In the past 5+ years leading a software company, I have heard and listened to lots of nonconstructive feedback from many different people including our leaders and managers. These can lead to an unhealthy environment: unmotivated people and negative thoughts. I am going to bring collective real stories with hints for better.

First of all, from the human being perspective, we have been naturally growing and learning in our environment that we are reacting to concerns with a defensive behavior and starting with a complaint. When you are not reflecting on these actions, we are most of the time forming nonconstructive feedback by expressing from our belly but not from our mind/brain.

#1 Stop making judgments

Judgments, how does it sound?

• “Huy, why should we attend this presentation as you are not the expert in this topic?”
• “Huy, I don’t think this opportunity leads into a project.”
• “Huy, I don’t think this can be a nice business case for the users.”
• “Huy, you should stop with this investment in this business model.”
• “Huy, the software that you and your team had made for your startup is crappy and I think it is very bad.”.

There’s no need to make any assumptions. Not only does it make the person look bad, it also makes you look bad — especially when your assumption turns out to be wrong:

• Hurt other people. This might not always happen. Things have a way of coming back and hurting people in unexpected ways.
• Make you feel worse about you. When you judge others (or, at least, when I do), you feel bad afterward. You don’t feel good about yourself. You bring yourself down when you bring others down.
• Put negativity into the world. Can you imagine if we were all accepting and loving of one another? Can you imagine what the world would be like if we tried to understand other people rather than judging them? No matter how you rationalize your judgments, they are not bringing anything good into the world. They make the world a more unhappy place.
• Encourage you to judge yourself. If you’re judging others, you’re probably judging yourself pretty harshly as well!

So, why the people are giving judgments?

• We are insecure. This is the main reason we judge. When we are insecure and/or unhappy with who we are, we try to put other people down. We want to feel good by making others feel bad.
• We are scared. Often, when we’re scared or intimated by other people, we’ll put them down. When people are scared, they try to feel better by putting others down. We also may fear those who are different from us and may judge them just because they are unlike us.
• We are lonely. When you are lonely, you might use judgments to bond with other people, but these bonds are based on negativity. The bonds you have based on judging others are superficial and are not likely to contain the true substance.
• We are seeking change. When we want our own lives to be different, we are quick to judge the lives of others. If we are jealous of others’ changing lives we are likely to make quick judgments.

How to stop judging?

• Monitor your thoughts. Think about what you thinking about. I’m going to work on paying more attention to my thoughts and do my best to push them in a positive direction.
• Look for the positive. Judgments are negative. There is almost always something positive you can find in someone or something. While my mind might immediately focus on the negative, I can push my thoughts in a more positive direction and look for something nice to say. And, of course, if you can’t find something nice to say, don’t say anything at all.
• Stop judging yourself. It’s not all that easy to do, but the more we judge ourselves, the more we’ll judge others. I judge myself a lot and I need to work on that. I need to focus on the positive aspects of me and then it will be a lot easier to focus on the positive aspects of others. There’s no reason to be so hard on myself and I’m going to really, really work on this one.
• Focus on your own life. When all else fails and judgments are hard to push away, focus on yourself. Don’t worry about what other people are doing/wearing/etc. Think about your own life. Focus on what you want and go after it. When you’re trying to avoid your own problems, it’s easy to criticize others. Don’t. Think about you and focus on the good things.
• Remember how it feels. Remember how it feels to be judged. AND remember how it felt the last time you judged someone else. It doesn’t feel good to judge or to be judged so put an end to it right now. I’m going to work to remember these feelings the next time I feel like a negative thought about someone else is cropping up.

#2 Be specific with your feedback

I receive a lot of feedback while asking the opinions of my colleagues for our employee benefits. I found that the more specific the person is when giving the feedback, the more actionable it is for me.

Focus more on objective points than subjective opinions. Just saying “I don’t like it” is not helpful. On the other hand, stating the specific things you do not like, is helpful. Give specific examples of each point. What are the exact situations or examples?

while receiving this feedback “Huy, our blog is not a blog”: while receiving broad feedback, other words: vague feedback; then you won’t know what you should improve. Instead of saying “vague/general”, be more specific, e.g: the font should be x font, the width should be y size, and here is another example on this z blog style. Then, this sounds awesome!

Another example, “Huy, the project is boring”. What can I help with this feedback? instead of telling me more specific: this technology is not interesting because of (a) reason and (b) reason; OR the requirements can be more clear so that we know what we should do.

#3 Focus on the situation, not attacking a person

While working together means we help each other to improve but not telling bad about the people. When critiquing, focus on the situation on hand, not the person. Firstly, detach the situation from the person. This distinction is crucial. Take the person out of the equation and focus on the behavior/ action/situation/issue at hand.

Comment on the issue, not the person.

For example, “Huy, she left the company is because of you!”, “Huy, he is stupid even he had a bachelor degree.”, “Huy, he does not understand me.”

What can you hear from this feedback?

Don’t make personal attacks. Comments like “You’re so stupid/ negative/lazy/unorganized / ” come across as accusatory. Stay away from attacks and turning it around into situations:

• “Huy, there was the situation that she was working with you and she did not feel motivated. If it was like that, then the situation was better”.
• “Huy, there are many times we communicated to each other and we could not understand each other”.

While it’s tricky to give constructive criticism when it comes to someone’s personality, here, it is successfully accomplished by separating the person’s actions (that makes him/her negative) from the person him/herself. This then makes it easy to critique the behavior without offending the person in question.

#4 Give suggestions to improve

When all is said and done, it helps to give suggestions on what the person can do to improve. Everyone has varying perspectives, which means every critique can be interpreted in different ways. Giving your suggestions will give the person a clear idea of what you have in mind. Secondly, giving suggestions provide a strong call-to-action. You want the person to take action on what you have shared, rather than procrastinate.

When giving suggestions, it helps (a) to be specific about improvements and (b) to briefly explain the rationale behind the suggestion.

Last but not least, teamwork is the key:

Got inspired from these posts:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-give-constructive-criticism-6-helpful-tips-nishlan-pillay/

http://www.positivelypresent.com/2009/05/stop-judging.html