Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity

Toyota’s leaders painted a big red square on the assembly line floor. New employees had to stand in it at the end of their first week, and they were not allowed to leave until they had criticized at least three things on the line. The continual improvement this practice spawned was part of Toyota’s success. I asked my team what they thought: did we

Notice that Jobs catches himself. He’s careful not to personalize the criticism—not to say “when they’re not good enough.” Instead, he says “when their work isn’t good enough.”

Friends of mine who worked at Yahoo! and AOL have told me that when things were going well, whole teams would get richly rewarded; but when they started going badly, nobody had any idea what to do. They’d just been measuring the results, and they didn’t understand what had been driving them or what to do when the results turned bad.

Ruinously empathetic praise “Just trying to say something nice”

the question that led me to study Russian literature—why some people live productively and joyfully while others feel, as Marx put it, alienated from their labor—was central to a boss’s job. In fact, part of my job was to figure out how to create more joy and less misery. My humanity was an attribute, not a liability, to being effective.

JOBS: The most important thing I think you can do for somebody who’s really good and who’s really being counted on is to point out to them when they’re not—when their work isn’t good enough. And to do it very clearly and to articulate why … and to get them back on track.

Why, then, is it important to give more praise than criticism? Several reasons. First, it guides people in the right direction.

When bosses are too invested in everyone getting along, they also fail to encourage the people on their team to criticize one another for fear of sowing discord.

When I am criticizing, I try to be less nervous, and focus on “just saying it.” If I think too much about how to say it I’m likely to wimp out and say nothing. And when I am praising, I try to be at least aware of how praise can go wrong, and put more energy into thinking about how to say it.

all teams need stability as well as growth to function properly; nothing works well if everyone is gunning for the next promotion.