Monday, September 29, 2014

Physician, heal thyself


From experience and watching people teach others, one of the hardest things to accept is having someone giving comments about how to fix something that they themselves aren't good at.

The first issue with this is problem pretty obvious - it's frustrating to take a comment like that because you're thinking if they can't do it, it's not fair for them to point it out.  Listening stops.

The second issue is that the comment may be very valid, but now it's been associated with the commenter, and perhaps unfairly invalidated.  So I may suck at staying on tempo and point out that you're not staying on tempo, but just because I have my own issues with it doesn't mean my comment's wrong.

I've heard this problem approached well by people who say "I know I have problems with this myself, but..." before they state the critique.  You don't want someone to give 50 comments like that, but it does help.

Not being able to do something well doesn't mean you shouldn't give comments that are valid when appropriate, but it will serve you well to think how those comments are perceived.  Maybe you'll even wind up with better insight of your own abilities and how to address the ones *you* get critique on!

1 comment:

  1. This is really helpful! My group can definitely benefit from taking a look at this

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