Radical Candor: Fully Revised & Updated Edition

Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

De: Kim Scott

Narrado por: Teri Schnaubelt

Featuring a new preface, afterword, and Radically Candid performance-review bonus chapter, the fully revised and updated edition of Radical Candor is packed with even more guidance to help you improve your relationships at work.

Radical Candor has been embraced around the world by leaders of every stripe at companies of all sizes. Now a cultural touchstone, the concept has come to be applied to a wide range of human relationships.

The idea is simple: You don't have to choose between being a pushover and a jerk. Using Radical Candor - avoiding the perils of Obnoxious Aggression, Manipulative Insincerity, and Ruinous Empathy - you can be kind and clear at the same time.

Kim Scott was a highly successful leader at Google before decamping to Apple, where she developed and taught a management class. Since the original publication of Radical Candor in 2017, Scott has earned international fame with her vital approach to effective leadership and co-founded the Radical Candor executive education company, which helps companies put the book's philosophy into practice.

Radical Candor is about caring personally and challenging directly, about soliciting criticism to improve your leadership and also providing guidance that helps others grow. It focuses on praise but doesn't shy away from criticism - to help you love your work and the people you work with.

Radically Candid relationships with team members enable bosses to fulfill their three core responsibilities:

1. Create a culture of Compassionate Candor.
2. Build a cohesive team.
3. Achieve results collaboratively.

Required listening for the most successful organizations, Radical Candor has raised the bar for management practices worldwide.

©2019 Kim Scott (P)2019 Macmillan Audio

Couldn’t stand the tone the Narrator Used

While I don’t agree with all the principles in the book, there were some good points. Overall, it was a painful listen. The tone of the narrator came across as ice like and in your face. I don’t recommend listening to her at all.

Realistic and Relatable

I loved this manager toolkit in a book. The stories, examples, practical how to put the lessons into practice put this at the top of my recommendation list for all people leaders and HR professionals.

Excellent content; better as physical text

The content was incredible, and I'll be returning to this text over and over in my career and personal life. As an audiobook, it's dense and long, and definitely better to read physically and jot notes in.

Great read but needs a pdf companion

Great book and interesting insights I found highly relevant to my current role. Lots of actionable advice I can immediately put into practice. Only negative was there were several tables or diagrams that were read aloud instead of being in an accompanying pdf. Reading a table aloud was totally useless and disengaging. I would have preferred a pdf to go look at as the associated section was read.

It was great until…

I’m sure I’ll be accused of “mansplaining” or because I am white, but we could deal without all the privilege talk and making George Floyd sound like a saint.

Good points made, but problematic people praised, hence the lower rating (would have been 5 stars until chapter 4)

I was soooooo happy to learn from this book and I do appreciate the information shared and agree with a lot of the principles. However, it was a big shock to hear the praise for problematic leaders-though, I don’t know if she knows they’re problematic, but it puts her advice in perspective. I like to imagine she would hear someone who would raise flags about the person she was praising. The sad reality is, as women in technology, it’s hard to know who to trust, and it’s common to be fooled by problematic people. Point is, being a good boss is complicated and I agree that being radically candid is helpful to find solutions and address problems. Also, it’s important to be selective with who you trust, and advocating for someone harmful, will radically evisorate your credibility as a good boss. All of which is a very challenging dynamic to create a safe place for people to show up as their best selves and feel safe and happy and produce results.
-your millennial friend

Insightful

It’s all about sincerely communicating not gender or race. But the concepts are valid and helpful

Candid, Empathetic and Clear

This is a real 'How To' from someone who's done it at different levels and in varying settings.
Kim's experience is tangible and prescriptive while at the same highly humanized.
Her experience at Google, Apple and Juice touts the best of each of these bastions of modern day management excellence, which often present as infallible, however she provides a bird's eye view of some of their limitations and where their philosophical tenets start to falter as organizations scale.
Kim shows a great deal of ownership and vulnerability in her candor and gives clear step by step instructions on how to implement radical candor.
I have only read the revised version. However, from the introduction, I think her revisions address some key misinterpretations of the original book. For that reason, I recommend the revised version of the book.
This is another invaluable read for any leader (whether in management or an individual contributor) who wants to gro themselves and their organization in an honest and caring way founded on FAIRNESS.
Great book.
Regards,
DG

Middle manager mediocrity

I’m a middle manager with direct reports only sometimes but not always. I learned more about what my supervisors can do differently than what I can do. Wish there’d been more about followers and team members, and not just leaders.

Solid read. The subtitle says it all.

“Be a kick-a** boss without losing your humanity” — it’s not only the subtitle for the book, it’s also a perfect description of its content — maybe even more so than the actual title.

As you could surmise from said title, this book is filled with strategies for being open and honest at work. However, the real message and lesson here is actually teaching the reader how to be a great boss and lead a successful division without treating his/her employees as means to ends.

It’s both effective and informative. I’m going four stars here instead of five simply because the book does get a little in the weeds on strategic implementation at times. I think that’s just a product of the nature of the work itself. Some people will love that. I just found it to drag out a little at times. That said, such implementation details are core to the book’s ethos and will go a long way toward helping people improve their management skills.

Props to the author for addressing the hilarious Silicon Valley episode that made a mockery of the original edition. She handled it gracefully and used it as an opportunity to get the message back out there — another product of the mindset she preaches throughout the book.

-Brian Sachetta
Author of “Get Out of Your Head”