Criticism - a therapy.

 

Criticism – an act not liked by most of us when it’s done to us, but when we get an opportunity to do this – we not only love doing this, most of the time we blow this out of proportion as well.

Why so? If this has to be expressed in a few words – one becomes the best advocate for his / her mistake and gets transformed into a top-notch judge when we are at fault.

Criticism is very often done in a very narrow manner, thereby not only losing its real meaning & intent but also does more damage the doing anything constrictive.

Almost all of us must have come across people claiming, “I am open to criticism.” But are they really up for criticism, in most of the cases they really are not, most of us say this just for the sake of saying or posing ourselves as cool.

Shall we not ask some questions to ourselves – shall we not take a pose and do an introspection & think are we really up for Criticism? How positively do we Take Criticism? How do we react if we are criticized? This is one side of the coin – we must think about the other side of this activity also i.e. criticizing someone or something. What is our real intent, when we are criticizing someone? Are we really keen to help the person improve upon, whom we are criticizing? Are we criticizing someone in the right manner or not?

Before we do a deep dive into this let’s try and understand what criticism is. If we go by the literal meaning of this word, as per Wikipedia - Criticism is the practice of judging the merits and faults of something. Cambridge dictionary defines Criticism as the act of saying that something or someone is bad. Dictionary.com states that Criticism is the act of passing judgment as to the merits of anything, the act of passing severe judgment; censure; faultfinding.

So on the basis of, some of the above definitions we can safely conclude that the Criticism is an act of analysis, observing, studying – something/someone or somebody’s act or work and then sharing your feedback/comment/inputs – calling out its merits and demerits. It’s a wholesome exercise, which involves calling out not the negative aspects or the areas of opportunity but the positive aspects or the strengths as well.

But unfortunately these days most of us focus on the dark side of this exercise i.e. calling out the areas of improvement or the negative aspects of a person or his / her acts and more disturbing is in most of the cases we blow this out of proportion as well.

When we are criticizing someone closer to us we go one step ahead and rather than just focusing on the topic or activity that we are actually criticizing we start to dig the graves thereby bringing in past mistakes or inappropriate acts also in discussion, thereby losing the track.

In this unfortunate misadventure, we start attacking the person as an individual or his / her personality rather than highlighting the area of opportunity requiring an immediate attention, which actually is detrimental. This type of criticizing not only breaks the person form inside in the long run but also makes the relationships strained in due course of time.

It’s very important to understand that criticizing someone is not a casual act – it’s an art – rather I would prefer to call it a therapy.  I am sure some of my readers may not be able to relate to this, still, I would request you all to kindly spare a few more minutes and read this article till the end.

Let’s spend a few minutes understanding why I call criticizing someone a therapy.

What a doctor does while treating a patient? Firstly of all doctors will carefully examine the patient – right?

Similarly, when it comes to criticizing someone – as a first step we must examine the person or his / her act carefully. Here we must be cautious not to have any prejudice or any kind of influence or reservations while accessing the person or his / her act. When we do this exercise with complete honestly and in good faith – just like a doctor examining the patient – then only we will be able to do a natural assessment of the person or his / her act. This is a very important step as this will lay the foundation of our entire act of criticizing someone. This is not a secret that a got structure can’t be erected on a weak foundation.

Prejudice, any kind of influence, or reservations will act as forces weaken the foundation later on resulting in collapsing of the entire structure.

A thorough and honest assessment of a person or his / her act will help you in getting the right perspective – perspective in terms of what are the strengths vs. weaknesses, positive aspects vs. negative aspects, what that person did well and what could have been done better etc.

Post completion of diagnosis doctor will share the outcome of diagnosis with the patient followed by working out a plan of treatment – deciding the medicines to be prescribed, its dosage and sharing the same with the patient.

Likewise in the process of criticizing someone, once the opportunity areas are identified the critic – as a doctor – should share the feedback i.e. details of opportunity areas with the person in a review. This is the first phase of the process.

