So how do you In fact, deliver criticism to someone who wants it and needs it? Well, I would urge you be very cautious. If the first thing out of your mouth is criticism, you may be completely right. But you're going to arouse people's defense mechanisms, and they're simply not going to be receptive to you. So I'll share with you the strategy I use in my own primary business, which is presentation training and media training. So, for example, if I record someone giving a speech, and every other word out of their mouth is M. Er, and it's obvious that they seem nervous and uncomfortable, and everyone else in the room is ignoring what they're saying because they're now counting the arms.

It's obvious This is a big problem. But if I simply start with Hey, Jim, you sound like a complete idiot with all the ohms you said Oh, 127 times. It's so annoying, it's awful. It's really cutting against your home message. Everything I said would be true. But it would be completely worthless just because I know it's awful.

It's all I should never speak again. It puts people in such a funk. Here's what I've noticed about personal psychology of individuals. People say they want criticism. They don't people want to be praised. People want to be loved.

They want to be told they're great and deserve raises. I know that's what I like. I love it. When people tell me I'm great and offer to pay me more money. So I'm not holding myself out. As above anyone else.

And people have mixed feelings about criticism and the one hand, most of us, myself included, we all realize we could be better. We want to improve we live in a self improvement culture. And yet we still don't really like criticism because There's a part of us that says, hey, TJ, you said, I said Allah but you know, your hair's falling out and you have beady eyes. You set up a defense mechanism in the person you're trying to help if you're too abrupt launching right into criticism. So my suggestion, always, and I do it in my own practice is look at what they're really trying to do for started, what is their goal? If someone is saying, as an AMS a bunch when speaking, their goal is to actually communicate to an audience, whether it's three peers at a staff meeting, or 1000 people at a major trade association convention when they're giving a speech, look at their goal, what is it they're trying to do?

The next thing I try to do is list every single thing they're doing well. And you can do this to try to chronicle someone's strengths because it Everybody loves praise as long as it seems sincere and meaningful. So for example, when I am critiquing someone's speaking skills, and they are saying, Ah, I'm constantly, I still analyze everything else about how they speak. And I try to come up with a long list a legitimate list of what they're doing well, so that's the first step chronical every single thing they do well, so, in this case, I would say to the person, Sam, you're speaking speed is good. A lot of people who are nervous, speak too quickly. Your speed is good, that's good.

Your volume is good. A lot of people get uncomfortable, nervous, and their volume shrinks, and they're speaking so softly, no one can hear them. And Jim, I'm noticing that you're gesturing. Well, that's good. Nervous people hold their hands or they play with pens. I like that you had some good hand movement.

So I'll go through. And I'll list as many as 20 things that the person did well now to the casual observer. And they're not even noticing any of that because the arms were so annoying. I don't talk about the gums yet. I just focus on their strengths. And it may be that they had something interesting to say.

It may be that they put good pauses into their presentation. So the hard part is not letting myself get distracted by this one ugly, horrible thing. They're doing this one huge flaw of the arms every two seconds. Now, typically, at this point, the person says, Well, I want to know what did I do wrong? How can I get better? What's bad?

People asked for their weaknesses. But I find if you just hop right into the weaknesses, it's too abrupt. They shut down. It either depresses them. Or it makes them hate you and it depresses them. Neither one of those is good.

So we always start by chronicling a person's strengths in the category that we're dealing with. Now, you may be managing someone who has problems talking to customers over the phone. And you may want to talk about all the good things they do when they're talking one on one to customers who come to your store, come to your office, or all the things they do well, speaking to fellow employees or colleagues, talk about their strengths as communicators, before you go go right to that criticism of Oh, my God, you're so rude, obnoxious and you're cursing at the clients on the phone and hanging up on them. That's crazy. You're going to be fired. You can't just go to the negatives.

So start by chronicling the positives. In the case of my colleague with the public speaking issues. I may spend 10 minutes, just going through everything they do well. Now this is important for several reasons. Number one, it relaxes that it's always more relaxing to hear people tell you what you do well, and it's legitimate and it's meaningful. It can't be you telling me teacher you have the prettiest, thick, dark, curly hair I've ever seen.

It can't be something that seems like total BS. It always has to be rooted in reality and you have to be sincere. I don't give credit. I don't give praise to anyone. Unless I legitimately meaning but also remember, the bar can be low. If I'm giving somebody credit for speaking with a good volume, that's not that hard.

Because most people have okay volume when they're speaking it's the bottom 20% of so who lower their voice and they sound scared and timid and not everyone rocks in a way that makes them look bad. nervous. But for someone who doesn't rock, I'm happy to give them praise for not committing other common blunders. So the first beauty of starting off with something positive is that you relax the person number one. Number two, your credibility goes sky high, because they can tell you're really paying attention to them. And you must be brilliant because you're telling them things that are specific seem real that other people haven't mentioned.

So when I put when I praised this speaker, who says all the times I'm being legitimate, I'm being honest. And I'm probably telling them 20 things they're doing well, maybe 10 of them are things they've never thought about before. And no one else has ever praised them on that. So they now think I'm a genius. They think I'm a nice guy, and I'm a genius. Yes, for telling them all the specific things that they do well, so my credibility is very, very high.

And that's why I urge it's the first important step is you've got to look at the general nature of the issues involved. In my case, if somebody says arms, it's how they speak and communicate, and your case it may be, how does an employee treat other employees or how does this person deal with clients over the phone, you've got to pick the subject matter. But then you've really got to do an exhaustive analysis of what this person is doing well, and lay it out. It's critically important, relaxes them, makes them receptive to the criticism that comes, makes them feel comfortable with you, and it makes them feel like you are legitimate. You legitimize your expertise if you're spotlighting what they are doing well. Because then if you have criticisms later, just seems a lot more legitimate.

So that's the first step. And that's against our nature. The easiest thing to do especially if your boss is a Smithers don't do that. Sally, you're a pig, they're clean up that mess. Hey, dude, the easy thing to do is to just go right to the criticism, but it's not really the most effective. I'm not asking you to lie.

I'm not asking you to make up stuff. I am asking you to take the extra step. Really analyzing every single thing this person does in this niche and writing down or at least thinking about what it is they do well, so you can tell them. So that's your first step. I need you to think of some employee you have to criticize, you have to manage and I need you to come up with a comprehensive list of everything they do. Well do that.

Now.