Constructive Criticism
Managing people is a challenging task. Often the manager has to ignore personal assumptions and presumptions, hatred towards religion, culture, race and creed, personal ego and various other traits that will reduce the managerial qualities in the manager.
A successful manager is the one who focuses on the problem or an issue rather than focusing on the people who are part of the issue. Such a manager continues to have a great relationship with his team mates but can be still a terror at work.
When a team member is fired and after the firing he realizes the purpose of the firing and accepts that manager was right in firing him, seems to be an ideal condition right?
Well, when the manager’s words do not affect the individual’s ego, his personality, or something said was specific to him, the ideal condition can exist.
Constructive criticism is all about identifying the mistakes, flaws in team members and point out to them in such a way that they benefit from your criticism. At the end of every feedback, if you note that your juniors have made serious attempt to correct themselves; you are very much following the principles of constructive criticism.
Manager’s job is not only to manage; he or she often shapes the career of his juniors. He or she should understand the strength and limitations of his or her team members, appreciate them in whatever way they are, and try to work on improving them.
Manager’s farewell party often consists of flamboyant speeches from the juniors that what they learnt from him or her, and how they are going to miss him or her, etc. But after the boss has gone, it’s invariably all bad-mouthing how much he or she acted as a dictator, how much he or she was rude and tough. This will never serve the purpose.
While the manager has to be broad-minded, look beyond individuals and give importance to their roles, a team member of every manager also should be polite enough to point out the flaws in his or her manager’s decisions. Often, juniors ignore to point-out the mistakes of seniors because either they are scared or they don’t want to upset the “boss”. They feel insecure of being targeted.
It’s within an employee’s right to give preference to the company’s image and benefits; the diplomacy to point out the senior’s mistakes ensures that the result is win-win for everybody. The attitude to show that you know better than your senior or manager or as if you were waiting for him or her to do a mistake shows your narrow mindedness.
In effect, the word TEAM as we all know by now, Together Everyone Achieves More needs to be understood and followed to form a successful organization.
Organization is just made up of individuals. A good manager and able team members are the catalysts of a successful team. Such a team can handle any crisis, can avoid losses to the company, can bring great orders and maintain happy customers all along.
Manager is not only to manage the team; but also to manage himself. An efficient manager sets an example due to his people-oriented managerial traits. Constructive Criticism is one of the important managerial traits.
Let each one of in our company develop such managerial qualities and become successful managers.
~Mohan Krishnamurthy
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