Why Managers Can’t Skimp on Radical Candor

strategy+business, April 17, 2017

by Theodore Kinni

It’s been a long time since I was a wage slave. But if today’s workplace is anything like what Kim Scott describes in Radical Candor, it must be a nightmare. People are picking their noses, stinking up the joint with body odor, and tucking their underwear into the office furniture. They call each other “dumb-a**” and cry a lot. Crying. It sounds like preschool for grownups.

Or maybe that’s just business as usual in Silicon Valley, where Scott, an entrepreneur, executive, and executive coach, spent a decade or so. She ran online sales and service at Google’s AdSense, YouTube, and DoubleClick, where she worked for her Harvard Business School classmate Sheryl Sandberg. Then, she joined Apple University, where she designed and taught a course for first-time managers. With those unimpeachable credentials in hand, Scott struck out on her own, coaching CEOs at Twitter, Dropbox, and Qualtrics. In 2016, she cofounded Candor Inc., a training firm built around the concept of radical candor, which she developed.

Radical candor stems from Scott’s conviction that interpersonal relationships are the currency of management. “They determine whether you can fulfill your three responsibilities as a manager: 1) to create a culture of guidance (praise and criticism) that will keep everyone moving in the right direction; 2) to understand what motivates each person on your team well enough to avoid burnout or boredom and keep the team cohesive; and 3) to drive results collaboratively,” she writes. “If you think that you can do these things without strong relationships, you are kidding yourself”...read the rest of the review here