
Trust is a foundational ingredient of any healthy relationship. Maybe because of this foundational quality, people tend to think of trust as an aspirational state of unwavering robustness, when in reality, trust is messy. It will be put to the test, most of the time in unintended ways. Then, if your expectations ebb too much on the side of this unwavering robustness, you will quickly find yourself in a state where you don't trust anybody and deprive yourself of human connection and authenticity.

Perhaps the target state for trust is an antifragile system? For the sake of definition:

<Quote quote="Some things benefit from shocks; they thrive and grow when exposed to volatility, randomness, disorder, and stressors and love adventure, risk, and uncertainty. Yet, in spite of the ubiquity of the phenomenon, there is no word for the exact opposite of fragile. Let us call it antifragile. Antifragility is beyond resilience or robustness. The resilient resists shocks and stays the same; the antifragile gets better." author="Nassim Nicholas Taleb" />

It's unlikely one will build trust through volatility, randomness, disorder and stressors. Probably the opposite will work better to build it. You also don't want to inflict such phenomena on any relationship intentionally. However, it is naive to think it is avoidable.

With trust established, genuinely trustworthy relationships get stronger and better in the face of unexpected adversity. Therefore, trust is antifragile.


After reading about 'anti-fragility', I wrote a brief reflection on how relationships built on trust can get better through unavoidable volatility, randomness, disorder and stressors.

Trust is antifragile


Beyond contextual reasons why this would be a timely read to me, [Julie Zhuo](http://juliezhuo.com/)'s [The Making of a Manager](http://juliezhuo.com/book/manager.html) is a great book. One reason to start with is Julie's story: she was Facebook's first intern grown into VP Product Design in her 13-year long tenure.

The book's chapter structure expresses the same progression than the title, as it starts with "what is management" and ends up in "nurturing culture". Surprisingly though, as the chapters have minimal dependencies between themselves, the book is easy to pick from where you left and to go to a chapter further and come back afterwards as you wish.

Furthermore, beyond going over foundational management themes in an unpretentious tone such as how to give feedback, how to run meetings and how to hire and build teams which work well together, the book also covers some concepts which were very interesting to think about.


### Concept #1: The multiplier factor

Very early on the book Julie talks about how **managers have the responsibility to be a multiplier factor to the team**. That is, **a manager's responsibility is to improve the outcomes of a team**. Through a metaphorical growing business story, a lemonade stand, she mentions how common it is for one transitioning into management roles to hesitate reducing or stopping their individual contribution as a response to the fact that it will reduce the team's pace, at least temporarily, and get it further away from its goals.

The trade-off on slowing short-term is a fair one: as the book mentions, there is much more to yield through finding opportunities that make the team more efficient as a whole. Regardless if it is by finding skill gaps, fixing process flaws or mentoring team members  – you will be able to add a multiplier factor to your team's outcomes if you focus on figuring out what is slowing you down, or in what could be better.

Even though the book attains itself to the context of individual contribution to line management progression in this chapter, there is clear applicability to progressions from line management to senior management roles too. Given the similar paradigm involving responsibility shifts and the counter-intuitive reality of the new position – less depth and further away from the craft, more breadth and larger context switch propensity – you will likely have to gradually step back and repurpose your contribution at a different level.

### Concept #2: The critique meeting

Another great concept Julie talks about is the critique meeting. Here is how it works:

- The team gets together and spends 90 minutes every week to share their progress for the week to each other;
- One team member starts the presentation and shows what they've achieved and then opens up for questions, concerns or suggestions;
- Every other team member raises their points, asks questions, proposes other approaches and expresses their point of view, regardless of whether the criticism is strategic or tactical;
- The presenter then takes notes from the feedback given, agrees on a list of next steps with their peers, and moves the conversation to the next person;
- The process then repeats until everyone had their turn.

I believe the main reason this concept caught my attention is that **every team has different dynamics, and collectively learning how to productively criticise each other's work can take considerable time**. With a structured session centered on criticism, you likely will learn how to give/receive feedback for the team setting much faster, while also reiterating the sense of trust between team members, which is invaluable to any team.

