Aren't you too hard on poor bosses in your books?
Most humans on the planet – that's why we're still here – are good people... until they become bosses. So, many believe they are forced to become either dictators or easygoing and timid conflict avoiders...
Until they get kicked out?
That's another problem: that useless bosses tend to protect each other.
Aren't there no less useless subordinates?
And that is why the personal growth management alternative that I propose in the trenches of Silicon Valley, after having managed at Google and having taught at Apple University, is radical candor.
I read that you have made your leadership fashionable with your column in The New York Times.
I learned that radical candor by founding and chairing my own software company.
Have you become another useless boss?
I had 60 employees, most of them engineers, and I was surprised the day they agreed to tell me that they preferred an unbearable but competent boss to a charming but incompetent one...
Was he going for you?
That's what I thought, so I began to consider this third way of radical candor.
Was she honest with herself?
I finished the MBA from Harvard Business School without anyone explaining to me how to manage people. Today there is a lack of reflection on this matter, because we are people, not software.
What is the way of frankness?
In the employment relationship, do not act according to whether you are the one who has power – you command and instruct – or not – you obey and remain silent – but rather that everyone can tell the truth at all times to everyone.
Can't you honestly be wrong?
Then, upon realizing it, you must rectify it. And if you weren't wrong, you should say it too.
The demographic decline is ending unemployment: is it good or bad for bosses?
It is good for everyone that it is easier to move from one company to another and that they all now need more efficient employees. And it's the reason radical candor prevails in Silicon Valley, because every company is desperately looking for talent.
If employees are missing today, does the bad boss they abandon end up on the street?
It is not about confronting bosses and their subordinates, but about thinking together creating value knowing that one day you are the boss, and the next, the subordinate. We are a team. And it is achieved with radical, unapologetic candor.
Isn't it better to say what is appropriate?
Better just so that nothing improves. The freedom to speak your mind is the environment in which creativity and innovation flourish. Mere obedience is comfortable, but it only creates repetition.
Without discipline can you create something?
I studied at the Soviet Moscow Physics Institute...
You were select brains.
But without freedom. One of my best friends there, a brilliant physicist, confessed to me one day: “They order me to think what they tell me and, then, that I must revolutionize what is known. And I can't do both at the same time.”
Well, he was right.
For this reason, the Soviet Union sank into chaos and Putin has ended up as the boss, even though he is the worst and a reactionary. On the other hand, radical candor generates good freedom, which is self-discipline without bosses.
Is radical frankness the middle ground between chaos and dictatorship in a company?
And it can only be achieved by creating a company culture in which anyone speaks their mind to anyone, boss or not, at any time. Respect, but the same for everyone; and, from that respect, sincerity.
Does the truth make us free and creative?
You don't know well! When everyone sees that the truth sets them free, they no longer want comfortable silences or lies.
Is that sincerity enough?
With it you have to ensure that everyone on the team is convinced that they are progressing in the direction of their dreams...
Isn't it enough to get paid at the end of the month?
At Google, my problem was not the salary, believe me; and yet, I left, because I was not progressing towards my goal, my dream.
What if my dream competes with yours?
Every person has a potential that they want to develop and it is not always their fault if they do not achieve it. To achieve this, the team must focus so that everyone feels that they are improving.
Isn't it about making money?
You won't win if you surround yourself with dissatisfied people who end up being incompetent.
What if it depends on knowing how to sign the best?
You have to sign the one who tells you what to do and not the one you have to tell them.
Should we create value for the shareholder?
If you focus on billing short without thinking about anything else, you end up destroying the value you have after making everyone unhappy: make everyone grow, and the company and its profits will grow with them.
