Radical Candor

Kim Scott draws on her time as an executive at Google and Apple to argue that good bosses must care personally while challenging directly. She sorts feedback into four behaviors: obnoxious aggression, which challenges without caring; ruinous empathy, which cares without challenging; manipulative insincerity, which does neither; and radical candor, which combines both through clear, kind praise and criticism. Stories from her years leading teams in Silicon Valley illustrate each one. The framework is meant to help managers build better working relationships and meet three duties: creating a culture of feedback, building a cohesive team and achieving results. A revised and updated edition later followed the 2017 original.

Daniel Pink endorsed it for its clear, honest guidance on leading others, from giving and receiving feedback to making decisions. DuckDuckGo founder Gabriel Weinberg counts it among the books he keeps returning to for lasting mental models, and Thomas Graziani of WalktheChat expects it to help him build better relationships with colleagues.