Being Constructive

I think I wrote on here a long time ago about constructive criticism and how I don't like it. I like to call it constructive guidance, because it's a positive word with a positive word.

We live in a critical world. People like to look at everyone and everything and criticize it. The flaws. The negative. It makes it hard to look at the positive.

So, I have always disliked constructive criticism, but it wasn't until now that I realized why. It's because people do it wrong. I know, here I am being critical of constructive criticism! Seriously though, if you go to someone and tell them everything they are doing wrong, whether they asked you to or not, typically they are not going to be motivated to change. More likely they are going to get defensive because they know they are doing some things right, or they will just want to stop trying because they don't feel like they can do anything right.

That's the key.

They are doing SOME things right.

If you want to motivate someone to change, first you tell them what they are doing right, and then say, hey, if you want to do even better, here are some things you could work on. Unfortunately, most of the time the truly constructive part is left out, so instead of constructive criticism, you just get criticism.