Radical Candor: How to Get What You Want by Saying What You Mean

That’s why Colin Powell said leadership is sometimes about being willing to piss people off. When you are overly worried about how people will perceive you, you’re less willing to say what needs to be said. Like Jony, you may feel it’s because you care about the team, but really, in those all-too-human moments you may care too much about how they f

Radical Candor is not about schmoozing, nor is it about endless extroversion that exhausts the introverts on your team or wears you out if you happen to be the introvert.

Caring personally is about doing things you already know how to do. It’s about acknowledging that we are all people with lives and aspirations that extend beyond those related to our shared work. It’s about finding time for real conversations; about getting to know each other at a human level; about learning what’s important to people; about sharin

The second dimension involves telling people when their work isn’t good enough—and when it is; when they are not going to get that new role they wanted, or when you’re going to hire a new boss “over” them; when the results don’t justify further investment in what they’re working on. Delivering hard feedback, making hard calls about who does what on

Then next time you spot a metaphorical fly down and are tempted not to say anything, imagine where that puts you on the framework: Ruinous Empathy or Manipulative Insincerity? The little jolt might just move you toward Radical Candor.

Start by asking for criticism, not by giving it Don’t dish it out before you show you can take it

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.

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“Steep growth” is generally characterized by rapid change—learning new skills or deepening existing ones quickly. It’s not about becoming a manager—plenty of individual contributors remain on a steep growth trajectory their entire careers, and plenty of managers are on a gradual growth trajectory. Nor should steep growth be thought of as narrowly a