Delivering Criticism With Grace and Kindness

Packaging Critical Feedback for Maximum Uptake

I’m sure that not everyone gets invited to read the writing of their friends and acquaintances with the same high frequency as me, so when I sat down to write this article I gave a bit of thought to the applications it would have for those who are not asked to give feedback on writing regularly. When I write about writing and editing, I’m writing for writers and editors, yes—but there are often insights for others who are not writers or editors.

This is one of those topics. My experience with giving feedback and criticism comes mostly from my working relationship with the written word and with artwork, but I think most of us are called upon to give feedback regularly. Anyone who has working relationships with colleagues, or who is raising young people, needs to deliver criticism to be effective. In an earlier article on mastering defensiveness, I talked about the importance of reacting to criticism with grace and poise even when it makes you angry or hurt. This article is on the other side of the equation: How to deliver critical feedback in a way that it is most likely to be received without evoking a defensive reaction.

A big part of my job for many years, and still (to a lesser extent) to this day, has been telling people—authors, usually—that the way they have done something needs to be changed. People—authors and others—don’t like that very much. A negative reaction to criticism is the most normal thing in the world. For the most part, people do not do things they care about in ways they believe are suboptimal. People do things the way they think is best. When a writer writes a sentence, they write it the best way they can. When a worker creates a work product—if they care about doing a good job with it—they do it the best way they know how.

This isn’t to say people don’t do things in lazy and sloppy ways. Obviously, people do. But when someone has done something to the best of their ability, or done something using the process that seems best and most logical to them, they are likely to take criticism of the product or process personally. That’s a very normal and very human reaction.

Some of us say things like “I love receiving feedback.” I say this all the time. I want to stress that it is true. I love to receive feedback because I can take it into consideration and improve my products and processes. That doesn’t mean I don’t have an initial internal emotional reaction to receiving criticism of something I have worked hard on. There’s no magic word someone can say, no foolproof formula for criticizing my work, that is going to completely negate that reaction when someone is telling me that my best work has room for improvement.

That said, there are some ways to ameliorate the injury. There are methods of giving critical feedback—on anything, not just writing—that are less likely to cause the recipient to shut down and stop listening to you. When you give criticism in a way that is easier to absorb without defensiveness, you protect your relationship with the person whose work is being criticized and you increase the chance that they will take your feedback to heart and use it to improve.

Knowing the secret to delivering your criticism effectively is the difference between your comments going over like a lead zeppelin and your comments going over like Led Zeppelin (it’s a whole thing, you can look it up). As all writers and editors already know, your choice of words is everything.

Criticize to Help, Not to Hurt

Some people start clamming up as soon as they hear the word criticize. On its face, this isn’t a word that inspires warm feelings: It means to express an unfavorable opinion of something. That’s it. To say “the work could be improved by removing this element” is a criticism (one that I have recently received). To say, “I hate your hair” is a criticism (one that I have recently received). When you criticize anything, you may be doing so with the intent to help something or someone improve, or you may be doing so with the intent to inflict harm on someone. Criticism can be either. Same blade, two edges.

To complicate matters further, regardless of the intent of your criticism it may be received in either way as well. So you may criticize with the intent to help someone improve, but they may receive it as an attempt to inflict harm. Conversely, you may criticize someone with the intent to make them feel bad but instead they may receive your criticism as helpful advice and use it to improve.

You can only control the way you deliver the criticism. Even if you deliver it in the most kind or neutral way possible, the subject of your criticism may still receive it as an attack. Some people perceive any critical feedback as an attack, and there’s not a lot you can do about that. You can’t change a person’s mind from closed to open; they have to do that themself. All you can do is make sure that the criticism you deliver is coming from a place of genuinely wanting to help someone improve. 

There are people who deliver criticism with the intention of causing emotional or psychological harm while disguising their feedback as helpful and meant to improve. This is passive aggression, a practice in which you should never engage. It is my least favorite type of aggression. I prefer aggressive aggression, myself. If you’ve got any kind of inner animosity toward someone personally, you need to address that with yourself and them before you can participate in giving feedback on their work. 

When you are certain that the criticism you would like to give someone on their work is truly coming from an intention to help the work improve, you can proceed to the next item.

Criticize the Work, Not the Person

This seems really obvious. If you read someone’s writing and you feel it could be improved, you should say something like “hey this could be improved” and not “wow you’re a bad writer.” Choose your words carefully to make sure you are focusing on whatever it is that you are criticizing and not the originator of the material. Target the work or the process.

It’s also important to bear in mind that not everyone’s thought process will follow the path that seems most logical to you. Different people understand things in different ways. The goal of giving critical feedback is to get to the best possible end result and not to get to that end result in the same way that you would have done it. 

Here’s what I mean. The end result of a manuscript edit—obviously—is to get to the best-written and most error-free version of the manuscript. Everyone has a different idea of the best way to say something and no one’s idea of the best way to say something is correct. The “best” way to say something is highly subjective. To give feedback on writing, you have to be able to separate the best version of the author’s work from the best version of the story as you would have written it.

If you are giving feedback that completely changes the work to bring it more in line with the way you would have written it at the cost of the authorial voice, then you are essentially criticizing the writer. You are trying to get to the best possible version of their work. 

Which leads to the next item—

A Tip From Your Therapist

Anyone who has been to any kind of counseling or therapy for relationship issues (of any stripe, romantic to familial to professional) has already heard this but I’m going to go ahead and say it again just in case you didn’t already realize the relevance.