Differently from [agile retrospectives](https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/heartbeatretro/), where the focus is usually behaviour, attention is sparse, and feedback can be less objective, and from [reviews and demos](https://www.scrum.org/resources/blog/sprint-review-much-more-just-demo), which the primary intention is usually gathering feedback from users or stakeholders making it is shallower from a technical standpoint and outcome-focused, **the critique meeting results in specific feedback by design**, has narrow focus with the intention of raising concerns, giving feedback, finding consensus of next steps, and then holding each other to account for progress and improvement.


### Concept #3: Peg your work back to the mission

Another very entertaining part of the book is Julie's story on how her team approached the extension of Facebook's iconic Like button. For context, Facebook's mission statement is "to give people the power to build community and bring the world closer together", which makes that specific capability – liking a post, a photo, etc. – an incredibly strategic feature.

When extending the design of one of the platform's most critical features, options were many, including a "dislike button". Even though it sounds like a good idea at first sight, additional insights guided the feature's extension in another direction.

Whilst diving deeper into the user's motivations, Julie's team found some interesting insights. Firstly, users were asking for a dislike button, although this was an oversimplification of how they felt. "Dislike" in fact means a range of emotions which are can be more specific such as sadness, anger, surprise. But most importantly, a dislike button doesn't get you any closer to _bringing the world closer together_. It actually sets people apart. With that said, the team decided to pick another route which made more sense.

In conclusion, it is easy to disconnect yourself from the company's mission, especially when you are trying to make a decision which can feel very practical, or when you feel under pressure to move on. With that said, **a great candidate [eigenquestion](https://coda.io/@shishir/eigenquestions-the-art-of-framing-problems/eigenquestions-3) for hard decisions is "how does this fit into the company's mission?"** as it can likely help you reframe the problem, as a consequence of that, pick a better solution instead, and also increase your cohesion to the overarching goals.

### Concept #4: Aim to put yourself out of your job

Lastly but certainly not least, as this is my favourite concept in the book, Julie talks about how her process for delegation is "aiming to put herself out of her job". Expanding on that, her work delegation strategy comes from working on the intersection of two factors:
- Most important things for the organisation;
- Things I can uniquely do better than anyone in/for the team.

If the task at hand isn't both, you should delegate. Here is her rationale on the subject:

1. **If anyone in your team can do one of the most important things either as good as you or better than you, delegate it.** This will allow them to increase their impact while freeing you up to pursue further support other opportunities for the team.

2. **For things you can do better and are not necessarily the most important ones, delegate to someone interested in the challenge and coach them to achieve it.** This will be a valuable learning experience for them and will help you reduce this capability gap in your team.

3. That leaves to you things that align with your skillset and are most impactful opportunities to work on within your remit. **These should be your priorities** – for the time being.

In due time, as you delegate enough lower risk opportunities, the team will be better positioned to do the most important things for the organisation which they initially couldn't. As that happens, firstly, you have fulfilled your role as a manager by improving the team's performance to achieve better outcomes. As a consequence to that, you are also taking care of succession planning, which as Julie says, puts yourself out of your job – but for your team's growth and your own progression's sake too.

Even though many management book authors talk about the motivations and mechanics of delegation such as growing people, managing risk, and the dynamics between full abdication at one side of the spectrum to being overly prescriptive/protective at the other side, what I particularly love about Julie's lens on this subject is her pragmatism on putting together an incredibly simple framework that is practical and has unambiguous criteria for putting it into practice.

---

In closing, [The Making of a Manager](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B079WNPRL2/) was a refresher to some extent, by bringing me back to my first management experience. It also reminded me of how it is fundamental to focus on building a strong foundation and gave me a pragmatic perspective to subjects which are often spoken about but very rarely fleshed out that simply and clearly.


Just before joining Facebook I read "The Making of a Manager", a book written by Julie Zhuo, who joined the team as an intern and grew into a VP Design role. I summarised my favourite parts of the book in this article.

Review: The Making of a Manager


Earlier this year I was introduced to [Radical Candor, by Kim Scott](https://www.radicalcandor.com/the-book/), amidst an interview process for a role at Amazon. The book is a gem on leadership and management, regardless of at which stage in your career you are at and if you effectively manage people or not.

