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Being critical makes you vulnerable to criticism
Hello TPM community,
as said in "my leadership mistakes": as a new leader I was too harsh.
I'm someone who's all about constant improvement. So I was criticizing nurses' and residents' work. I had good intentions. It was for a better functioning team.
But the truth is that people will feel slighted even if justified.
Then when I do a mistake: it happened and will happened. They are harsh back in mirroring. They took it personally (identity conversation in "difficult conversations") and will be harsh back.
So it's about warmth and making friends not enemies. Hopefully this mistake did not cost me that much and I'm correcting it.
Also being critical with other people's work can and will be taken as social climbing no matter the intention.
So it's about being more diplomatic. Also, sending emails for correcting behaviours (even if justified and/or corrections are part of the role) will be taken as covert aggressive. It is in a way.
So I also think that these must be said warmly with power-protecting and face-to-face. Also saying that it's a small thing to correct.
If you are in boss position you can still criticize, highlight behaviour and they will comply without big problems.
Best is to be generally helpful / supportive and then even if you correct it straightforwardly they will accept it.
Even if they get resentful of it was fair and not done out of malice they will see it sooner or later that there is nothing to be angry about.
Doing it the best way just takes too much time for every little thing, just do it in a way that would feel fair to you and accept the consequences, those that are good at cooperating will understand and those that won't are not worth tiptoeing around.
