Radical Candor by Kim Scott was the Agency Local Bookclub book of the month for September.

Radical Candor – what is it? What does it mean?

Yesterday we held our monthly Bookclub (The aim of the Bookclub is to encourage a mindset of continual learning and continual business improvement for marketing agencies ). At each meeting we discuss the book, identify key messages and to highlight our own takeaways as to what we can use in our business.

This was a great book and plenty to share from the discussion. Kim Scott has taken her experiences from managing teams at Google and Apple and come up with an approach that provides the right environment to build and lead effective teams. 

Despite this being based on a corporate scenario, the key principles equally apply to smaller teams and even to one man business working with partners. 

Key takeaways from the discussion were:

Paula Alibone highlighted that it is a great book to help you run teams and manage people – It could easily be a ‘bible’ to team and people management. 

Helen Kirkby said ‘it provides a model to create a valuable culture and a common language where criticism and praise is part of the operating system to foster collaborative working’

Catherine Story observed that the book provides a framework for providing advice (in a Radical Candor way) which is really useful. Giving advice, guidance and feedback can be very difficult and damaging if it is not done correctly.

Good leaders listen understand and adapt.

Other important points from the discussion included that for a leader of a team or a business it always starts with you – you have to lead by being able to allow feedback on yourself. This is sometimes really difficult for some leaders. 

She also outlines a very useful model for ‘Getting Stuff Done’ (GSD) … efficiently 

Key quotes:

“Praise in public, criticise in private”

Magic Question for starting the feedback discussion and improving the way you work with others:

“Is there anything I could do or stop doing that could make it easier to work with me?”

Once you see through the corporate speak there are some really useful ways to manage people – either direct employees or other partners that you work with. Highly recommended.

 

For more information, updates, our latest titles and to join in on the book club discussion, head to the #book-club channel in Slack

And to find out more for yourself check out the official website: https://www.radicalcandor.com/