The first part covers a set of anecdotes from executives at large organisations such as Google and Apple – including Kim herself, whose experiences include leading hundreds of people in her tenure at Google. Then, the second part is more actionable, with tips on how to put it into practice, and how to effectively execute what the anecdotes touch upon.

After reading and digesting it, I thought I'd share my three favourite reflections from the book.


### Reflection #1: Challenging is, effectively, caring

The main framework on the book relies on two dimensions: _Caring Personally_ and _Challenging Directly_, splitting people's behaviour into four quadrants. Kim uses anecdotes which exemplify the side effects of over-indexing on any of the dimensions: _Ruinous Empathy_ when you care, but don't challenge, and _Obnoxious Aggression_ when you challenge without really caring. When your behaviour lacks both, you are falling into _Manipulative Insincere_, and finally, when you excel on both, you achieve _Radical Candor_. It's worth noting that these behaviours are transient, meaning nobody fundamentally _is_ any of these, but instead, _expresses_ these in different situations.

<Image src="/assets/uploads/2020-09-12/framework.jpeg" alt="The Radical Candor Framework" caption="The Radical Candor Framework" placement="default" width="450" height="300" />

As you know, it really can be tricky to challenge your boss. This natural pullback can come from multiple places, for instance, overarching cultural differences, such as coming from a context where hierarchy is overly respected. It can come from the fact that you belong to one (or multiple) minoritised groups. It can come from the fact your work environment and past experiences didn't allow for candor to flourish. It can come from fear of judgement, lack of confidence, or from feeling that your opinion is less relevant than others in the room. The list could go on, but bottom line is that it isn't easy to get started.

My main take on the subject is that firstly, **as a leader you must incentivise and reward challenge, but not only that, you should help people to challenge you and each other**. Challenge will most likely start with a subtle note, or one can be dancing around the subject to tell you something they didn't agree with. People will give you signs that they're trying to disagree with you, and it is your responsibility to help them to challenge you when you think they are trying to.

Further, **we only argue for things that mean something to us, the ones we don't care about we just dismiss.** If people are voicing their opinion out is because _they care_, and that's the most important quality you can have from anyone in your team. The best teams I have ever worked with had a strong sense of pride, belonging, and giving the team the ability to change your course comes with effect way more valuable than attribution, or ownership of a solution: it provides the team with a shared purpose.

Finally, that shouldn't be a manager-report thing. Peers should be able to challenge each others' work or behaviour, and that is usually a very good starting point if you don't feel comfortable challenging up. **Increasing cohesion from a culture standpoint by challenging sideways can be a great step towards challenging upwards.**

In conclusion, the framework in the book helped me to further bring to consciousness the extent that the two dimensions (caring and challenging) are entwined.

### Reflection #2: Clarify to get to the real meaning

Another tool the book offers is the [GSD Wheel](https://www.radicalcandor.com/4-ways-help-new-managers-succeed/). The _Clarify_ step caught a lot of my attention. In short, this step explains how important it is to let ideas breathe, and give them time to reach maturity before debating, so you don't cut it off too early or too short. The section starts with a quote:

<Quote quote="It is only by selection, by elimination, and by emphasis that we get at the real meaning of things." author="Georgia O’Keeffe" />

What I got to is that _selection_ helps to pick the right balance between known and unknown, and how much of each one of these ingredients to allow for each circumstance. That would be something like defining the appetite for effort and risk. Another way to think of it is a highly successful product which seems to have very few features. What happens there is that it usually slices a part of a problem, and focuses on **solving that problem and its adjacencies incredibly well**, whilst being very opinionated about what it shouldn't and doesn't do. That brings us to the next point.

_Elimination_ is about defining the boundaries and thresholds, or in other words, **what you are not solving for at the time.** Good examples of elimination are:

1. **Clearly articulating rabbit holes:** we are doing A and B, but we don't know much about C and how complicated it will be, so let's leave it out until we know more;
2. **Defining domain boundaries:** we'd love to have this feature, but we believe it should live somewhere else other than this domain, so  we'll give it some more thought;
3. **Trimming scope down:** through X and Y we'll achieve 85% of a key result we're trying to get to. We'll leave Z out for the time being as it increases the complexity of X and Y drastically and can compromise their delivery;

In short, _elimination_ is about reducing noise from your message, so you don't dilute it with less relevant things. But is saying enough "no"s sufficient?

