Critics are maybe the most difficult people to handle in an interaction because of their seemingly negative focus and their habit to find problems with the suggestions and ideas of others.
They operate from a problem frame.
They have a tendency to make generalized judgements. (Such as “This will never work”).
The issue with that verbal generalization statements is that one can only agree or disagree with them. The answer will be; “Yes, you are right” or “No, you are wrong”.
Criticism usually leads to polarized ideas, and finally conflict (If one does not agree with the other one).
The key
The key is to underestund that criticism, like all other behavior, is positively intended.
The critic analyses the idea or suggestion or dream of others, to find out what could go wrong.
Transforming the positive intentions into positive statements
Critics usually make negative statements using negative linguistic terms.
For example: A critic would say “Avoiding Stress”, rather than “becoming more relaxed and confortable”. And yet both statements suggest a similar internal state.
One describes what is not wanted. The other describes what is wanted.
Behind any negative statement from a critic, theres a positive intention. And we must identify it.
If a critic says: “This is a wast of time”, they are probably trying to say “Use available resources wisely and efficiently”.
Identifying the positive intentions hidden behind the negative statements can be challenging at times.
Turning Criticism into Questions
Once we discover the positive intention and we stated in positive terms, we can turn that criticism into a question. And here is where the fun starts!
For example: Imagine that the critic, instead of saying “It´s too expensive”, says “How can we afford it?”. Can you see the difference? It produces a completely different result. The other person can outline the details of the plan, rather than having to agree or disagree with the idea.
The answer to this questions will be a lot different from the outputs that we can have from a negative generalized statement.
Another example: “The idea will never work” can be turn into a question like “How are we going to do it?”.
Notice that in examples I provide, both are “How” questions. This are the ones that tend to be the most useful. They encourage the other person to think and refocus on an outcome, and to formulate an answer that can not be “yes” or “no”, so it avoids conflict.
Turn Critics into Advisors
- Find the positive intention hidden behind the negative statement.
- Ones yo find it, make sure to state the positive intention in positive terms.
- Turn the criticism into a question (into a “how” question)
An example of implementing this linguistic tool could be:
Critic Statement: “What you are proposing is superficial”.
Positive intention stated in positive terms: The critic is trying to preserv/achive “Deep and lasting change”.
The How Question: “How can you be sure that the proposal will address the key issues that are necessary for deep and lasting change?”.
I find this linguistic tool really interesting and I use it in a regular basis. It produces huge turns in almost any discussion or conflict, and it turn the situation into a constructive dialogue generating great results and better relationships.
You can start trying it out on yourself. Before making any critic, try to follow the three steps mention above, and instead of a negative statement make a constructive question. Please share your results with the community!
I found this linguistic tool in the book Sleight of Mouth
by Robert Dilts. I highly recommend you to ready it if you are interested in this sort of stuff.
Your thoughts? Please leave a reply
, by Mikael Krogerus & Roman Tschäppeler
.
