Critique

Critiquing the work of your colleagues is one of the most difficult tasks in all of professional communication. When done correctly, everyone has the opportunity to grow by leveraging the education, experience, and expertise of their colleagues. When done incorrectly, it can not only prevent people from growing, but it can lower someone's morale as well as disrupt workplace harmony.

The first step in learning how to properly critique the work of a colleague is to honestly assess if you are the right person to be evaluating someone else's work. People tend to have different areas of expertise, and just because someone is an expert in one area, it does not make them an expert in all areas. Therefore, before critiquing someone's work you must be sure that you are qualified to give the correct feedback on what someone is doing right, as well as what they are doing wrong.

Assuming you are qualified to assess someone's work correctly, the next step is to identify for yourself what you think the person is doing right, and what they are doing wrong. This is so that you have a clear understanding of both their strengths and their weaknesses, which enables you to nurture their strengths, and help them learn how to mitigate their weaknesses.

After you have carefully reviewed your colleague's work, and after you have a thorough understanding of what they are doing right, and what they are doing wrong, you now must decide how best to communicate this information so that it is well received, and leads to them improving in the execution of their work.

Telling someone everything they have done right with their work is very easy: simply tell them everything they have done right.

For example, if your colleague wanted your feedback on a report they were working on, and you noticed their formatting was excellent, tell them their formatting was excellent; if they have created compelling diagrams to explain complex topics, compliment them on their diagram; if they have chosen attractive photos that are also informative and enhance the professionalism of their report, tell them you like their selections.

A mistake that is often made when critiquing someone's work is glossing over everything someone has done well, and instead focusing only on their mistakes. When you are evaluating someone's work, you should be evaluating everything, which includes what they did well, as well as what they did not do well. This becomes extremely important when the time comes to point out their mistakes, as they will be far more receptive to hearing you tell them what they did wrong after you have told them what they did right.

After you have taken the time to tell them everything they have done well, you should ask yourself if they have made any mistakes worth mentioning. If they didn't, then you have nothing further to say, and can simply congratulate them on a job well done.

If you have to inform them of their mistakes, you should be precise in stating what the problem is, and be specific on how it should be fixed.

For example, instead of using vague language such as, "You probably might want to think about maybe changing this," you should use assertive language such as, "The caption on the second pie chart is "Market Share," but I believe it should be, "Retail Sales by Region."

Before you continue telling them about additional mistakes, you will need to gauge how your critique was received, which should involve closely monitoring their body language. If after telling them they miscaptioned a pie chart they lean away from you, fold their arms across their chest, and their face develops a scowl, you know your feedback was not well received, and you may need to persuade them that there is a mistake in order for them to fix it.

One technique to persuade someone that they made a mistake is to simply ask them questions to uncover the rationale of why they did things the way they did, in the hope that by getting them to think critically about their work, they can recognize their mistakes for themselves. For example, instead of simply informing them of the miscaptioned pie chart, you might ask, "I see the second pie chart is captioned "Market Share," is that the most accurate caption for the data you are presenting?"

This technique is called the Socratic method, and involves you asking questions to help someone understand their own reasoning, and therefore recognize any flaws in their reasoning. Using the Socratic method does have the disadvantage that it tends to be very time-consuming when compared with simply telling someone what their mistake is, and how to fix it. However, if you have detected that someone is responding poorly to you assertively stating their mistake, you may have no choice but to use the Socratic method.

In a perfect world, people will be open to taking direct feedback on their mistakes, which is much more efficient for everyone involved. Even so, it can be difficult to tell if you have been too hard on someone, especially if you have spent a lot of time with them, meticulously reviewing every one of their mistakes.

One of the ways you can tell is what the person does the next time they are in need of someone to review their work. If they seek you out again, then whatever techniques you employed, whether it was assertively telling them their mistakes and how to fix them, or using the Socratic method to help them realize their own mistakes - clearly they were appreciated.

If, however, they do not seek you out for future reviews, then they most likely interpreted your critique not as an objective review of their work, but instead as a personal criticism. The line between an objective critique and a personal criticism is very easy to cross, and it takes great care and concentration to keep the conversation focused on the work and not the person. One way to try to avoid crossing this line is to avoid using the terms, "you" and "your," such that you condition yourself to say, "The pie chart," instead of, "Your pie chart."

Giving a critique such that it is not interpreted as a personal criticism is a very difficult communication skill to master, but it is well worth the effort, as giving effective critique is the essential skill of any teacher, instructor, coach, or mentor; and there are few things so valuable to an organization as someone who can improve the performance of the people around them.