We’re officially celebrating ONE YEAR of the Bettering Communities Book Club! This group was started in 2024 with the goal of creating stronger, intentional community with folks who love reading and learning. We reviewed our sixth book of the year this month, Radical Candor: How to Be a Kick-ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott.

Reactions to the Book

Our group noted that this book had actionable things we could apply in our jobs and within our teams. The format of the book was interesting, too, with the first half covering broad philosophies in management and the second half featuring techniques and tools to use (a more functional handbook). Overall we saw ways where these techniques could be applied within our own organizations.

Quality over Quantity in What You Say

A major theme in the book is the idea of giving feedback with intention. Author Kim Scott notes that it is important to put as much thought into the compliments / praise we give as we put into our criticisms and feedback. Participants in the discussion noted that they had been personally frustrated when they received positive feedback that had been vague or felt disingenuous. This goes against a concept we’ve often been taught - which is to give compliments or to deliver feedback in a “feedback sandwich”.

One participant shared that they were given the feedback early in their career of remembering the acronym “WAIT”: “Why am I talking?” This ensures that you consider if you are truly adding value by contributing to a conversation and that your insights will hold more weight if they are intentional.

A Management Relationship Invested in Understanding Your People

Kim Scott recommends that managers have one-on-ones with their direct reports at least 2x a month - this seemed unthinkable for some of us in organizations we’ve worked in - but we appreciated that these conversations were structured around the employee’s long-term goals and how the manager could support them in reaching those goals. Kim recommends three conversations with new hires: 1. Your life story, 2. your big dreams, and 3. your 18-month actionable plan. This seems to go against our hiring methodology many of us utilize which incorporates questions in the interview process such as “what is your five year plan?” - it feels like we have to lie and say that we’ll be satisfied in this job, but that gives us no space to share if we desire a higher growth trajectory.

One participant shared that their organization is renaming performance reviews to better incorporate growth and learning into the discussion. Kim Scott also draws a distinction between “rockstars” and “superstars” in organizations - those who prefer a steady growth trajectory and those who seek rapid advancement. Kim notes that there is value in both - and managers need to be mindful to find growth opportunities for the superstars and value and retain the stability and institutional knowledge of the rockstars. We discussed where we are personally right now - as rockstars or superstars and how this has ebbed and flowed throughout our professional life. The difference between superstar and rockstars is indicated visually below.

When Someone Needs to Exit an Organization

Kim Scott was very frank about how to give feedback clearly and to fire someone with grace. One of the major points was “it’s not mean, it’s clear” and reframing guidance as a gift. We all appreciated how she shared the story of keeping an employee who was not meeting expectations and how it was unkind to keep him as long as they did without being candid with him. When he was blindsided by being let go, it was a failure on the organization’s behalf. We discussed how it can be challenging to have candid conversations in the style which Scott recommends in a tighter Human Resources environment - especially working with unionized employees where documentation is imperative. How can we care personally when we are in a litigious environment where we fear retaliation?

We also talked about how challenging it is when a past supervisor did not bother to give candid feedback. The clock starts when documentation begins - an employee may have been performing poorly for years without receiving clear feedback.

Process documentation when you lose an employee by choice was also a point of discussion. Losing rockstars is a major challenge in lean organizations where folks may not be 100% cross-trained. It is a goal of some participants to have all employees in lean departments develop a guide to help a new hire when institutional knowledge is lost within the organization, perhaps even suddenly.

Kim Scott recommended following up with employees who leave or let go - which seemed unthinkable to some of us. However, there’s merit to it in ensuring that the bridges are not burned and in hopes that the organization may be considering the future value of that employee after they grow their skills elsewhere.

Challenging Stability-Centric Organizations to Embrace Feedback/Innovation

Many of the participants come from a local government background and we discussed how folks who tend to gravitate toward that field value stability. It can be scary to embrace innovation, disruption and change when stability, processes, consistency are important values for those individuals. We talked about ways to encourage team members to tip toe into problem solving or innovation discovery:

Rather than asking “what could we innovate here?”, ask “what is your pain point right now?” or “what’s the thing that you procrastinate on doing?” to identify a space where they may be open to change.
Rather than starting with a big question like “what could we do differently?”, consider mapping a process and seeing if there are redundancies or inefficiencies when it is mapped and a team sees the process with fresh eyes in a new format.
If someone is particularly change-averse, embrace the idea of being “politely persistent” to encourage people to feel safe offering feedback and considering a different approach.

In Summary

Our group felt that this represented a form of management we’d like to embody with our teams where we can be direct but kind and truly embrace the idea of “caring personally and challenging directly.” We also felt that there were takeaways we could apply in how we better understand our employee’s future growth potential through the models of one-on-one interviews and three essential meetings.

You can learn more about author Kim Scott, her books and the concepts of this read on the Radical Candor website.

Book Review: Radical Candor by Kim Scott