Dr. Mario's 2nd 🧠

Radical Candor

9 min read

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some people were using Radical Candor as a license to behave like jerks, (Location 60)

Put another way, compassion is empathy plus action.” (Location 112)

“Relationships are core to your job. If you think that you can [fulfill your responsibilities as a manager] without strong relationships, you are kidding yourself. (Location 119)

When Larry wouldn’t back down, Matt started yelling at Larry. (Location 253)

In the time I worked at Apple, we taught thousands of people, to great reviews. Many more have taken the class since I left. (Location 287)

  • Note: No tiene abuela. QuĂ© abureimiento

“It’s Slovakia, dumbass!!” (Location 329)

My sharp correction was simply a short, effective way to get him to focus. He didn’t make the mistake again. (Location 331)

  • Note: Madre mia

The point is, rather, that if you are someone who is most comfortable communicating in that way, you have to build relationships of trust that can support it, and you have to hire people who can adapt to your style. (Location 335)

the time you dedicate to managing your team will come to approximately ten hours a week, (Location 373)

I’ll also suggest you block out about fifteen hours a week for you to think and execute independently in your area of expertise. (Location 374)

Despite the predictability, successful intervention proved dishearteningly elusive. Some days I felt like I was watching a slow-motion train wreck I’d seen dozens of times before. (Location 379)

“Is my job to build a great company,” I asked, “or am I really just some sort of emotional babysitter?” (Location 413)

  • Note: Cretina

many people feel they aren’t as good at management as they are at the “real” part of the job. (Location 430)

guidance, team-building, and results. (Location 444)

Implicit with candor is that you’re simply offering your view of what’s going on and that you expect people to offer theirs. (Location 516)

not just in a corporate hierarchy but on a fundamental human level. Part of the reason why people fail to “care personally” is the injunction to “keep it professional.” (Location 550)

This often means modeling the behavior yourself by showing some vulnerability to the people who report to you—or just admitting when you’re having a bad day—and creating a safe space for others to do the same. In (Location 560)

There are few things more damaging to human relationships than a sense of superiority. (Location 564)

you must also care deeply about people while being prepared to be hated in return. (Location 577)

  • Note: 
 It depends

In fact, if nobody is ever mad at you, you probably aren’t challenging your team enough. (Location 596)

  • Note: This is a bit paternalistic: people can push themselves without the need of someone pushing them

The hardest part of building this trust is inviting people to challenge you, just as directly as you are challenging them. (Location 603)

that you may be the one who feels upset or angry. (Location 605)

Radical Candor is also not an invitation to nitpick. (Location 625)

We have to be constantly aware of the fact that what seemed Radically Candid to one person or team may feel too obnoxious (or too touchy-feely) to another. (Location 641)

I’ll never forget overhearing Noam Bardin, Deltathree’s COO, yelling at an engineer, “That design could be fifteen times more efficient. You know you could have built it better. Now we’re going to have to rip what you did out and start over. We’ve lost a month, and for what? What were you thinking?” That seemed harsh. Rude, even 
 (Location 647)

  • Note: Puff

If it was OK to challenge and reinterpret God’s doctrine, of course it was not a sign of disrespect to argue vehemently with each (Location 654)

  • Note: It not remotely the same than the shameful moment before. And rooted in the idea of people not putting enough effort

realized I should take Noam’s challenges as a sign of respect rather than rudeness. (Location 658)

  • Note: Challenge is ok
 Shame is not

So I encouraged that team in Tokyo to be “politely persistent.” Being polite was their preferred way of showing they cared personally. Being persistent was the way they were most comfortable (Location 666)

  • Note: This is ok but the israel thing not, even accounting for culture

whose head had snapped out of his computer when I’d declared how many new customers had signed up in the past month. (Location 687)

“The other day I gave you a hard time about leaving early (Location 775)

  • Note: Cretina

refuse to work with people who can’t be bothered to show basic human decency. (Location 792)

most people would rather work for a “competent asshole” than a “nice incompetent.” (Location 795)

  • Note: Not sure. And where is the article?

