You Want Feedback – Not “Constructive Criticism”.
// August 10th, 2007 // Logical Emotions, The MINeD Field
Criticism: a serious examination and judgment of something
Is there such a thing as ‘constructive criticism‘? Well, for one, it goes against the best advice ever written:
“Don’t criticize, condemn, or complain” – Dale Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People
Criticism also involves the dreaded “J” word: judgment… Now judgment by someone has a certain end to it where there is no further room for discussion or anything else for that matter. To actually pass judgment on something (or worse, someone) means to draw conclusions or reach a final decision. If you think of a competition where judging is involved, it typically goes something like, “3rd place goes to X, 2nd place goes to Y, and 1st place goes to Z. The rest of you can go home and the matter is closed.”. They have been judged, and the final decision has been made.
But it’s constructive you say? How so? Through criticism you have passed a judgment and have automatically closed the door on the subject. How can this be useful? Constructive or not, criticism involves someone passing judgment.
Have you ever been told by (or heard) a parent tell their child that they need to learn how to accept constructive criticism? Ever wonder why kids have such a hard time accepting it? Simple, they understand it and plainly see it as someone else’s judgment. It’s only after years of being told that constructive criticism is GOOD do we begin to use it ourselves.
Construct – to build
Critique – to judge
To build judgment? Absolutely insane. To me at least, there is absolutely no such thing as constructive criticism, and it needs to be eliminated from our vocabulary.
Feedback: The process of communication whereby a person can disagree, ask a question, repeat information for understanding, or otherwise talk back in the communication process
Brilliant isn’t it?
The challenge at times is being mistaken for providing criticism when your intent was to provide feedback. For me, I get caught in this more frequently that I care to admit…
Feedback in it’s purity is communication. It is communication with the purpose of exploring possibilities that are not your own where you have the ultimate choice to accept or deny them. Where we get a bit touchy at times is when it comes to negative feedback; but is negative feedback bad?
Negative criticism is a judgment passed on a subject that is not in its favor. Negative feedback on the other hand, is simply feedback that is the result of a process. The only reason that it is negative is simply because in relation to the desired outcome (which would be positive), it is the opposite, which is negative. If we don’t get the result that we desire, negative feedback will help to identify where something might have gone wrong and ultimately create a better process. When we get positive feedback, it is simply a confirmation that our process is indeed correct and that no changes need to be made. Getting some feedback that is not in correlation with your intended result? Great, compare the feedback to the process to see what may need to be changed to get the desired result.
Now when it comes to the feedback itself, for me, I believe in the ultimate requirement of honest and direct feedback.
The key to providing great feedback is to simply ask the initial question: “Is this process meeting it’s desired result?”, and then with each part of the feedback you are providing simply ask: “Am I passing judgment?”.
Ever provided feedback and it didn’t go well? Are you sure you weren’t passing judgment?
In the world of email and blog comments, it is absolutely more critical than ever to ensure that your feedback isn’t mistaken for judgment. Unfortunately, it is more difficult to take the direct approach electronically simply because it doesn’t allow for the nuances of body language, and more often than not, small things such as 
or 
go completely unnoticed when in fact they are absolutely critical. If you think that it might be mistaken as judgment, change your response so that there is no misunderstanding at all. If it can be mistaken – it will – trust me.
The great thing about feedback is that because you are not passing judgment, you are able to be as direct and honest as you possibly can – and you should! With feedback you are looking at the process and how it relates to the end result. The moment we pass judgment on something, as we all know, that is when things tend to go off the rails. People’s feelings get hurt, misunderstandings develop into issues and conflict, and all the while, communication about the process vs. result breaks down and nothing is improved upon.
It is our prime responsibility when asked for feedback to be as direct and honest as possible. To be any less is to do a great disservice to all parties involved. To be afraid of hurting someones feelings is a key indication that you may be quite close to passing a judgment and not providing feedback… People’s feelings get hurt when judged, but not when provided with feedback.
Photo by ladyloneranger
Popularity: 42% [?]
12 Responses to “You Want Feedback – Not “Constructive Criticism”.”
Leave a Reply
Categories
Recent Posts
Definitely Nimbus
Archives
Community Items
Blog Communities
Tweets from Twitter
- Join me on @urbantag http://t.co/CyYIUlrc 5 days ago
- Websites.... if I arrived at your website by clicking a link in your newsletter, please stop with the subscription popup when I arrive. 2 weeks ago
- Check out my featured map, "Lunch In The King(ish) West" map on @urbantag #awesome http://t.co/6zD9EeTy 2 weeks ago
- More updates...
Licensing & Misc.
LOGICal eMOTIONs by William Tully is licensed under a Creative Commons: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be requested at Tully.ca.
and your feedback is always welcome.
Thanks Liz, I always have a great conversation with you when I end up dropping in with a word or two on your site. You’ve created a great environment to provide feedback upon feedback until a great result is achieved. It fascinates me to no end.
“People’s feelings get hurt when judged, but not when provided with feedback”
I hear what you are saying, but I am not sure there is as much difference as you state, between judgment and feedback. In order to consider responding with feedback, there is implied judgment that the author deserves the respect of an answer, and that the topic either meets or disagrees with the reader’s world view. Possibly an additional judgment whether the reader wants to draw the author’s attention (partly met in the ‘respect’ judgment), and whether the message caused enough impact on the reader to warrant a response.
