Radical candor : be a kick-ass boss without losing your humanity

Published April 5, 2017 by St. Martin's Press.

ISBN:
978-1-250-10350-5
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4 stars (36 reviews)

Radical Candor is a simple idea: to be a good boss, you have to Care Personally at the same time that you Challenge Directly. When you challenge without caring it's obnoxious aggression; when you care without challenging it's ruinous empathy. When you do neither it's manipulative insincerity.

This simple framework can help you build better relationships at work, and fulfill your three key responsibilities as a leader: creating a culture of feedback (praise and criticism), building a cohesive team, and achieving results you're all proud of.

Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Taken from years of the author's experience, and distilled clearly giving actionable lessons to the reader; it shows managers how to be successful while retaining their humanity, finding meaning in their job, and creating an environment where people both love their work and their …

5 editions

Review of 'Radical candor : be a kick-ass boss without losing your humanity' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

So much good stuff packed into one book about how to be a better boss…by caring about your employees! Great candid lessons learned by the author. Lots of practical approaches to helping guide employees to be their best selves.

Good for any leader, not just people managers.

Review of 'Radical Candor : Fully Revised and Updated Edition' on 'Storygraph'

4 stars

Possibly the best business management book I've read (though this may be a low bar). I thought some of the concepts might be difficult (impossible?) to implement in a public sector job, but I still see so much value in creating a healthier work culture in general.

Review of 'Radical candor : be a kick-ass boss without losing your humanity' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

generally if you cut it in half and skip all the Wokens - it may be a useful handover for the newbie manager, I guess we can't call it a book;
to sum up this brochure - it has some good examples in startups and bigger companies, all of them in the epicenter of the woke movement hence lots of these things don't really make any sense for a european; moreover, her views on 'special treatment' of women, while written in a careful manner, are still pretty close to radical feminism I despise;
I wish this book would be about management and 80% of it still is but the rest, I found it hard to swallow.

Point is, Eastern Europe ain't her brochure's target audience, I presume thus take my review with a grain of salt.

Review of 'Radical candor : be a kick-ass boss without losing your humanity' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

I had read some articles about this book, and thought it was about being very direct with people. There's more to it than that, and there's a lot more in the book about building relationships with people at work than I expected.

The book feels a little padded to me, and there's a lot of advice that won't apply to every business. The basic ideas, though, are sound. When I think about the best leaders I've worked with, most of them have exhibited the behaviors suggested in this book.

Review of 'Radical candor : be a kick-ass boss without losing your humanity' on 'Goodreads'

4 stars

Whispering "Your fly is down!" to someone who needs to know, may be a bit hard, but it shows your concern and helps the person. This book is about how to maximize your "radical candor" with others at work.

Kim Scott talks about how to build effective relationships at your job -- especially with people you manage. They don't need to be fake-friend and they don't need to be coldly inhuman, but if you manage a team, talking with people about personal goals will help the team achieve its goals more efficiently and build a place where people want to bring their best.

While I do Scott naturally favors systematizing personal relationships to an excessive degree, the analytical tool of understanding where you fall on the 2-dimensional "caring personally" vs "challenging directly" axes helps ensure you're expressing concern in the most beneficial way to the most people, while avoiding the …

Review of 'Radical candor : be a kick-ass boss without losing your humanity' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

This book should've been an article or an essay. While the basic premise is fine and the attempt to make it more easy to digest is laudable, I don't see it as revolutionary - similar approaches have been proposed numerous times in the past (although not in this 2-axis / 4 quadrants way) and the concept of giving actionable feedback and empathizing is nothing new.

Bottom line: reading the first 2 chapters should be mostly sufficient.

Review of 'Radical candor : be a kick-ass boss without losing your humanity' on 'Goodreads'

5 stars

Great book for new and seasoned leaders who struggle with finding the balance between being a hard-ass and a softie. Kim Scott provides more than a theory - she shares clear instruction on HOW leaders can: give and receive feedback effectively, create growth plans for employees, fire under-performers, etc. Anyone charged with leading and developing people would benefit from reading this.

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