How Criticizing in Private Undermines Your Team

And rather than publicly criticising Ted (see the article) you talk about ways to avoid these deadline misses in the future.

The problem that HBR misses here is making the issue "about Ted" rather than "missing the deadline." If you can credibly talk about what was needed to make the deadline and wasn't there, then you can talk to the solution. Ted may come up to you in private and say "I'm not sure I can handle this" but they don't need to feel like a turd.

I once explained to a person that if I asked them to lift a car off the street would they consider themselves a failure for not being able to do it? or me unreasonable for asking it? They said it was an unreasonable ask. (which in that way it is) and then I asked "Ok, so if I said we need that car up and off the street, can you take care of that?", their response was "What tools can I use?" and I say "What do you need?", they say "A crane, a crane operator" and I say "Ok, the crane company will be in touch." Now they are going to achieve the same thing, "Get the car lifted off the street" but it's not about them, its about getting what is needed to be done, actually done.

I completely disagree with the approach being suggested in this blog post. Calling people out by name in the middle of a team meeting is not productive, it's only going to cause everyone to be uncomfortable and the person called out to feel terrible and embarrassed. Depending on their personality they may not be able to function well or think clearly for the rest of the meeting.

It will also cause people to feel a ton of anxiety about missing a deadline because they know what follows is being called out in the meeting in front of everyone.

It's much better to talk about these things in private. It's less stressful and allows you to have a more in depth conversation if necessary without everybody being present. In particular if the problem is stemming from the interactions between team members, having everyone present will make it harder to get to that point.

Let me give an example; say the problem is like that in the article, that Ted has missed two deadlines. But say the problem is due to Ted needing something from Joan he didn't get in time, which pushed him back. Or Joan's code was buggy and Ted had to spend time debugging it, etc.

If you call out Ted in the middle of the meeting one of two things happen depending on Ted's personality:

1) Ted clams up and just takes the blame as a pariah for the team, not wanting to make further waves.

or

2) Ted says it's all really Joan's fault and the whole meeting degrades into a shit storm.

Neither of these is good.

Calling people out in public is a horrible practice, and it's amazing to me it's being seriously suggested here.

You can absolutely make the team feel included and feel responsible to each other to deliver without calling people out by name. In the meeting you can say "We've had some slipped deadlines lately, and after talking to everybody it seems like the problems are stemming from A, B and C. Do you all agree? Is there anything else? Ok let's find some solutions to these problems. My ideas are X, Y and Z." etc.

"In the case of Ted, you could start by saying something like, "I'm noticing two patterns in our meetings. First, Ted, this looks like the third time in a month where you haven't met a deadline for the team. Am I off? [Assuming Ted agrees, you continue.] The second pattern is that each time Ted says he hasn't met a deadline, I notice the rest of you — Fran, Alex, and Sheryl — sigh or shake your head, but you don't say anything to Ted. Am I on target? [Assuming people agree, you continue.] Since these meetings are the place for solving problems and the team can't meet its deadlines if Ted doesn't meet his, I'm curious, what leads you not to say something to Ted in the meetings?""

If I'm Ted, this is a very uncomfortable meeting... and from the sound of things, will be going down hill very quickly.

Woah - Stop.

This is horrible advice, for more than a few reasons.

First - there is almost never a dynamic of "equals" at a boardroom table. There is always a recognized hierarchy, defined or not. Given that, a senior member critiquing a member junior to him but senior to others at the table undermines that person's position in the group. Unless you are into discarding team members, that's not a smart thing to do.

Second - Nobody likes to be critiqued, and it takes a lot of maturity to accept it and more importantly to properly (and positively) correct the behaviour in the future. A "private" situation where the person doesn't need to worry about saving face creates the best possible environment for this happening.

Third - If being "outed" is a consequence of action, the result is that action itself becomes less desirable and behaviour more conservative. This is a bad thing if you are trying to create a business that grows. If you aren't making mistakes, you aren't doing anything at all. The goal is not "no mistakes", it's "as few mistakes as possible".

