Criticism and reactions to it are a high-voltage part of communication. There are people on each side who can be careless with other people’s feelings, take words personally instead of working, and dig deep into their feelings. As a result, the team atmosphere can get heated and the sides can sharpen their knives on each other.
To keep employees’ sanity and the team as a whole productive, you need rules for both the one who criticises and the recipient of the criticism.
How to criticise correctly and safely
The mission of any feedback is to solve a shared problem. Therefore, you need to speak up so that the person hears you. Here’s how to do that.
Consider the purpose of the conversation before you talk
We need to understand why we want to give feedback. Bad purposes are to punish, offend, point out the person’s mistakes. Good ones are to figure out what went wrong, to find a solution to the problem together.
Let the person know about the conversation in advance
Warn the person that you want to give feedback. This is necessary for the person to prepare for the conversation, to understand the nuances of the project, to come to the discussion collected. Criticism is stressful, even if we try to take it correctly. Experiences are inevitable, so give the person time to prepare.
Meet privately
People often perceive public criticism as a jury trial. Feeling embarrassed in front of others triggers a defensive reaction, so the information will be rejected. It is best to give feedback in private. If the conversation turns out to be very productive, then you can package the thoughts into conclusions and share them with the team.
Don’t start feedback with minuses
Use the “green marker” principle: circle the pros of the work first. Highlight the complexity and scope of the project, and list the strengths. After that, start with the mistakes. This is a classic shit burger. If you neglect the “green marker,” the person will feel like you hate them.
Be careful with evaluations
We are not discussing the person, but how they performed on a particular project. Remember that people are good and wonderful by default, and blunders do not define a person’s character. More often than not, fakups are due to an employee not understanding something, forgetting something, or not knowing something. You need to figure it out and figure out how to fix it.
Stick to the hard stuff
That is, back up your words with facts. Taste, speculation, muddy assessments will not help during feedback. Refer to documents, task statement, technical task, deadlines – anything that will prove your objectivity.
Support the position that all mistakes are correctable
Don’t present criticism in a disaster format. And after feedback, emphasise that almost all mistakes are fixable. The main thing is to find the breaking points together and figure out what to do now.
If the consequences of a mistake are catastrophic, a person has destroyed the project, there is no point in criticism. Feedback is not given to those with whom they want to instantly part with.
Don’t turn feedback into a monologue
Make the person feel like a linear participant in the process rather than a defendant. Ask questions to the interlocutor: how the mistake can be corrected, what broke down in the chain of actions, how he/she assesses the risks caused by the mistake.
Direct the conversation towards finding a joint solution
Ask what the recipient of feedback thinks about the problem, offer your own solutions, encourage his/her suggestions. Emphasise that the main purpose of the conversation is to understand each other, agree and correct mistakes.
How not to react to criticism
When we have been working on a project for a long time, it is a priori dear to us. We have put a lot of professional and mental resources into it. This makes us want to protect it from any ill-wishers. When we are told about the project’s shortcomings, we are tempted to react unconstructively.
I assume that the algorithms for reacting have been laid down in childhood. Our parents criticised us inappropriately, so we formed a psychological clot and destructive scenarios of reaction to criticism.
