Instead of Critiquing Someone, Do This Instead

Summary

• When helping people improve, I prefer providing alternatives over critiquing them.
• Instead of focusing on past mistakes, I suggest what they can try next time to get better results.
• Giving people clear, actionable advice helps them understand what to improve without feeling criticized.
• Sharing my own successful experiences makes my suggestions relatable and practical.
• For example, if someone did something a certain way, I would say, "Try doing it this way next time, it worked well for me."

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest focusing on providing alternatives instead of critiquing when you want to help someone improve. It's less about pointing out what went wrong and more about what they can try next time.

For Small Businesses:

• Team Feedback: When giving feedback to your team, suggest new methods instead of critiquing their past performance. If they handled customer service poorly, suggest a new approach: "Next time, try this method I found effective."
• Process Improvements: Provide your team with alternate processes to enhance efficiency. For instance, if a marketing strategy didn't work, suggest a new technique you’ve seen success with.

For Entrepreneurs:

• Personal Growth: Reflect on past experiences and identify where you can implement alternative strategies. If one marketing approach didn't yield results, research and try others that successful entrepreneurs use.
• Network Building: When helping peers, share your own successful experiences as alternatives. Instead of critiquing a failed attempt, say, "I tried this strategy for networking, and it worked well."

For Personal Growth:

• Self-Improvement: Apply this method to your personal development. If you find yourself dwelling on a mistake, switch your focus to exploring new ways to approach the same task in the future.
• Mentoring Others: When giving advice to friends or family, offer actionable alternatives from your own experience. Avoid dwelling on what they did wrong; instead, say, "I tried this approach once, and it really worked for me, maybe give it a shot."

By focusing on these low-cost, high-value strategies, you're giving people clear, actionable advice that encourages improvement without criticism. It's all about suggesting what can be done differently next time, making the advice practical and easier to accept.

Full Transcript

critiquing and then there's also offering Alternatives and they're different which is like a critique is like we want you here you're here here's the discrepancy it's pointing out the discrepancy in performance another thing that you can do is just provide Alternatives so for the most part what I do is I don't critique people so much as I provide them with an alternative oh you did this oh you know what you should try this this next time here's what I did one time and this worked really well try it let me know what happens that doesn't seem like a critique because I'm not talking about what happened in the past or what their performance is at I'm just giving them something to do next time