If you need to be critical of someone’s work, your recipient is more likely to act on your comments if they are presented in a constructive way.
Let’s imagine that you are co-authoring a report on how to reduce the company’s travel costs. However, the colleague you are co-authoring with is from another branch of your company in another country. You and your colleague are on the same level in the company hierarchy. Most of your communication has been conducted via email and you have only met once face to face.
In your opinion your co-author has committed three mistakes. He has:
1. forgotten one area of the travel costs: car rentals
2. not put the sources of his statistics on travel costs between Asia and Europe
3. misspelled the names of some of the airlines
Here is a typical example of an email that fails to address these points in a constructive way.
Dear Paul
I have had a look at the report and there are several problems with it. First you have failed to take in account car rental costs. Second, you have omitted the sources of your stats on costs between Asia and Europe. Last but not least, you have misspelled a number of the airline companies.
I am reattaching the draft with various other suggested changes and additions.
Please could you make the other necessary changes and send me the draft back by the end of this week. It is now quite urgent.
Best regards Maria
Maria has not thought about how Paul might feel when he reads her email.
Paul is likely to be very angry and / or very upset. He may have spent several days writing the report. In addition, there may be reasons for the three apparent errors. Perhaps the car rentals costs were originally in the report, but Paul had decided to change their position, and had thus cut them out but forgotten to paste them back in (maybe he was interrupted by a phone call when in the middle of the cut and paste). In his email to Maria,
perhaps Paul had forgotten to tell her that he was locating the sources of some of his statistics. And finally, maybe Paul was waiting for Maria’s revisions before doing a final spell check.
Maria’s email will have a negative impact because:
• it does not give the recipient the benefit of the doubt, it assumes that there is no other explanation for Paul’s three errors other than that he is incompetent (see 9.7)
• it is very direct, there is no introduction
• it over-emphasizes the problems by using words like failed and last but not least, it thus seems quite sarcastic
• its tone is not that of a colleague but that of an angry boss
If you begin your email with an immediate criticism, your recipient will react negatively and this will set the tone for how he / she reacts to your other comments.
Instead find something positive to say. Here are some examples:
Thanks for getting this report to me far ahead of the deadline, this will make my life much easier.
I really like your succinct style of writing, I think it will help the readers to digest the report quickly and easily.
Provided they are sincere, the above sentences will help to get the recipient in a positive state so that he / she will then read your criticisms with a more open mind. You then have to deal with the three mistakes in his / her draft. The first thing is to try and reduce the number of criticisms you make, and then to begin with the most serious mistake. Thus Maria’s email could be rewritten as follows:
I just wanted to point a couple of issues in your draft.
I may have simply not seen them, but I couldn’t find any data on car rentals.
Secondly, the boss will expect us to provide the sources for all our statistics, so I think we need to add these. I think I only noticed a couple of cases, so this shouldn’t take you too long.
By the way, would you mind doing a final spell check, but not just with Word as I don’t think it will identify any spelling mistakes in the technical names (e.g. the names of the airline companies).
8.5 Be constructive in your criticism (cont.)
47
In her revised version, it seems that she is only making two criticisms ( firstly… secondly) and she does this in a very soft indirect way. This gives Paul the option to prove her wrong. Regarding the sources of the statistics, Maria takes joint responsibility for this by using the inclusive pronoun us and our, and she then minimizes the effort required by referring to the small number of sources involved and the short time required to sort out the problem. Finally, she presents the reference to the spelling mistakes almost as an afterthought ( by the way) and as a friendly request ( would you mind).
So, when Paul reads the above message, he will be appreciative of Maria’s comments and will be more likely both to implement them and get back to Maria quickly.
8.5 Be constructive in your criticism (cont.)
8.6 Avoid being too direct when asking for clarification