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Dealing with criticism
It is clear that showing any kind of initiative carries the risk of being met with criticism. While that's not much fun, it seems to come with the territory. Vin Ghiang inspired me to take a closer look at the way i think about this.
In an interview with Steven Bartlett, Ghiang offers us this:
If they go: "You're an idiot". I'm like, "Yeah, I'm a bit clumsy at times, I know that". And they don't know where to go with that. When they go: "And you're stupid", i go "You know what, I've done so many stupid things in my time."
-- Vin Ghiang
He warns that this approach requires dialling down his ego, but reminds us that we are all flawed, so technically it's no big concession!
He then makes the important distinction of where the critique is coming from. Are they are in the sandpit with you, or are they sitting on the sidelines?
First assuming that we manage to avoid reactive or defensive types of response, when someone that is important to us slips into this kind of feedback, in AR we have some good choices:
- I hear you telling yourself that i am silly, I get it, it makes sense (reflect and validate).
- Could you give me a specific example of something you saw me do that makes you think that i am being silly? (curiosity).
- You seem disappointed, i'm curious if you are wanting XYZ from me (skilful projection, empathic conjecture).
On the other hand if its coming from someone who is not invested in the relationship, then Ghiang suggests a more radical approach. "If you're not in the arena with me I'm not really that interested in your feedback".
The man in the arena
His use of the term 'arena' is a reference to Theodore Roosevelt's 1910 speech now known as "The Man in the Arena", but originally titled the "Citizen of the Republic":
It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly
-- Theodore Roosevelt
Roosevelt's speech became better known as a result of Brene Brown's retelling, in her book Daring Greatly (a name also inspired by the speech). "If you are not in the arena getting your ass kicked on occasion, I am not interested in or open to your feedback." The core message is only listen to feedback from people who are also taking risks and being vulnerable themselves, not from critics sitting safely in the "cheap seats".
Criticism as protest behavior
Seeing as we have opened this can of worms, it feels timely to explore what's behind the criticism.
Rosenberg said something to the effect of every judgement or criticism is simply a need that isn't being met. Or hasn't been identified yet, something like that. Sue Johnson has a name for this: protest behavior.
An infant that is hungry and needs feeding will protest by crying. The protest is an attempt to draw the caregivers attention to the need, to enlist help, or put another way co-regulation.
In adults with disrupted development, ahem, thats probably all of us, given the slow adoption of attachment informed parenting, its probably not a surprise to see residues of this early life strategy.
The infant doesn't know specifically why its grumpy, does not know how to ask, doesn't even have a language to ask. What remains is protest. Its kind of effective, even if it does leave the caregiver guessing what the need is. So, its a primitive communication system, with obvious limits.
As adults, protest is one of a small number of such adaptive behavioral patterns. Other examples are withdrawing, rescuing, appeasing, fawning and dissociation.
My point is that we might want to see criticism as a strategy, and allow that to inform the way we approach it as we encounter it during practice.
Putting criticism in perspective
Lets remember that criticism is not neutral. We will all likely make mistakes and occasionally slip into criticism. Its not wrong or outlawed. But it is not something we ideally want in our relationships. That's the value we hold based on the weight of evidence.
The indiscriminate ventilation of negative emotion to create catharsis is not part of the EFT process and can be detrimental in couple therapy -- Johnson
Anger is a natural emotion, and it comes from a frustrated goal - there's very good, productive information in that, but it's essential that it be expressed without contempt or criticism...
We've said this before and we'll say it again: there is no such thing as "constructive criticism." Criticism is always destructive.
-- Gottman and Gottman
Of course, we benefit from practice being able to respond to the occasional slip up. And we benefit from practicing repairing asap if we are the one who slips up.
But a slip up it is, and anything more is allowing criticism to take root, and in learning organizations that in my view seems like a primary error.
I kinda suspect, that the same conclusion might also hold for some of the other adaptive strategies mentioned above. That's a bit sobering to ponder.
Meantime we have Gottmans' four horsemen: criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling, which during laboratory testing have all been correlated with relationship failure.
Lessons
In organizations with explicit contexts of learning and development, experimentation is prized. This speaks of the vulnerability of initiative, of trial and error. Of iterative prototyping. And of harvesting feedback.
In this way it's kind of self-evident that the more we do, the more mistakes we will make. That's the cost of initiative. If a percentage of everything that is done is a mistake, and we ask someone to make less mistakes, then they need to do less. Is that what we are really asking them to do?
As we explore feedback processes more in the months ahead, we might want to first check the kind of approach we feel moved to adopt, on a given day, to a given person. That means slowing it down. Getting my wise mind engaged well enough to make this call.
Reading:
- Ghiang Interview https://youtu.be/oIiv_335yus?t=5356
- Brown, Brene (2012), Daring Greatly
- Gottman, J and J (2024), Fight Right
Note that views expressed in blogs do not necessarity reflect the views of the Project. They are the blog authors version of truth.
