Book: Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Malone Scott. Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️.

A book every boss should read. It helps to create a culture of giving and receiving honest feedback and create great teams. It has many truths, you will notice many of them if you’re working for a big company. You may not agree with some parts of it depending on how you see work and people but if you really care about people careers and the performance of your team it makes a lot of sense.

Here are my notes about this book:

  • At apple, we hire people to tell us what to do, not the other way around
  • The manager asked Steve Jobs about how the team should be built and he said that if he already knew that the manager will not be needed
  • The manager role has more to do with persuading than giving orders
  • “babysitting people’s emotions” is your job as a manager and it’s necessary to be a good boss. It IS real job. Managers should not be complaining about it.
  • When you put people in roles they don’t like and are not good at, or when you force people to deliver in unrealistic schedule, you decrease the level of trust
  • Building a trust relationship with your team is vital for every other activity
  • Care personally about people. Give hard feedback when necessary but show them you care about their feelings. “It hurts, I know, but we have to deal with it”
  • A good rule of thumb for any relationship is to read three unimportant things that were not said that day
  • Radical candor praise gives a personal and specific compliment that makes they have your attention and know you’re being sincere
  • Criticism is bad in case you don’t think about the other person as a human being
  • Be careful when praising, understand all the details. There was a case where the boss decided to praise an employee publicly but forgot so give all the credit. The other employees thought he was taking all the credit for himself
  • To criticism to be effective it’s crucial to do it very clearly and to articulate why you’re criticizing in details, so people can improve that
  • Praise in public, criticize in private and don’t personalize
  • Learn about what motivates each person on your team
  • Rockstars are people who love their jobs and will not get another one if it takes them away from their craft. If you put them in the wrong role, they leave.
  • Superstars need to have challenges to grow constantly *Rockstars are just as important as superstars. Stability is just as important as growth.
  • People do a better work when they find that work meaningful
  • Three bricklayers were building the St. Paul cathedral when they were asked about what they were doing. 1: I’m working. 2: I’m building a wall. 3: I’m building a cathedral
  • Be a partner, not an absent manager or micro manager
  • Focus on bad employees instead of focus on the good ones is a bad choice. The improvement of the good employee from good to great will be better than an improvement from bad to mediocre
  • Rockstars usually don’t want promotions, be sure to compensate them somehow. Conferences (in case he likes to speak) and so on.
  • Accepting mediocrity is not good to anybody
  • 3 tips to consider when deciding if it’s time to fire someone: Did you gave this person radical candor guidance, do you understand the impact of this person’s performance on your colleagues, did you ask others for advice
  • Most managers wait for too long to fire people. When they decide to do it, this people performance has been a pain in the ass for the whole team for a while
  • Managers tell many lies to not fire people
  • Lie 1: it will get better. Ask yourself how would it happen.
  • Lie 2: somebody is better than nobody. It’s better to have a hole than an asshole. Poor performance actually creates more work.
  • Lie 3: Transfer is the answer. You will not act in good faith doing it
  • Lie 4: it’s bad for morale. Don’t worry, your team will understand if this person really had a poor performance, you will be helping the team with this decision
  • By firing that person you may help him find another job he excels in. It’s not the person that sucks, the job sucks, at least for that person
  • Retaining people doing bad work penalizes people doing good work. Retaining bad bosses is even worst since it has such a bad Impact on people who report to them
  • Sometimes you put a good person in a wrong role. The responsibility for his bad performance is yours.
  • Even in an authoritarian company you will get better results if you lower your power down and work collaboratively
  • Doesn’t matter who is right, but how to get it right
  • If your boss is taking a bad decision, it’s your responsibility to convince him to change it or he will ask you about it in the future (Steve Jobs did that)
  • Plussing. Instead of criticizing new ideas, try to solve problems with it
  • Bosses should not take decisions alone but listen to the team and guide it
  • Seek facts, not recommendations. The recommendation usually comes with ego.
  • Block time to execute
  • Never try to prove your colleagues values wrong and yours right
  • As a boss exercise your own public criticism. Speak publicly about what you have to improve, this will help others to provide feedback about you
  • Orange feedback box on eBay. The manager answer to all the questions during the meetings and people feel comfortable asking them
  • Don’t say: she’s really smart. But instead, say: this was the clearest way to show the user problem I ever seen. It will give enough detail about why she’s good and in what it applies
  • Let’s face it, flat hierarchy is a myth. High hierarchy is an inescapable fact of life (LOL)
  • Categorize your team. You may have rockstars, superstars, people not doing well but with good potential, and people not doing well at all. Work to let Rockstars do their work, motivate superstars, work on peoples growth, and fire those who doesn’t have a good perspective to improve
  • If you have more Rockstars than the other teams, it’s probably because you’re out of sync with your colleagues, not because you have the best team
  • Invest in hiring, it’s not easy to fire people
  • Don’t make it nearly impossible to fire people or you will get your good employees to do extra work and feel frustrated about it
  • Address performance problems as soon as possible. Try to help the employee to get better and in case it doesn’t work, fire him
  • Tolerating bad performance is unfair to people performing well
  • Say thank you. it’s a simple gesture and makes a huge difference for the employee
  • Don’t announce promotions if it doesn’t make sense for the other employees (new responsibilities)
  • There is a chart about micro management vs. Partnership. This article describes it: http://firstround.com/review/warning-this-is-not-your-grandfathers-talent-planning/
  • If people are canceling 1-1 frequently is because your partnership is not worth enough
  • If you’re not receiving enough criticism, people are not feeling safe sharing it with you
  • Google employees do team update snippets to share with the team
  • Separate decision and debate meetings
  • Meeting agenda should be shared with your team before the meeting
  • People will go to the meeting only if they want or need to be there. People hate to not participate in decision that involve them but they hate attending to meetings irrelevant to them even more
  • Encourage people to switch roles in debate meetings, ego should not be part of it
  • Most parts of the tips in this book consider a really big team
  • Work against meeting proliferation. Remove chairs from meeting rooms, people don’t want to stand for a long time.
  • Show you care about the small details and people will start doing the same
  • Encourage people to stop complaining and start helping. Do it yourself too.
  • Clarify everything you say. People will try to use your thoughts to do stuff, be sure they understand correctly.

People management summary: Have clear conversations with each member of your team, create growth management plans once a year, hire the right people, fire the appropriate people, promote the right people, reward people who are doing a great work but shouldn’t be promoted.

There are great tips here and I mostly agree with them.