I don’t see how any feedback can fail to reflect a number of judgments of the article, the author, and the reader’s relationship to the author.
I see your point and was wondering if anyone would bring this up. I purposely didn’t cover blogging in particular which I will admit is a bit of a grey area…
Blogs as written works will always receive critiques which are in fact judgments. When you look at literature there is always a critique that follows. Blogs are indeed subject to this judgment and simply have to accept it.
The comment boxes when you think about it allow for both, feedback AND judgments. I believe that when we publish a post we are (on some level) looking for feedback on the process which we have worked through to develop the post. As a written/published work, it is also subject to judgment.
Let’s not kid ourselves – we all judge. I think it comes down to the response that we leave in the comment boxes on blogs – are we in fact expressing our judgment, or are we providing feedback as it relates to the desired result of the post?
Again, with blogs, the desired result of the post may not always be known, yet is also subject to judgment which, also, adds another level of complexity to the whole thing..
Posting a comment is up to the reader, and as authors of blogs, we just have to accept the fact that we will receive both.
I simply take the view that if someone is moved to submit a judgment about a post, the blog, or me, I have the right to challenge that judgment with process. ie. Have you looked at the process and result to provide feedback to better the process/result, or have you made a judgment on something early and closed the door?
I hear what you are saying – I’m just not sure if I’m making sense… Great feedback tho!
LOVE the pic. That’s what people start to look like in my brain when they’re blah blah blah-ing about what I’m doing wrong. Or maybe that’s what I look like when I walk away. Hmmmm.
“Things that make you go hmmmmm!”
I think feedback, as a topic, includes criticism. Also slander, praise, reviews, and other expressions of judgment. All are potential expressions of technical or emotional reaction from a reader for an author’s work.
A review should be a relatively balanced appraisal of the strengths and weaknesses of an object or article for a particular purpose. Usually a review is specifically requested by an author, an agent, or another interested party.
Criticism is seldom requested, and usually considered negative, focusing on faults. Sometimes the criticism is intended to identify faults for improvement, other times to modify the value of the object of criticism.
My DraftResource.com web site is an ‘interest’ site, intended to help new draft horse owners find information about draft horses, the draft horse industry, books, harness, etc. One of features popular today is the chat board. I found several years ago that the rule ‘talk about horses, not the owners’ stopped a lot of petty bickering and name calling (most of us *did* grow up around a barn!). That is, stay technical, fix problems. Avoid emotional things.
What your article calls ‘feedback’, I would call ‘supportive comments’. When someone has an emotional reaction that disagrees with your conclusions, like this one(!) .. I don’t know. I am not criticizing, since I don’t think you are wrong. I am not judging you, I don’t think you did wrong, there is no reason to correct you or anyone. But you inspired a desire to express my perspective, which differs from your article, and reflects an examination of my own understanding of the topic.
Thanks for an interesting experience!
“Criticism is seldom requested” – exactly, we would rather not have judgments levied.
Brad, your feedback is always welcomed. Your comments actually let me challenge the process through which I drew my conclusions. The great thing about feedback as opposed to judgments is that it removes the emotional side of it, allows open dialog of differing opinions, and ultimately, I (we) have the final say as to what impact the feedback has on the process. Sure, there was an original emotional response, however, I believe that what we have been doing is looking at specifics in the process itself and have been testing and evaluating to see how the result changes.
I have taken quite a bit from what you have said and have used it to further refine my process on this topic.
It’s a bit of a selfish act that I welcome differing opinions, simply because it allows me to re-look at the process compared to the desired result. For me, I tend to take them on and challenge the heck out of them which sometimes scares people a bit, but it is purely out of curiosity and my attempt to better understand my side and your/their side.
Draft horses, eh? I grew up with horses – not quite the big beasties that you have though. They weren’t my ‘thing’ but I have put in my time at various horse shows, eventing competitions, and pleasure driving meets/shows. My dad currently has a massive Canadian Sport Horse which he would love to get back into driving with. At +16h he is a bit big for most vehicles though. I’ve seen the raw power of draft horses at a small pull competition a couple years ago – one of the most impressive things I’ve ever seen!
I wonder if feedback for some isn’t just self-gratification . . . not judgment, not criticism, just a chance to take my own brain out for a spin? Would that be feedforward then?
Sure, why not? I believe that when we actually commit to providing feedback, we are in essence taking the process as we believe it to be, and evaluating it in comparison to what we perceive the result to be. (Brad, hope you’re reading this – I’m having a thought)
When we feel moved enough about the process, we then begin to explore it for our own gain. I do believe that we have a genuine interest in a greater outcome so if we are able to contribute, it is to both our personal gain, and the overall gain.
Like I was talking with Brad about, what I wrote about as it compares to blogs is a bit of a grey area… I wrote on ‘the bigger picture’ and purposely avoided getting specific on blogs, simply because, well, I dunno..
“brain out for a spin” – where were you when I was trying to come up with a new tag-line for the blog?!
Oh, I just love the photo
)))
[...] Tully presents You Want Feedback – Not “Constructive Criticism”. posted at William Tully, saying, “Criticism: a serious examination and judgment of something. [...]