You can...get encouragement from them in hard times.
I'm wondering if the first ever interferes with the second? E.g., if you worked hard on something and they tell you it's not good.
1. "You have a point, I had a niggling feeling that my stuff wasn't good anyway, but now I have ideas on how to make it better."; or 2. "Thanks for your opinion, but you are wrong, and I'm going to prove it!"
Both are motivating outcomes of honest criticism.
I just pointed a few things out to a potential partner and a fellow entrepreneur. Namely, that he might have good ideas, but that he's not a programmer and it shows. Some matters of fact from our conversation:
- Does not know enough to know what's hard and what's a solved problem
- Does not have a colleague or advisor he can hash these things out with in
close collaboration and learn from
- Wastes a lot of time with underlings who just tell him "well, if you can
draw it out, we can implement it" but don't try to communicate with him further
In a moment, I decided that I want to see how this fellow reacts to getting a little truth-tap to the head. Unfortunately, I was disappointed, as he immediately started to puff himself up as a defense mechanism.
Oh well, I guess I'll keep on looking.