Radical Candor
It was my first book on people management, and I'm really happy about having started with this one. It is full of techniques and practical topics about how to conduct a productive team building.
It is really focused on feedback, and how feedback relates to other things: from rituals, situations, hierarchy, exceptions, diversity, etc.
I recommend the book for both the newcomers in the area and also for the experienced ones. I had some good managers that could have learnt important things if they had read it.
----
Here are my book notes (a lot of them):
- necessary part of being a boss: telling people clearly and directly when their work wasn't good enough. - create a climate in which people who weren't getting the job done were told so in time to fix it - hire people to tell us what to do, not the other way around - do with pushing people to decide than with being the decider; more to do with persuading than with giving orders; more to do with learning than with knowing - I don't mind being wrong. And I'll admit that I'm wrong a lot. It doesn't matter to me too much. What matters to me is that we do have the right thing. - You need to criticize in a way that does not call into question your confidence in their abilities but leaves not too much room for interpretation - Management and leadership are like forehand and backhand. You have to be good on both to win. - Three areas of responsibility that managers do have: guidance, team-building and results - It's not enough to care only about people's ability to perform a job. To have a good relationship, you have to be your whole self and care about each of the people who work for you as a human being. - leave three unimportant things unsaid each day - Feedback is measured at the listener's ear, not at the speaker's mouth. - How long do you spend making sure you have all the facts right before you criticize somebody? How long do you spend making sure you have all the facts right before you praise somebody? Ideally you'd spend just as long getting the facts right for praise as for criticism. - Ask for criticism before giving it, and offer more praise than criticism. - ... people who are more concerned with getting the right answer than with being right make the best bosses. - Some managers advise you simply to hire the right people and then leave them alone. "That's like saying, to have a good marriage, marry the right person and then avoid spending any time with them." That's ridiculous. - About superstars. Recognize that you'll probably be working for them one day, and celebrate that fact. - Telling people what to do didn't work. I didn't involve my team in decision-making; I just made the decisions myself. After making them I didn't take the time to explain why or to persuade them. Instead of executing those decisions, the team dissolved. - Spend at least ten minutes in every 1:1 meeting listening silently, without reacting in any way, keep the face totally neutral. You'll hear things you didn't want to hear. - 1. have a simple system for employees to use to generate ideas and voice complaints, 2. make sure that at least some of the issues raised are quickly addressed and 3. offer explanations as to why the other issues aren't being addressed - If you can build a culture where people listen to one another, they will start to fix things you as the boss never even knew were broken. - 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. - When companies help people develop new ideas by creating the space and time to clarify their thinking, innovation flourishes. - The debate takes time and requires emotional energy. But lack of debate saps a team of more time and emotional energy in the long run. - Remind people what the goal is: to get to the best answer, as a team. - How important is providing a clear explanation up front about the purpose of debate and creating a positive space in which it can occur. - Kick-ass bosses often do not decide themselves. Not only does that result in better decisions, it results in better morale. - If you ever played the game "telephone" as a kid, you know what happens to "facts" when they get passed around too many times. - If you're working efficiently, not everybody on your team is involved in every step of the listen-clarify-debate-decide process for everything - just the relevant people. - Aristotle's elements of rhetoric - pathos, logos, and ethos, which I'll translate loosely as emotion, logic and credibility. - Credibility is one of those things that is hard to articulate but you know it when you see it. - Minimize the collaboration tax. - When the facts change, change your mind. - When somebody reacts emotionally, this is your cue to keep asking questions until you understand what the real issue is. Don't over-direct the conversation; just keep listening. - Telling other people how to feel will backfire. - When you encourage people to criticize you publicly, you get the chance to show your team that you really, genuinely want the criticism. - No matter how unfair the criticism is, your first job is to listen with the intent to understand, not to defend yourself. - Repeat what you heard back to the person to make sure you got it. Then, let them know you want to think about what they said, and schedule a time to talk about it. - If you can't make a change, giving the employee a thoughtful, respectful explanation of why not, is the best reward you can offer. - If you're the boss, you have to do much better than announce how employees "must" feel. - ... he put a box with a slit on top in a high-traffic area so that people could drop questions or feedback into it. At his all-hands meeting he'd reach into the box and answer off the cuff. - describe three things when giving feedback: 1) the situation you saw, 2) the behaviour (what the person did, either good or bad), and 3) the impact you observed - on lower defenses: I'm going to describe a problem I see; I may be wrong, and if I am I hope you'll tell me; if I'm not I hope my bringing it up will help you fix it." - If it's not important, don't say it right away or at all. - The best guidance I've gotten in my life generally happened in super-quick conversations on the fly. - Don't use performance reviews as an excuse not to give impromptu in-person feedback. - Remaining silent at work for too long about something that angers or frustrates you makes it more likely that you will eventually blow up. - If you ask them to do this but they don't or if they submit ratings anonymously in the app, you've got a good signal that they don't trust you to react well. - What can I do or stop doing to make it easier for you to give me feedback? - The thing that I most need from you is to tell me what you really think. - never let one person on your team talk to you about another behind their back. It feels like you're being empathetic to listen, but actually you're just stirring the political pot. Instead, insist that they talk directly to each other, without you. - Your job is to be supportive, not punitive, when people come to you together with a conflict they cannot resolve. Open, fair, and fast resolution is one of the services you owe your direct reports. - kick starters: "what is your manager doing well?" Then, "what could your manager be doing better?" Then, "what really sucks?" - practicing these conversations helps to remind everyone that they have a goal: learning what motivates people at work - The second conversation moves from understanding what motivates people to understanding the person's dreams - Retention was the by-product; satisfying, meaningful work and productive relationships with boss were the primary goals. - "What do I need to learn in order to move in the direction of my dreams? How should I prioritize the things I need to learn? Whom can I learn from? - make a list of how the person's role can change to help them learn the skills needed to achieve each dream; whom they can learn from; and classes they could take or books they could read. Then next to each item, note who does what by when. - What kind of new projects or education or help you can offer to others? - All hiring is flawed and subjective, and these drawbacks cannot be fixed; they can only be managed - Here's a tip: schedule an hour, interview for forty-five minutes, and write for fifteen. - When you have to fire people, do it with humility. Remember, the reason you have to fire them is not that they suck. It's not even that they suck at this job. It's that this job sucks for them. - Take a moment to say thank-you. Do it in person, and do it in writing. - Don't start by bossing people. They'll just hate you. Start by listening to them. - The purpose of a 1:1 meeting is to listen and clarify - to understand what direction each person working for you wants to head. - recommend that managers use the 1:1 time to have "career conversations" - If people who report to you cancel 1:1s too often, it's a sign your partnership is not fruitful - If people just give you updates that could simply be emailed to you, encourage them to use the time more productively - good news only → people don't feel comfortable coming to you with their problems, or they think you won't or can't help. In these cases, you need to ask explicitly for the bad news. - No agenda → This is your time, but you don't seem to come with much to talk about. Can you tell me why? - debate meetings: lower the tension by making it clear that you are debating, not deciding. - The sole product of the debate should be a careful summary of the facts and issues that emerged, a clearer definition of the choices going forward, and a recommendation to keep debating or move to the decision - **"Culture eats strategy for lunch"** - becoming a boss is like getting arrested. Everything you say or do can and will be used against you. - I'd helped to create something larger than myself. It was one of the most magical moments of my career. - start by asking your team to criticize you - Don't ask questions that can be answered with a yes or a no - someone offers you criticism, they are taking a risk. It's your job to make sure they are rewarded. - Let your team know your plan to ask for feedback in your upcoming 1:1s.