Forth - High performers are already harbouring guilt when they fail. They are their own worst critics. There is nothing served by reinforcing these negative feelings. Poor performers and/or slackers are only going to rebel against being made a fool of.

Fifth - The assumption is that "Praise publicly, critique privately" is somehow commonplace. I can tell you that outside of the military, nothing I've seen seems to indicate that, and I've been working for some 20 years now.

I could continue but I think that's long enough. I must say though that I'm disturbed that the author is a psychologist.

What the author of the article is advocating is to use a failing team member as a method of rallying support and cooperation from the rest of the team by publicly throwing them under the bus. This really is fairly effective, at least in the short term, and a large number of very successful leaders have used this practice well. Giving the rest of the team a common enemy and a 'mark' they need to make sure they stay ahead of is effective and commonly used in military training.

However, it's just morally awful and I doubt (hope?) it's not actually more effective than just building a team where you don't have to do this.

If an employee is consistently missing deadlines, it's the fault of whoever put that employee in that position - either the employee was mis-hired, the tasks given to the employee are not do-able with his skillset, he hasn't been given enough support to accomplish the task, etc. Criticizing in private is just as bad as in public here - you need to stop criticizing and fix the problem at the root cause!

HBR is a perfect reflection of the management consulting world.

Both will suggest something completely contrary to popular opinion in an effort to remain relevant and edgy. Much of the research is performed by or at the behest of the organization which stands to benefit from it. After they make the case and sell people on the new 'paradigm', even newer research will show that the old way is better after all.

See:

> Vertical vs. Horizontal markets

> Flat vs. Hierarchical org structures

> Outsourcing vs. Insourcing

> Specialization vs. Generalization

> Pretty much everything that HBR has ever printed

I've noticed an interesting pattern in my management style. When I'm in a dysfunctional organiation, I have to focus so much energy shielding my people from the dysfunction that my team is generally self-organizing and fairly efficient. When I'm in a functional organization, I can spend more time on my team and I end up putting myself in the middle of everything rather having the team organize itself. I have to keep reminding myself to let the team members handle their own intra-team issues. In some ways it's a tougher assignment because I'm not just reacting to whatever ridiculous issues are coming out of the other groups.

I find it shocking how negative people here react to the simple act of saying out loud what everybody in the room already knows but doesn't dare to say.

IMHO there is something seriously dysfunctional about a team in which addressing what everyone already knows constitutes "publicly throwing someone under the bus".

We're dealing with adult professionals here, not a bunch of kids.

OTOH, not being able to deal with anything remotely resembling criticism in a mature way is one of the reason people find it so hard to work with developers.

I think there are some areas in which we shouldn't be expecting "management" to pander to our specific quirks, and this is one of them. People who want to be empowered, independent and not micro-managed should be able to deal with some gentle criticism.

I agree that criticizing in private creates a situation where group accountability is lost. It's not that Ted is accountable to the Boss (or by proxy, the organization) but primarily to the team.

This is why we tend to not have individual deadlines but self organizing teams that commit to deadlines, and then the team is collectively on the hook for something.

That said, sometimes it's obvious when someone messes up, and it should be the team that provides accountability and support to help.

It's not that everyone in the team should nag Ted but that anyone should be able to go "Hey Ted, we said that we were gonna have those copy changes pushed to the website by 5p, and it's 3p and I haven't seen the commits yet. Do you need some help?"

If Ted says "No, I got this" and then misses the 5p, it's up to the team to figure out what happened. Was it Ted slacking off, in over his head? Or did Bob break the build so it was all-hands trying to fix it?

And, it shouldn't be "found out" in a meeting a couple of days later. Close the feedback loop as soon as possible and that'll ensure it won't get out of control.

Oh boy. Bit of overgeneralizing in that article.

First, if you have direct reports, especially if they are mangers, odds-are that you don't have a team. You are a middle manager. I conclude you're not a team because you're having special meetings to communicate, instead of letting communication happen organically (because you are already working informally in close physical proximity)

In this case, if you don't have a team, you need one. So follow all that advice in the article. Plus there's a bunch more advice about creating a team that you should find and follow.

