each archetype?

  • **RockStart **

    • Need to recognize them, make them happy
    • but this doesn’t mean promotion
      • which can set this person in roles is not well suited for
      • or simply don’t want

  • SuperStar

    • Challenge them!
    • make sure they are constantly learning
    • give them opportunities
      • even bigger that they can actually handle
    • ensure you are not too much dependent on them
      • cause they will fly eventually

  • Sometimes a team change work… some times two persons don’t work well together…

  • When management is the only path to higher compensations, the quality of management suffers. Specially people under the umbrella of people who don’t want this management role

  • In many ways your job is to set and hold, a quality bar… seems harsh in the short term… but in the long term the only thing that is meaner is loweing the quality bar

Chapter 4 🔗

  • Telling people what to do doesn’t work -> people felt left out
  • Jobs always get it right -> inviting you to challenge his ideas, so at the end, it was the best idea possible
  1. Listen
    1. Give the quite ones a voice
  2. Clarify:
    1. ideas are fragile at the beginning they need nurture.
    2. help making ideas drop dead easy for others to comprehend
  3. Debate
    1. keep the conversation centered on the idea, not the ego
    2. Create the obligation to dissent
    3. don’t grab a decision cause the debate is becoming painful
  4. Decide
    1. Push decisions into the facts, or pull the facts into the decisions
    2. you are not the decider (usually)
    3. facts… not recommendations
  5. Persuade:
    1. Listener’s emotions, not speakers
    2. Credibility: demonstrate expertise and humility
    3. Logic: ensure everybody understand the facts that drive the decision
  6. Execute
    1. keep dirt under your fingernails
    2. You should still do ground work
    3. So you understand your colleagues
    4. Block time to execute
  7. Learn

Chapter 5 🔗

  • work/life, integration not balance: Your time and work time don’t need to compete, instead they can help each other.
  • Calendar: put things that you need to do yourself in the calendar
  • Free at work: everybody is going to be able to bring their best, if they feel autonomous.
  • Building trust: always takes times
  • Demonstrating openness: When somebody shares something with you you should always be respectful
  • Recognize your own emotions: share with the team how are you feeling
  • Ask questions: when somebody is frustrated/angry etc… keep asking questions and listening, you will understand the real issue
  • **Tell others how to feel: DON’T DO THAT **

Chapter 6 🔗

  • Guidance: Is the key of being a boss, you need to get, give and encourage. bot praise and criticism.
  • Is there anything I can do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me?
  • Don’t critique the criticism, it’s a gift, try to understand it, not debate it.
  • critics => situation + behavior + impact
  • Clarity of guidance gets measured in other person ear, not your moth
  • Don’t personalize:
    • ❌"You are wrong "
    • ✅ “I think you are wrong”
  • Make understand that when you critic/challenge you do it, because you care.
  • Spend half the time looking backward, half planning (future)

Chapter 7 🔗

Techniques to avoid boredom and burnout

  • First conversation
    • Try to learn what motivates people
    • ask for how was their life, brothers? kids? etc…
    • Don’t push
  • Second
    • Drams,
    • Don’t ask for professional aspirations… they will tell you what you want to hear
    • ask for 3 to 5 drams for the future
    • also ask for which skills are needed
  • Thrird
    • 18 month plan
    • What I should prioritize to go to the direct of any dream?
    • can be scary to follow you dreams directions -> might need some encouragement

Chapter 8 🔗

Goal: achieve results collaboratively that you could never achieve individually

  • 1:1
    • Best opportunities to really listing, and care personally -> listen and clarify
    • frequency: 1 a week with each team member
    • is the other person’s agenda, not yours -> Listen mother fucka!
    • show up, don’t easily reschedule.
    • encourage new ideas -> so they can grow stronger
    • flags:
      • cancellations -> too often might mean is not useful for the other person
      • **only updates **-> encourage them to use better this time
      • no criticism -> you are not good enough at getting critics
  • Think time -> block time to think, and make it sacred!
  • Bit debate meetings:
    • state in front that is not gonna be a decision after the meeting
    • pressure between who really want to discuss vs who want to get a decision
  • Execute time
    • An important job of a bis is to make sure there is time to make the actual work
    • block time in calendar
  • Be conscious of the culture
    • culture in team has a really strong effect in results
    • and leaders personality has a strong effect in culture of the team
      • people are listening -> everything you say could be used against
      • clarify
  • Learn:
    • Shit happens… is your responsibility to learn from it. and make a change -> prevent to happen again.