It’s tempting to dismiss Ned as a jerk, but this is exactly the kind of attribution error that Radical Candor teaches us to avoid. Blaming people’s internal essence rather than their external behavior leaves no room for change. And why had Ned never changed? Because nobody ever bothered to challenge his behavior, and so he never had to learn. His obnoxiousness just escalated. (Location 823)

  • Note: Ok

Fundamental human decency is something every person owes every other, regardless of position. (Location 843)

Be as specific and thorough with praise as with criticism. Go deep into the details. (Location 954)

Start by asking for criticism, not by giving it (Location 961)

more firsthand experience you have with how it feels to receive criticism, the better idea you’ll have of how your own guidance lands for others. (Location 966)

Patronizing or insincere praise like that will erode trust and hurt your relationships just as much as overly harsh criticism. (Location 1005)

Ideally you’d spend just as long getting the facts right for praise as for criticism. (Location 1015)

Second, it might be the case, particularly when you’re dealing with highly accomplished people, that you have to go to some extremes to break through their tendency to filter out critical messages. (Location 1051)

Make it clear that the problem is not due to some unfixable personality flaw. Share stories when you’ve been criticized for something similar. (Location 1058)

After their first design review, he’d show new employees two binders he kept in his office. One had ten sheets of paper in it. The other had more than a thousand. “This is my ‘yes’ file,” he explained, pointing to the slim binder. “The design ideas that got approved.” (Location 1061)

“Just say it!” (Location 1102)

Not all artists want to own a gallery; in fact, most don’t. (Location 1128)

Think about teams you’ve worked on that have needed some of each and what the right ratio would (Location 1140)

It will remind you to help people conduct their careers in the way they desire, not in the way you think they should want to. (Location 1200)

To do that, you are going to have to get to know each of your direct reports at a personal level. It’s also going to require you to have some of the hardest conversations you’ll ever have. Sometimes, you’ll even have to fire people. (Location 1205)

Rock stars are just as important to a team’s performance as superstars. Stability is just as important as growth. The right mix of each will change over time, but you’ll always need some of each. (Location 1209)

your job is not to provide purpose (Location 1260)

our world, is plenty dinged up already. (Location 1268)

If one person is doing much better work than others on the team, it seems obvious they should get a better rating and a higher bonus. But when ratings are primarily used to justify future promotions, rather than to recognize past performance, this doesn’t happen. (Location 1353)

In World War II, the U.S. Air Force took their very best pilots from the front lines and sent them home to train new pilots. (Location 1360)

my job to help him keep growing. (Location 1430)

  • Tags: blue
  • Note: Patronizing

make sure you don’t get too dependent on them; ask them to teach others on the team to do their job, because they won’t stay in their existing role for long. I often thought of these people as shooting stars— (Location 1439)

can appeal a decision, but the manager is not the decider. (Location 1453)

I did it because I believed that everyone can be exceptional somewhere and that it was my job to help them find that role. I also believed that we should strive to have 100 percent of the team doing exceptional work. If somebody hadn’t proven in the course of two years that they could do exceptional work, they almost certainly would never get there. (Location 1503)

Steve was so focused on getting to the right answer that he genuinely didn’t care who’d said what. (Location 1769)

Before I interviewed at Apple, a friend warned me that Tim tended to allow long silences and that I shouldn’t let it unnerve me or feel the need to fill them. (Location 1814)

“If I gave any reaction at all, people would often tell me what they thought I wanted to hear. I found that they were much more likely to say what they really thought—even if it wasn’t what I was hoping to hear—when I was careful not to show what I thought.” (Location 1826)

To get others to say what they think, you need to say what you think sometimes, too. (Location 1835)

Steve Jobs, “He’s a lion. If he roars at you, you’d better roar back just as loudly—but only if you really are a lion, too. Otherwise he’ll eat you for lunch.” (Location 1853)

saying what I think really clearly and then going to great lengths to encourage disagreement is a good way to listen. (Location 1861)

“It is only by selection, by elimination, and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things.” (Location 1938)

  • Tags: blue
  • Note: On curation

As the boss, you are the editor, not the author. (Location 1944)

Part of your job as the boss is to help people think through their ideas before submitting them to the rough-and-tumble of debate. (Location 1960)

Not too many take 20-percent time, so this policy belongs more to the fantasy Google than the real Google. (Location 1974)

It was his responsibility to make the ideas that seemed so obvious to him equally obvious to FDR. (Location 1996)

Steve would later say that when a team debated, both the ideas and the people came out more beautiful—results well worth all the friction and noise.* (Location 2025)

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