4 Ways to Constructively Criticize

As owners, managers, executives, account managers, operators, employees, as people, we need to communicate effectively to be understood, move our business forward, and build community. 

Too often, what comes out of our mouths does more to satisfy our emotional needs than help us achieve what we want. It’s hard not to. It can feel personal when someone fails to live up to the expectations set. When it’s hard to see where resources were used for a specific request, we end up dismissing, venting, exploding, projecting, and demeaning the earnest efforts of employees, peers, and vendors alike. 

While the emotional responses can feel satisfying, it’s rarely effective. I’m not talking about being nice so you’re seen as a nice person. I mean poor communication ends up with everyone losing. 

Without clear guidance on how to improve, it's hard for anyone to avoid repeating the same mistakes. Learning from experiences is crucial, but it requires actionable feedback and steps for growth. When people don't receive this direction, they miss the chance to make meaningful progress. It doesn’t help move the business forward because it can leave the one who has produced work feeling deflated. It doesn’t encourage collaboration, foster trust, or lead to reciprocal benefits and long-term relationships for a richer network. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. You can give bad news, critical feedback, and even tell someone they’ve let you down in a way that doesn’t feel like you’re dropping the equivalent of a conversational atomic bomb. 

Take the charge out of negative feedback so you accomplish projects and build a positive rapport with fellow professionals. Here are four rules to follow:

1. REMEMBER YOU’RE TALKING TO AND ABOUT ACTUAL PEOPLE

This is the one that sounds like I’m wagging my finger in your face and reminding you that you need to treat others the way you want to be treated. Yes and no. While the latter is always sound advice, I think we can zoom out and remember that we are all imperfect. That’s it. That’s all you have to do. You are not perfect, and neither is the person sharing their work with you. If you make this the underlying truth from which everything comes, you can respond instead of react when you’re let down by someone. When we react, we center our feelings on the thing. If we can respond, we can offer tangible changes that will improve the outcome. 

Ex: The marketing team presented the rebranded template package you paid them to do. They not only failed to include a new business card design, but they also forgot to include an e-mail signature in the deliverables. 

Reaction: “Did anybody actually read the agreement we signed? I thought I was getting what I paid for, but no. I guess I’m just getting this. Good luck collecting on the final invoice. You did 80% of the work, you can live with 80% of the fee.” 

Response: “Before I give you any feedback on the deliverables, I want to point out that we are missing a few promised deliverables. I need to clear the air on that before going forward. Should we pull up the contract, or do you know what I’m referring to?” 

1. ASK QUESTIONS BEFORE YOU MAKE A STATEMENT

I firmly believe that the solution to so many of our problems is to “get curious.” If we adopt a practice of getting curious before all else, we can avoid a large number of misunderstandings blowing up into unnecessary emotional and relational catastrophes. 

This is not the open door for excuses to flood in and justify what’s obviously unacceptable. Curiosity allows for more understanding before offering your opinion. It saves time on back and forth. It helps de-escalate highly emotional conversations. It opens up paths to learning rather than shutting down. 

Ex: Your customer service team was supposed to give a customer terms but accidentally billed them COD. 

 Statement: “This kind of mistake is unacceptable. If you can’t even bill our customers correctly, you have no business working here.”

Question: “I need to understand the point of failure so it doesn’t happen again. Do you know which customers get billed and which get terms? How do you differentiate? Can you walk me through the SOP for billing and then for terms? Do you know where you mixed them up for this customer? Do you know how to make sure that doesn’t happen again? What safeguards do you have now that you didn’t have before? Do you need more training on this or are you confident in this? Can I count on you to use this as a time to review processes when things are quiet so you can make sure there aren’t other blind spots? How else can you use this mistake to learn? 

1. START FROM A PLACE OF AGREEMENT 

Agreeing to disagree does not count as agreeing. Disagree better. Welcome to my TED talk. 

When a conflict arises at work, the least helpful place to try and work from is two separate camps. If we plant a flag somewhere, leaving it feels like admitting defeat. We do everything we can to stand our ground. Not. Helpful. However, if we can start by agreeing on some basics, then we can trace the point where expectations and reality diverged and surgically correct the issue. There’s no need to club people to death with your point. 

Ex: Your website designer unveiled the new homepage design, and it doesn’t remotely resemble what you told them you wanted. 

What you want to say: “I don’t see a single thing we asked for on here. Is this the designer’s first day? I feel like you’re showing me someone else’s work or something. This is so not what I asked for. I can’t believe you think this is ok”

Start with Agreement: “My gut reaction is that this misses the mark in some big ways that we asked for. Before we go there, can we review your notes on what we asked for? I want to review what we last agreed to.”

1. BAN VAGUE LANGUAGE 

A lot of self-help and business folks encourage people to make S.M.A.R.T. goals: Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. I think the same should apply to communicating feedback. Telling someone that their work or product or service “isn’t good” or “sucks” or “doesn’t impress me” or “feels flat” or a million other ways to tell someone they’ve made you unhappy but give them no specific direction on how to fix it is a terrible way to communicate. 

Vague language gets us into sticky situations. It will not get us out. Make sure your feedback is as SMART as your goals. 

Ex: Your copywriter wrote a 750-word blog that’s supposed to kick off a campaign but doesn’t compel anyone to take the call to action. 

Vague: “I don’t like this. It feels really blah. I wanted something that would make people want to follow up. This doesn’t make me want to do anything except stop reading after the first paragraph.” 

Specific: “If this blog is going to kick off our campaign, let’s agree that it has to be moving. It has to compel people to click. Do me a favor and circle the sentences and verbs that direct the next action and underline the ones that move people either with facts or emotion or whatever tools you chose.” 

Communication is key in any successful relationship, and B2B ones are no exception to that rule.