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Radical Candor: Fully Revised & Updated Edition: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity Hardcover – Big Book, October 1, 2019
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Enhance your purchase
* New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller multiple years running
* Translated into 20 languages, with more than half a million copies sold worldwide
* A Hudson and Indigo Best Book of the Year
* Recommended by Shona Brown, Rachel Hollis, Jeff Kinney, Daniel Pink, Sheryl Sandberg, and Gretchen Rubin
Radical Candor has been embraced around the world by leaders of every stripe at companies of all sizes. Now a cultural touchstone, the concept has come to be applied to a wide range of human relationships.
The idea is simple: You don't have to choose between being a pushover and a jerk. Using Radical Candor―avoiding the perils of Obnoxious Aggression, Manipulative Insincerity, and Ruinous Empathy―you can be kind and clear at the same time.
Kim Scott was a highly successful leader at Google before decamping to Apple, where she developed and taught a management class. Since the original publication of Radical Candor in 2017, Scott has earned international fame with her vital approach to effective leadership and co-founded the Radical Candor executive education company, which helps companies put the book's philosophy into practice.
Radical Candor is about caring personally and challenging directly, about soliciting criticism to improve your leadership and also providing guidance that helps others grow. It focuses on praise but doesn't shy away from criticism―to help you love your work and the people you work with.
Radically Candid relationships with team members enable bosses to fulfill their three core responsibilities:
1. Create a culture of Compassionate Candor
2. Build a cohesive team
3. Achieve results collaboratively
Required reading for the most successful organizations, Radical Candor has raised the bar for management practices worldwide.
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherSt. Martin's Press
- Publication dateOctober 1, 2019
- Dimensions6.5 x 1.3 x 9.55 inches
- ISBN-101250235375
- ISBN-13978-1250235374
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"I think this is an incredible book for anyone who is hoping to create better relationships in the workplace. Whether you manage 1 person or an entire company, this is for YOU." ―Rachel Hollis, New York Times bestselling author
"Scott’s experiences leading teams at Google and Apple led to this book, which espouses a workplace culture where leaders care deeply about their employees and challenge them to be their best selves.” ―Jeff Kinney, author of the bestselling Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, in the New York Times
"I raced through RADICAL CANDOR―it’s thrilling to learn a framework that shows how to be both a better boss and a better colleague. RADICAL CANDOR is packed with illuminating truths, insightful advice, and practical suggestions, all illustrated with engaging (and often funny) stories from Kim Scott’s own experiences at places like Apple, Google, and various start-ups. Indispensable." ―Gretchen Rubin author of NYT bestseller THE HAPPINESS PROJECT
"Reading Radical Candor will help you build, lead, and inspire teams to do the best work of their lives. Kim Scott's insights--based on her experience, keen observational intelligence and analysis--will help you be a better leader and create a more effective organization." ―Sheryl Sandberg author of the NYT bestseller LEAN IN
"Kim Scott has a well-earned reputation as a kick-ass boss and a voice that CEOs take seriously. In this remarkable book, she draws on her extensive experience to provide clear and honest guidance on the fundamentals of leading others: how to give (and receive) feedback, how to make smart decisions, how to keep moving forward, and much more. If you manage people―whether it be 1 person or a 1,000--you need RADICAL CANDOR. Now." ―Daniel Pink author of NYT bestseller DRIVE
"I read Kim's blog on Radical Candor and was immediately convinced that we needed to modify our culture. Being nice, was not nice at all. Not only does it hurt the company, but it also hurts the person who isn't receiving important feedback. We rolled out the Radical Candor framework at a 600-person company meeting six months ago. Despite having only applied modest reinforcement to date, we are already seeing the benefits. People will often start a conversation with "In the spirit of radical candor..." I love that it has allowed us to grab onto that phrase to transition toward a radically candid company. I can't think of a better way to improve our culture and, most important, help our people improve and develop. Thank you Kim!" ―Greg Schott, CEO of Mulesoft
"When I first heard Kim's presentation of Radical Candor, I was blown away. In a nicely compact 2x2 with just eight words, she perfectly summarized what I had known my whole career, but just didn't have the right way to say it. To me, Radical Candor was business poetry. Success in business is completely dependent on having the hard conversations and exposing the truth about what needs to happen in your organization. We all know how difficult those conversations can be and they are less effective if your team can't hear the message. Radical candor is about combining a desire to push the organization and achieve the vision while communicating in a way that lets your team know you care personally about them. I am so pleased when I hear an employee start a conversation, "In the vein of radical candor…”, as I know we will be speaking the truth and on a path to accomplishing great things." ―Christa Quarles, CEO of Open Table
"With Radical Candor, Kim has bottled some of Google's magic and shared it with the world." ―Shona Brown, former SVP Business Operations at Google
"Her seven-step methodology―listen, clarify, debate, decide, persuade, execute, learn―is the tool by which bosses and employees get work done well. Plus it completely overcomes the paralysis and concerns during appraisal time. An amazing process that should work, when embraced and applied." ―Booklist
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : St. Martin's Press; Updated edition (October 1, 2019)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 1250235375
- ISBN-13 : 978-1250235374
- Item Weight : 1.18 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.5 x 1.3 x 9.55 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #3,417 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Kim Scott is the author of Just Work: Get *t Done Fast and Fair as well as Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity. Trier Bryant and Kim co-founded the company Just Work to help organizations and individuals create more equitable workplaces. Jason Rosoff and Kim co-founded the company Radical Candor to help rid the world of bad bosses. Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and other tech companies. She was a member of the faculty at Apple University and before that led AdSense, YouTube, and DoubleClick teams at Google. Earlier in her career Kim managed a pediatric clinic in Kosovo and started a diamond-cutting factory in Moscow. She lives with her family in Silicon Valley.
