Book 302 - A Year of Magical Learning

Reflection Title: Don’t Judge a Book by Its Cover!

Book – Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott

Book Description:

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. 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.

Reflection:

Ugh, I finally bit the proverbial bullet and read this book. I’ve been avoiding this book for years primarily due to the title alone.

I worship at the church of balance these days and generally try to avoid philosophies that in name alone promote an extreme approach like Radical Candor, Radical Transparency, Extreme Ownership, etc. After reading Principles by Ray Dalio that detailed his culture of radical transparency in action, I wanted nothing to do with that life. Having to work in an environment where everything I do is recorded and any random co-worker is encouraged to tell you how crappy you preformed whenever they want as you collectively work to “improve the machine” sounded beyond miserable and something that definitely doesn’t align to my personal values or mission in life.

I assumed that Radical Candor was the same thing, or maybe even the origin, of Ray Dalio’s Radical Transparency and immediately crossed it off my list as a book that I would ever even consider to dive deeper. The title of this book has become something of a punchline over the years for my co-founder and I’s to personify the exact opposite of how we want our own culture to operate. A few weeks back after we brought up the idea of “Radical Candor” again in a discussion to point toward a direction that pulled us away from our mission of balance, a thought crossed my mind that I’m actively poking fun at something that I really don’t even understand fully. I figured, if we’re going to take this stance then I should probably learn for myself exactly what “radical candor” even means according to the author and not just an assumption made by me based off what I’d heard from Ray Dalio and how he interprets it.

So that led me to reading the book as a learning experiment, and here we are.

Well, wouldn’t you know it, after reading the actual book and spending time with the author and her ideas…I kind of agree with the idea of radical candor after all.

Radical Candor, according to the author is what you get by combing the concepts of Caring Personally + Challenging Directly. Duh, I 100% agree to that.

I’m all about values and leveraging them to form deep meaningful relationships with the people you surround yourself. Caring Personally…check.

As for Challenging Directly, that is one of my literal personal core values. I’m all about challenging yourself and beliefs that you hold true, challenging the world around you, and not being afraid to ask the tough questions as you stay on your quest to live a purpose driven existence.

Check and Check.

I guess I do believe in the idea of Radical Candor after all, which is kind of embarrassing to type after I’ve spent so much time shitting on the idea in the past. The author said she only placed the word “Radical” in the title to signify that this was a new and novel approach to candor in the workplace and not some extreme approach like I was interpreting the philosophy to be from the name alone.

So that is the lesson here today, as Maya Angelou so famously said, "We are more alike, my friends, than we are unalike.”

I judged a literally book by its cover alone. In doing so, I shut myself off from being open to making a new meaningful connection with the author as it turns out that we share a lot of values. The crazy thing that I’m learning these days is that by focusing on finding shared values with others, you can establish a meaningful relationship with almost anyone in this world if you are open to the conversation.

Stay open to the conversation!

Question: Have your limited assumptions ever prevented you from finding new meaningful connections in this world?

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Links:

What is The Year of Magical Learning? An Introduction

YOML Podcast Discussion - Coming Soon

YOML Bookstore - Radical Candor by Kim Scott