When delivering criticism it is helpful to use “I” statements instead of “you” statements. Just like you’re supposed to do when you fight with your girlfriend or whatever. “I” statements are effective at reducing hostility and resolving conflict. “You” statements are excellent for making people feel attacked. Simplest solution: Frame your criticism in “I” statements. Like so:

No: “You used way too many adverbs in this piece. You need to delete some of these adverbs.”

Yes: “I noticed a lot of adverbs in this piece. The work could benefit from reducing the number of adverbs.”

You’re still saying the same thing. You’re not fooling the author into thinking somebody else put all those adverbs in there. You’re just stating the information in a way that doesn’t sound and feel like a personal attack. The problem is the adverbs. The problem is not the author. 

This language pattern also places emphasis on you as the reader and not on the recipient of the feedback as the writer. Don’t let your ego get in the way of using “I” statements. I’ve noticed editors will say “this is confusing” rather than “I found this confusing” because they don’t want to take any responsibility for the confusion. They don’t want to imply that they didn’t understand the content well; they want the writer to understand that the responsibility for eliminating confusion is on the writer. 

If you must compromise, try “I found this part confusing, and I think other readers would as well.” Making an unequivocal statement like “this is confusing” is very easy for writers to dismiss out of hand. Accepting some of the responsibility for readability issues onto yourself as the reader can really help the writer absorb your statement. Take one for the team. If the writer’s response is “I’m not confused so it’s fine,” then there’s no way you could have phrased that feedback to get it through to them.

Prepare Your Subject

Once I have all of my criticism together, I find it super helpful to prepare the recipient for what they are about to receive instead of handing the feedback to them without comment to let them begin absorbing it.

As a copyeditor, it was my habit to prepare a letter for the author and send it back to them (or to their editor) with my edit and comments. The letter contained an overview of my edit to get them ready for what they were going to see when they opened the document. If I had fixed the same minor thing over and over, this was an opportunity to warn them (“don’t be alarmed by all the red strikethroughs, a lot of them are just changing X thing to Y thing per the publisher’s style”). If I had made a change that I anticipated would be controversial or provoke an argument, this was a chance to try and head that off by explaining my thought process or reason for making the change. 

Managing expectations is a huge part of any relationship in which one person is providing a service to another person. Even if you’re just casually reading a friend’s short story to tell them what you think of it, you are providing a service to them by doing an early read and giving feedback. In an informal situation like that, you don’t need to draft a letter—that would be overkill. But it is helpful still to send some kind of note ahead of your specific thoughts to prepare them for what they’re going to hear and give them a chance to set their expectations. 

Directness and the Compliment Sandwich

Finally, I want to address the “compliment sandwich” strategy that is very popular for delivering feedback in an agreeable way: Praise, followed by criticism, followed by more praise.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with the compliment sandwich format, and it helps not only the receiver of the feedback but it can also help the giver of the feedback when they are someone who doesn’t like to bear bad news. I appreciate that the compliment sandwich method reminds the reviewer that they need to provide some complimentary feedback along with their critical feedback. Unless someone’s product or performance was abjectly terrible in every way, you need to share some positive feedback. I’ve never read anything that was so uniformly terrible in every way I couldn’t find something positive and true to say about it.

So, yes, give some positive feedback along with your critical feedback. I’m not saying you shouldn’t. One of my issues with the compliment sandwich is that people use this to try and sneak the critical feedback in under cover of compliments. Don’t do that, that’s not how this is supposed to work. You’re not disguising your critical feedback as part of an overall complimentary package. You are delivering two different types of feedback—what you thought was good and does not need to be improved, and what you thought was weaker and could use improvement—and they are both valuable. Don’t be the person who writes a long, flowery paragraph about how much they loved everything about the work and then sneak in a brief line about how the plot kinda sorta falls apart in act three and then close with “but, again, I love it so much, the best ever (except for that tiny little act three thing), so great, wow!”

Not helping.

On the other hand, neither should you be the person who has a long list of detailed critical feedback sandwiched between vague compliments like “characters were so cool” and “loved the setting.” Your complimentary feedback should be truthful and meaningful. The compliments aren’t there to make the criticism more palatable. When you compliment something about someone’s work, you tell them “this is a strength for you, do more of this.” Helping someone identify the strengths in their writing is just as valuable as helping someone identify their weaknesses. If someone writes really great dialogue and their descriptive text needs work, tell them both things. Yes, help them improve their descriptive text. But also, let them know that dialogue is a real strength for them—meaning that during revision and in future writing they should look for ways to deliver exposition using dialogue.

Whether you’re using a compliment sandwich format or not, be direct and forthright with both your critical and your positive feedback. People can sense when you’re dancing around telling them the truth, cringing away from hurting their feelings. Critical feedback is kindness. It can be uncomfortable to deliver in the moment, but it helps the receiver improve and grow. And if you’re not growing you’re dying—ergo, delivering critical feedback in a way to help the receiver embrace it just might be the kindest thing there is.

---

If you have questions that you'd like to see answered in Shelf Life, ideas for topics that you'd like to explore, or feedback on the newsletter, please feel free to contact me. I would love to hear from you.

For more information about who I am, what I do, and, most important, what my dog looks like, please visit my website.

After you have read a few posts, if you find that you're enjoying Shelf Life, please recommend it to your word-oriented friends.