As for the severity of the criticism, that too needs to be tailored to the person, as well as to the severity of the situation.

Another important component when providing any kind of feedback, critical or otherwise, is trust. If the person on the other side of the table doesn’t trust you, then your feedback could end up falling on deaf ears. Likewise, if you don’t trust them to correct the situation, then they will feel less motivated or empowered to take action.

Critics *aren’t* just people who “tell other people they are wrong.” The good critic is *not* someone whose goal is to get everyone else to see things his way. Good criticism is about the ideas themselves, not about the relatively shallow matter of agreement. We’re trying to make better ideas.

Imagine if I said that the goal of testing was to make my client agree with me about the status of the product? Sure, they might agree with me. I would hope they’d agree with me. But I can achieve agreement even if I do a terrible job of testing. My actual goal is to see the product clearly and communication useful information effectively.

– james

James – I agree with your first point and what it means to be a good critic.

Good topic to bring up, I often find that I do not get enough criticism despite the fact that I ask for it on a regular basis.

Everyone has heard the adage you brought up of if you have nothing nice to say don’t say anything at all, it is one that I disagree with almost entirely. Criticism is a key component to the anyone (or anythings) improvement. When you start a new project it is criticized over and over again to reach the best final product possible, the same concept makes sense when applied to people.

As to how to deliver it, I would say it depends on the person. For most people private is usually the best bet, it is a more controlled environment and they wont feel they are being judged by others. The anonymous route is less useful in my mind because when I get criticism I always take into account who it is coming from to assess the credibility of it.

I think the best way to keep things from getting personal is just to have an open conversation with the person and tell them that you are not trying to bring them down, but in fact are trying to help them out and improve them.

One interesting side note, I have noticed (and it has been brought up to me) that a general trend is that people who are more confident in themselves and are higher performers can take a lot more criticism than those who are not. So this can actually be a good tool to see how others see themselves.

AW @Eusebui – Can you clarify what you mean?