Radical Candor: Fully Revised & Updated Edition: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

I first heard about "Radical Candor" during my government agency's annual training conference, a conference that included a workshop based upon "Radical Candor" led by our HR director. While I hadn't heard of the book, I fell in love with the ideas behind it and upon my return home set out to pick up the book for myself. "Radical Candor" has easily become one of my favorite books of the past year, a terrific option for those who are challenged by difficult conversations and who want to grow in leadership. While "Radical Candor" is likely most applicable to those in management or leadership positions, I've found the book really has been of tremendous benefit in my personal life. Within weeks of reading the book, I found myself in a challenging situation dealing with a healthcare provider and took much of what I learned from the book to resolve the situation positively and to work through a potentially negative situation. I displayed a side of myself I didn't really know and was rather awestruck by the positive results. Since reading the book, I've actually been promoted into a supervisory position and am now seeing the ways in which the book complements my existing leadership skills and management style. Truly, "Radical Candor" remains one of my favorite books from the past year and I've seen positive growth both personally and professionally resulting from author Kim Scott's intelligent, informed and sensitively written guidance.

This book is a comprehensive playbook for the best management practices in Silicon Valley - taken directly from Kim Scott's incredible experience at Google and Apple. If you are looking for a way to lead teams in today's world, look no further! Kim's authentic stories about her own successes and failures as a manager, humanize a manager's role and demystify the simple steps you can take to improve team morale and business results. No one has more radical candor than Kim Scott, which is why she's advised the best and brightest executives in the technology industry. Now everyone can have Kim's secret sauce - her wisdom, humor, humility and practical suggestions for being a killer boss and leader. This book is a compelling, entertaining and useful read. Every global training team should buy a copy for first-time and tenured company leaders.

Great book and wonderful insights to becoming a better leader. Be aware the font size of the book is extremely small and does create eye strain. Reading glasses are required to read this book even if you don' use reading glasses regularly.

I loved that the author was very honest about her own experiences. The honesty made reading the book feel like a conversation and it immediately gave you permission for any mistakes you have made or might make. She begins the book with Part 1 of her own experiences and then Part 2 provides more specific and detailed guidance for varying scenarios. The book addresses getting to know your team, handling conflict, expressing concerns, providing constructive and genuine feedback, receiving/ giving guidance and motivating change. I loved that at the end she also provided suggestions on where to begin and steps to follow AND redirected you to exactly where you can get help within the book with implementing the suggestions. I have read similar book where authors act like they have it all together, don't tell you where to begin and I end up being more confused after reading the book than I was before. GREAT READ!!

I’m definitely going to pull several notes from this book and apply it to how I conduct myself as a leader. I honestly love this book enough to buy her other book on leadership. (in other words, I’m coming back for more.)

This was an odd one, in part because it wasn't a book I chose. Our team has a book club at work and the Radical Candor was the first book we covered, in part because our manager is looking for us to provide each other with more radical candor. So first: this book is written for managers, and I am not a manager. (I don't foresee wanting to be a manager any time soon.) If you are a manager, it's probably a better fit. Second, well, there's a lot of Silicon Valley privilege dripping from this book. At one point, Kim talks about how letting poor performers go can be a blessing for both the company and poor performer because the fired employee can go do something like starting that coffee shop they always wanted. Maybe on a West Coast IT severance package (assuming they move somewhere else) but most people on the East Coast and all points in between lose a job and immediately have to go find another job. Kim also talks about how things like minority status or being female might make radical candor more complicated, but doesn't actually talk about what to do about them. Frankly, I don't think she knows. So yes, problematic book from multiple angles. At the same time, this book gave me some tips and tools that I need. For example, Kim puts a lot of emphasis on giving praise, which I don't do enough. One of the highlights of my year so far was an unexpected piece of praise from my manager for a wiki I'm putting together. I'm trying to pay that forward to the folks I work with, because we all should hear about the things we're doing right at least as often as we hear about the things we're doing wrong. The other thing that Radical Candor provides is a framework for structuring large conversations. When you have a business question where you know gaining consensus is going to be an issue, you can separate the "debate" meeting from the "decide" meeting, for example, to ensure that everyone gets a chance to have their say and at the same time there isn't pressure to make a decision right now. I don't think that Kim Scott provided enough direct advice on how to structure a piece of criticism. I think that Crucial Conversations does a much better job in that sense. But I do think that this book gives better examples of why constantly providing just-in-time feedback can help a team move from a place where crucial conversations are necessary to a place where everyone is communicating clearly enough that high-stakes behavior discussions are fewer and far between. In summary, this is not a book I'd say will have a permanent place on my bookshelf like Crucial Conversations does, but it's helpful and adds some tools to my toolbox that I didn't have before.

Used but taken care of!

Bought this for manager book club. A bit wordy, but has principles that we'll use long term.