Most likely no, and that's when _emphasis_ is important. Emphasis is about **doubling down on what really matters for the slice of the problem you are solving**, so you increase the chances of success. Just saying "no" to a set of things doesn't guarantee that someone will know exactly what you mean, so intentionality, consistency and repetition are important so you can make your message more relatable, reach a broader audience, and make sure you clarify what you are in fact doing.


For the sake of comparison, some anti-patterns to this I could think of are:
- **Selection**: over-indexing on customer needs and ending up in a situation where you lose the thread of your own strategy;
- **Elimination**: not having a strong stance on saying enough nos, and leaving too much room for misinterpretation;
- **Emphasis**: going too wide too early or having an overly abstract strategy, lacking opinion on tactics, making it hard to attain.

Having this frame helps to clarify whatever you are doing in a simple, yet powerful and opinionated way, _to get to what you mean_ – which by the way is the book's subtitle.


### Reflection #3: Context awareness is key for development

Another subject which I found fascinating was [career conversations](https://www.radicalcandor.com/how-to-have-career-conversations/). This is the structure proposed by the book:

1. **Start with the Past:** Go through the person's life story;
2. **Talk about the Future:** Talk about their goals, or preferably, their aspirations;
3. **Plan for the Present:** Put together the action plan;

What I tried doing in my team's last development cycle is putting forward their development plans using this structure.

_Start with the Past_ feels similar in format to [topgrading](https://www.greenhouse.io/blog/what-is-the-topgrading-interview-process), but with different purpose: instead of evaluating values and fit, **understanding drivers and motivations for each event in their lives**, such as:

- Why did you pursue a degree in X? And why did you drop out?
- What made you pick a job at Company Y over other options?
- What was the most pleasing project you worked on at Z?

The main goal is finding patterns, for instance, leaving a few places because of lack of growth opportunities, and mentioning a project which felt like a massive leap in their career might belong to a driver named _Seeking Growth_. That'd be different, let's say, to someone being driven by having a large impact. There's a difference between these motivations as the former is driven by progression and the latter by the outcome. As a side note, for senior team members, who may have decades worth of experience, instead of looking at specific tenures, I recommend grouping roles into cycles which you define together instead.

As you get to 3-5 drivers, writing down a few questions based on each driver might help, such as: _what are the largest opportunities we have here for you to grow and why?_, for _Seeking Growth_. Later, when you and the person are defining what the opportunities for the present are, these questions can be insightful.

I love Kim's approach to _Talk about the Future_ as it includes aspirations, not only goals. **Understanding someone's personal needs** reinforces your understanding of their context and helps you gauge and define what are the right set of initiatives for them, at the time. The book outlines an approach around finding 3-5 dreams, such as getting to an influential management role, starting your own business, or winning a sports championship, and then breaking these down into skills you need to achieve them. I personally like the idea of requesting at least one non-work-related objective to have extra context, as well as get to know who you work with better.

For instance, you might discover a huge undertaking a team member will have to move houses, or something they have been working on for years to achieve. Whatever it is, it will help you be a more empathetic leader, as well as guide you on what's really important for them at the moment.

Of course, after having these two inputs, you are in a much more considerate position to put forward a _Plan for the Present_ for anyone. Through this acquired knowledge, you can challenge yourself whether the areas that you expect someone to develop is in line with their own motivations. This awareness helps and supports the whole framework – to have candid conversations while caring personally and challenging directly. At this stage, it is mostly tactics: **finding out opportunities which exist for them to achieve whatever they're looking for.**

___


In summary, Radical Candor was a very pleasing read for me. I appreciated the mix of anecdotes and very attainable tips to try out. There are many more interesting concepts on the book; therefore I highly recommend that you should [check it out](https://www.radicalcandor.com/)!


Three reflections I made after reading Kim Scott's "Radical Candor", which I consider to be one of the best books for managers and leaders, regardless of their craft and experience level.

Personal Growth

Trust is antifragile

Review: The Making of a Manager

Review: Radical Candor