Clarity propels an organization. Not occasional clarity but pervasive, twenty-four-hour, in-your-face, take-no-prisoners clarity. Most people never perceive that this is lacking in their organization, but 90 percent of the time it is. Just open a few random emails on your company account, activate your brutal-vision, and read. The muddying messages are rampant. If people were brutally honest in their emails, the time we spend sorting through our in-boxes would surely decrease by half.
culture
Being More Connected
My colleagues and I focus on helping a system develop greater self-knowledge in three critical areas. Continue reading
Try cultivating your own unimportance
Is Success About Learning—Or Proving You Are Smart?
The fact is that the world is you, not in theory but in actuality.
Millennial Question
Learning to Grow Up
Organizations have been built on the notion that people must be held accountable and that someone else is in charge of doing that. This kind of thinking, more than anything else, creates and maintains parent–child conversations in the workplace that foster cultures relying on compliance rather than commitment. The idea that we are all responsible for our own commitment is radical.
Book Recommendation : Radical Candor by Kim Scott
From the time we learn to speak, we’re told that if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. When you become a manager, it’s your job to say it–and your obligation.
Author Kim Scott was an executive at Google and then at Apple, where she worked with a team to develop a class on how to be a good boss. She has earned growing fame in recent years with her vital new approach to effective management, Radical Candor.
Radical Candor is a simple idea: to be a good boss, you have to Care Personally at the same time that you Challenge Directly. When you challenge without caring it’s obnoxious aggression; when you care without challenging it’s ruinous empathy. When you do neither it’s manipulative insincerity.
This simple framework can help you build better relationships at work, and fulfill your three key responsibilities as a leader: creating a culture of feedback (praise and criticism), building a cohesive team, and achieving results you’re all proud of.
Radical Candor offers a guide to those bewildered or exhausted by management, written for bosses and those who manage bosses. Taken from years of the author’s experience, and distilled clearly giving actionable lessons to the reader; it shows managers how to be successful while retaining their humanity, finding meaning in their job, and creating an environment where people both love their work and their colleagues.
( Recommended by Fanny Limare-Wolf) Continue reading
Radical Candor: Care Personally at the same time that you Challenge Directly
Radical Candor is a simple idea:
To be a good leader, you have to Care Personally at the same time that you Challenge Directly.
When you challenge without caring it’s obnoxious aggression;
When you care without challenging it’s ruinous empathy.
When you do neither it’s manipulative insincerity.
![Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by [Scott, Kim]](https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/411O8D1w2UL.jpg)
In the new economy, management and leadership are not easily separated
In his 1989 book “On Becoming a Leader,” Warren Bennis composed a list of the differences between managers and leaders:
– The manager administers; the leader innovates.
– The manager is a copy; the leader is an original.
– The manager maintains; the leader develops.
– The manager focuses on systems and structure; the leader focuses on people.
– The manager relies on control; the leader inspires trust.
– The manager has a short-range view; the leader has a long-range perspective.
– The manager asks how and when; the leader asks what and why.
– The manager has his or her eye always on the bottom line; the leader’s eye is on the horizon.
– The manager imitates; the leader originates.
– The manager accepts the status quo; the leader challenges it.
– The manager is the classic good soldier; the leader is his or her own person.
– The manager does things right; the leader does the right thing. Continue reading