How do you get your team to do great work?
The answer lies in how you react to the work. There are two routes most people take: Critique or Criticism.
Criticism is about judgement & finding flaws:
“This looks exactly like what you made last time”
“You call yourself a designer? I could have done this myself.”
“This looks awful.”
Criticism is aimed more towards the person creating the work rather than the work itself.
On the other hand, critiquing is about the work. It’s about getting into the shoes of the person creating the work & genuinely tring to help them improve. Critique inspects and tries to find what’s missing. It’s honest constructive suggestions that makes the work better.
“Have you tried approaching it like this?”
“Maybe if it was in red, it could catch more eyeballs”
“The headline could be made much bigger for more emphasis”
Criticism is really easy, anyone could do it. But, critiquing is really hard, because you need to understand the subject well enough to provide meaningful feedback.
If you want your team to do killer work, try the latter.
What are your thoughts about this?