Sadly in most of the cases, the process ends here only. Critic assumes that once the opportunity areas highlighted or called out the process is completed. This is one of the biggest pitfalls of this entire therapy and its harsh truth that most of us fall victim to this. Why & how we will discuss later on when in the section of pitfalls.

Coming back to therapy, post explaining the ailment, the doctor will suggest the remedy which may include some medicines and precautions. Similarly, the critic must suggest ways and means to improve upon like does and don’ts.

As final step doctor will observe the patient for few days/weeks/months depending on the ailment – here also the critic must observe the progress of the person under review to ensure that he is progressing in the right direction.

At times remedy suggested by the doctor may fail to yield the desired outcome, the same may be the case with this the therapy of criticizing. If this happens – doctors change the medicine or change the dosage of medicine or alter the list of precautions, likewise, the critic may have to work with a person under review to revisit the list of does and don’t and suggest some alternate course of action.

This is why I termed the process of criticizing some as a therapy and I hope now most of you will agree with me on this.

As stated earlier there are some very common pitfalls in the process of criticizing someone and sadly most of us fall prey to them, if not always – very often.

So let’s spend some time understanding some of the pitfalls and ways to avoid them to the possible extent.

1.     Intent: This is of prime importance because our whole exercise of criticizing someone is governed and guided by intent. If our intent is to help someone to improve upon we are bound to get the desired or pleasant outcome. On the contrary, if the intention is mala fide and the critic is bent upon to show someone down or to insult someone then trust me only good god can save the relationship and only havens can predict the outcome.

2.       Being Judgmental: Passing a judgment or simply discarding someone or somebody’s act by stating that you are bad/useless or your work is of very sub-standard level or below par, whatever word or phrase the critic use will not lead to anywhere. As writing off someone or someone’s work is very easy. But making him/her understand with logical reasoning supported by facts and figures (if possible) is not that easy.

3.       Timing: At times we all go through the fit of rage or anger and end up behaving in an unacceptable manner. Criticizing someone at this juncture may not yield the desired results. Some people may disagree with my statement, saying that the person who misbehaved in a fit of anger asked for it, true. But are we also not very quick in criticizing him/her and somewhere deep inside us we are also experiencing the same fit of anger, whether we admit it or not?

4.       Surrounding: This also plays a very role in the therapy. Criticizing someone in the public will for sure in most cases will never have the desired outcome. Similarly criticizing someone while on road or watching a movie or having meals etc. will dilute the impact of therapy to a great extent.

5.       Completeness: Simply making someone understand that you have opportunity areas or making someone realize what could have been done better is one aspect, but incomplete. Sharing tips and tricks on how to improve as an individual or how to do things better completes the process. Yes, I do agree like all us may not know everything – like we know I am having a fever, but why I am having fever what medicine to take is something only a doctor can help me with. Similarly one may know the opportunity areas for a person or what could have been done better in his / her act better, but lack knowledge about how to change the things for better. Ask an expert, talk to people, Google it, read books there are many ways to solve this problem. If you have a problem, don’t live with it, solve it.

6.       Lack of Empathy: In most of the cases, most of us lack this very important aspect while criticizing someone. Very often we tend to access the person or his / her work form our own prospective. We even don’t try to understand the circumstances, situation, challenges the person whom we are reviewing or accessing. We just access the person or his / her work basis of our own perceptions / assumptions or reservations and share our thoughts. Lack of this very basic component in most of the cases kills the entire exercise and sad but true the whole efforts goes down the drain.  

 

If one follows all the steps with clear intent and full honesty the mere act of criticizing will become a wholesome exercise or as I said it will turn out to be therapy.

If we are able to make the person understand our true intentions behind criticizing him/her or his/her act and make him/her belief that we are actually interested in making him/her a better person and happily partnering in this endeavor, trust me this will not only help you in making that person a much much better person but also make your relations with that person rock solid.

Just a little bit of change in approach and intent will change an act into therapy and help you winning people for lifetime.

Don’t do this for anyone else, do it for yourself.

Hope I am able to drive the point home and you will agree with to an extent, if not fully that criticizing someone is not an action it’s a therapy.