Customer reviews
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Reviewed in the United States on December 10, 2022
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Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
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I recommend d the book to any manager no matter their level of experience.
So first: this book is written for managers, and I am not a manager. (I don't foresee wanting to be a manager any time soon.) If you are a manager, it's probably a better fit.
Second, well, there's a lot of Silicon Valley privilege dripping from this book. At one point, Kim talks about how letting poor performers go can be a blessing for both the company and poor performer because the fired employee can go do something like starting that coffee shop they always wanted.
Maybe on a West Coast IT severance package (assuming they move somewhere else) but most people on the East Coast and all points in between lose a job and immediately have to go find another job.
Kim also talks about how things like minority status or being female might make radical candor more complicated, but doesn't actually talk about what to do about them. Frankly, I don't think she knows.
So yes, problematic book from multiple angles.
At the same time, this book gave me some tips and tools that I need. For example, Kim puts a lot of emphasis on giving praise, which I don't do enough. One of the highlights of my year so far was an unexpected piece of praise from my manager for a wiki I'm putting together. I'm trying to pay that forward to the folks I work with, because we all should hear about the things we're doing right at least as often as we hear about the things we're doing wrong.
The other thing that Radical Candor provides is a framework for structuring large conversations. When you have a business question where you know gaining consensus is going to be an issue, you can separate the "debate" meeting from the "decide" meeting, for example, to ensure that everyone gets a chance to have their say and at the same time there isn't pressure to make a decision right now.
I don't think that Kim Scott provided enough direct advice on how to structure a piece of criticism. I think that Crucial Conversations does a much better job in that sense. But I do think that this book gives better examples of why constantly providing just-in-time feedback can help a team move from a place where crucial conversations are necessary to a place where everyone is communicating clearly enough that high-stakes behavior discussions are fewer and far between.
In summary, this is not a book I'd say will have a permanent place on my bookshelf like Crucial Conversations does, but it's helpful and adds some tools to my toolbox that I didn't have before.
is not alway through or successful in addressing all the various challenges a manager will run into, specially the really unpleasant ones. There is a lot of generalizations and there is no acknowledgment that there are outliers that this philosophy will not be effective on
While "Radical Candor" is likely most applicable to those in management or leadership positions, I've found the book really has been of tremendous benefit in my personal life. Within weeks of reading the book, I found myself in a challenging situation dealing with a healthcare provider and took much of what I learned from the book to resolve the situation positively and to work through a potentially negative situation. I displayed a side of myself I didn't really know and was rather awestruck by the positive results.
Since reading the book, I've actually been promoted into a supervisory position and am now seeing the ways in which the book complements my existing leadership skills and management style. Truly, "Radical Candor" remains one of my favorite books from the past year and I've seen positive growth both personally and professionally resulting from author Kim Scott's intelligent, informed and sensitively written guidance.
Top reviews from other countries


It lives up to its name; it is a candid look at the act of management and it proposes a useful model, peppered with useful and funny stories from the author's experiences.
I consider this book at must-read for any people manager (especially in IT). By no means sufficient, it succeeds in proposing a way of thinking at management that may bring surprising positive results.
Highly recommended.

Feedback is such a simple thing, but so hard for individuals and teams to get right without conscious practice. Radical Candor is an accessible and compelling companion for anyone trying to improve this aspect of their work.
I highlighted many passages and shared them with colleagues as I read this book - a sign that reading it was time well-spent.

