The Importance Of Constructive Criticism!

Yesterday I witnessed a quite common situation when people get criticized. It started at school and this girl who had just presented her project on the famous German philosopher Nietzsche, wanted some critique on her presentation. I was among the 3 persons who gave her a comment, and I had been thinking of the fact that her presentation really sucked. But should I take the liberty to let her know?

I’m an honest person and I expect others to be, so I decided to serve her the truth. I told her that reading from the paper, looking at the PowerPoint all the time, and not letting the audience ask questions during or after the presentation, entailed that I as an observer found the presentation rather boring and unvarying. The other two who commented her presentation gave her some comments on details, still constructive.

After we’d commented her, she replied to the audience and asked: “Aren’t there any good to say about my presentation?…”
What she means with “good” are comments like; “Oh you did great!”, “Sweet presentation, more of that”…
Her reply to our comments is just the perfect example of an individual who doesn’t have the ability to ‘flip the coin’. We just helped her to improve her skills of presentation, and there she is, only opening herself to “good” compliments.

Constructive criticism (e.g. you could do that instead of…) is the best type of criticism that you can ever get, you’ll learn a lot more from that than just plain response (e.g. that was good…; you did great in…).
Those (e.g. designers, advertisers etc.) who can’t see how to use this type of criticism will not improve; they’ll be stuck in time and development.

Remember to lower your shields and be receptive to constructive criticism!

NB: A nice way to serve constructive criticism is described in a post in the category “How to”!

Want to share? These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.