Don’t start telling the other person they weren’t Radically Candid! Instead, try to repeat what the person said to make sure you’ve understood it, rather than defending yourself against the criticism that you’ve just heard. Listen to and clarify the criticism—but don’t debate it. Try saying, “So what I hear you saying is…” If you find my language

“What could I do or stop doing that would make it easier to work with me?”

“Bosses are like diapers: Full of shit and all over your ass.”

The important thing to do is to stay in touch with your personal values, and to demonstrate them in how you manage your team, not by writing down things like “hard work,” “honesty,” and “innovation” on a piece of paper. Live your values. Don’t try to list them like an HR exercise from the show The Office

there are few things more damaging to building a trusting relationship with another person than unilateral authority or a sense of superiority.

“If you have to use someone else’s name or authority to get a point across, there is little merit to the point (you might not believe it yourself). If you believe something to be correct, focus on showing your work to prove it. Authority derives naturally from merit, not the other way around.”

When Steve Jobs had an idea, he wouldn’t just describe the idea; he’d share how he got to it. He showed his work. This signaled that if there was a flaw in his reasoning, he wanted to know about it. And if there wasn’t, people would be more likely to accept his idea. Showing his work was what strengthened his logic and ultimately made him not only

Aristotle’s elements of rhetoric—pathos, logos, and ethos, which I’ll translate loosely as emotion, logic, and credibility.

Your job as a boss is to turn on that “rock tumbler.” Too many bosses think their role is to turn it off—to avoid all the friction by simply making a decision and sparing the team the pain of debate. It’s not. Debate takes time and requires emotional energy. But lack of debate saps a team of more time and emotional energy in the long run.