critique it’s important for you to consciously work toward preventing any
natural tendencies to form rebuttals and instead focus on listening to people’s
entire thoughts. To help make sure you understand what people are telling you
ask them follow up questions or repeat what they’ve told you as you’ve
understood it and ask them if your interpretation is accurate. This is called
active listening.
Return to the foundation.
As people share their thoughts with you, you may encounter feedback that
seems out of place, as though it has little to do with what you’re trying to
create or the objectives you have. It may be that the person you’re hearing
from is just having difficulty connecting their thoughts, or it may be that
they’ve started to offer feedback that is based more on their own preferences
or goals.
To help you find out you can use previously agreed upon objectives. If you
can’t determine for yourself how the feedback relates to the product or
project’s objectives, try to work with them on relating it back by asking them
follow up questions related to the objectives.
If over time you’re able to determine a connection, then you’ll better
understand the feedback and can use it moving forward. If not, then you know
that the feedback likely isn’t valuable to your next iteration.
Participate
One of the best things a creator can do during a critique is to become a critic
themselves. Being able to shift our mindset from thinking creatively to being
analytical about what we’re creating is a key creative skill. Participating in a
critique of our own work has multiple benefits.
First, the more we exercise intentionally switching our mindset like this the
easier it becomes to control this mindset “toggle.” Switching from creative
thinking to analytical will be easier, faster and something we can do whenever
we feel like it’s helpful, whether we’re alone at our desks, or we grab the
person sitting next to us, or we’re in a meeting.
Second, one of the common challenges people have with giving critique is a
fear of hurting the creator’s feelings. By participating in the analysis and
openly talking about the aspects of our product that could be improved upon,
we can make others feel more comfortable participating in these discussions.
Aim for dialogue
One of the worst mechanisms for meaningful critique is email, yet it’s also one
of the most often used. The problem with email is that it isn’t conducive to
dialogue. Instead of an in-time back and forth of questions and answers