1: “Very few people start out their careers thinking, I don’t give a damn about people, so I think I’ll be a great boss,” Kim Scott writes in Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity.
To create a radically candid environment, Kim believes we must do two things: Care personally and challenge directly.
And yet, many bosses fall short in caring personally for the people on their teams.
Why?
Too many leaders focus on keeping it “professional.” Which means: “Show up at work on time, do your job, and don’t show feelings.”
The result? “Nobody feels comfortable being who they really are at work,” Kim observes. “We are all human beings, with human feelings, and, even at work, we need to be seen as such.”
2: The opposite approach is captured by author and coach Fred Kofman‘s statement: “Bring your whole self to work.”
As leaders, we must model this behavior, Kim writes. We must show “some vulnerability to the people who report to us–or just admitting when we’re having a bad day–and creating a safe space for other to do the same.”
Because what happens when people feel they must repress who they are to make a living?
“We become alienated,” she writes. “That makes us hate going to work.”
Kim believes there is a better way: “Caring personally is the antidote to both robotic professionalism and managerial arrogance.”
Why does she say caring personally instead of just caring?
“Because it’s not enough to care about the person’s work or the person’s career,” she writes. “Only when you actually care about the whole person with your whole self can you build a relationship.”
3: What caring personally is not?
It’s not “about memorizing birthdays and names of family members,” she notes. “Nor is it about sharing the sordid details of one’s personal life, or forced chitchat at social events you’d rather not attend.”
Instead, caring personally is something we already know how to do.
“It’s about acknowledging that we are all people with lives and aspirations that extend beyond those related to our shared work,” she writes. “It’s about finding time for real conversations; about getting to know each other at a human level; about learning what’s important to people; about sharing with one another what makes us want to get out of bed in the morning and go to work.”
One final thing Kim notes. We must “also care deeply about people while being prepared to be hated in return.”
Which we will explore. . . tomorrow!
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Reflection: What are the benefits of embracing Kim’s advice to leaders to care personally? Is there anything for me that is in the way of doing so? What experiment could I run to strengthen my ability to do so?
Action: Journal about my answers to the questions above.