Radical Candor by Kim Scott

Note: I don’t review substandard books. I read a lot, but I don’t have a lot of time to review books. What I share, I share because it’s the best of the best and I know it will help you in your quest to become an influencer.

Quick links/info:

• Buy the book >>
• Author Twitter profile
• Author LinkedIn profile
• If you liked Crucial Conversations you’ll love this book.
• Tags: Communication, management, leadership, working well with others.

How to know if this book can help you:

• You lead a team (you need to read this book).
• Your team has communication challenges (you really need to read this book).

Review:

After reading this book I sent this email to my management team at my marketing agency, MWI:

If there were three books right now that I’d say the repeated reading of would help MWI succeed more than any others, they would be:

Profit First by Mike Michalowicz
Scaling Up by Verne Harnish
Radical Candor by Kim Scott

I believe you’ve all read the first two. I’d recommend checking out the third if you haven’t already.

Radical Candor is not about being a jerk, just the opposite. It’s not about changing your personality to be someone you aren’t. It’s about giving all of us the tools we need to make communication easier and more effective. It’s full of useful tidbits of wisdom like this:

You may be worried about earning their respect, and that’s natural. Unfortunately, though, being overly focused on respect can backfire because it’ll make you feel extra defensive when criticized. If, on the other hand, you can listen to the criticism and react well to it, both trust and respect will follow.

That said, I don’t want you to think it’s a bunch of touchy-feely nice thoughts or quick, superficial fixes to problems that have deeper roots. This book is very easy to read, but it goes deep and strikes at the heart of communication problems. It makes what is one of the most complicated and thorny of issues–human communication, accessible.

If you can’t communicate effectively with an individual, you can’t effectively communicate with a large audience. If you want to be influential, dive in, read this book, and learn how to say what needs to be said, whether it’s working one-on-one, or with the crowd.