But if you have a team, you need to separate two things: the failed promise of performance from one of your team members, and the underlying reasons this might be happening.

You should absolutely hold people publicly accountable for the things they have committed to doing. Invite the team as a whole to own the problem instead of just one person. Many heads are better than one. The team is a tremendously-powerful problem-solving machine. Give them this problem to see what they can come up with.

However -- and this is a big caveat -- people might be missing commitments for reasons they do not want to share publicly. They may have a health problem. They may be having domestic problems in their marriage. They may have a private issue which prevents them from doing well in a certain type of work.

In this case, after publicly acknowledging that there is a performance problem with the team (which should probably happen on a continuous basis until the team either adapts or it gets fixed) you absolutely should comfort and counsel your friend offline in these other areas, assuming your conversation is welcome. And this counseling will probably consist of reminding your friend that either this obstacle is overcome or their relationship with the team could terminate.

I have been criticized in front of the team and the only thing it helped me do is start searching for a new job faster. It sounds like a good idea in theory but I would like to see a few more practical real life examples of how to make this work before I would dream of implementing something like this.

If you are conducting a team meeting, then the subject at hand is the team and the tangibles and intangibles associated with that team.

If you are changing the narrative to focus on one individual member of the team, you are off agenda and losing productivity for no good reason.

In a positive work environment, the team chemistry should allow for peer review and correction. Only when its clear that a person needs more help should the team manager step in.

If you are doing your job right and you are dealing with a professional, the person receiving the critique should already have the situational awareness to know they were having issues. Therefore, nobody benefits by dragging the person out to be humiliated in front of their peers.

At best, you'll make some egotist in the group feel superior and everyone else will begin positioning themselves to not be the slowest wildebeest on the savannah next time you get hungry.

If you lead through feer and persecution, you set the bar for the barest minimum needed to get by. If you empower your talent, you hand them the keys to the Ferrari and ask them to go as far as their limits will allow.

Thank you, Harvard Business Review, for letting everyone else know that having Ivy League credentials doesn't mean you walk on water.

When you have the leader, in the example shown, publicly dressing down "Ted" and then asking for validation from the rest of the team ("Am I off? Am I on target?"), you're not only saying to everyone "I'm willing to publicly humiliate you, too", but you're also saying something which can easily be misconstrued as "I need your validation because I'm a bit unsure of myself" and leaving yourself wide open to revolt from the team with the validating questions. Just one or two disgruntled employees can cause things to spin rapidly out of control.

Instead, when I have a situation like this I take Ted privately off to the side and say "Ted, I expect X, but I saw that you did Y. Why is that?"

When said appropriately, Ted might say "actually, I did Y because of Z" and then if you find out that Ted had a good reason to see the situation differently, you didn't just charge in guns-a-blazin' to publicly humiliate him only to make an ass out of yourself (I've seen this happen more than once).

If you're good at your job, Ted is usually wrong, so you explain to Ted why X is important and the consequences of Y and work to eliminate the underlying problem (which may very well be Ted himself). Once your team learns that you're willing to hear them out but you're going to take corrective action when needed, you can earn their respect. Publicly humiliating them by calling them out in a team meeting, however, is completely unprofessional.

First reaction, why is Ted missing deadlines?

In software development, the #1 reason why this happens is that the schedules were initially decided not on the basis of what is reasonable, but as the first date that nobody could disprove. After that it is guaranteed that schedules will be missed, and that is used as a club to beat the developers into working faster.

The only thing is that it doesn't work. If you try to motivate software developers with schedule pressure, you get worse software and demotivated developers. This is connected with personalities and type of work. For example a similar approach applied to sales people does improve sales. However research indicates that accurate schedule estimates improves development speed.

Therefore an article that accepts that missed deadlines are primarily the fault of the manager who cannot make the deadlines, without stopping to think about whether the schedule might not be reasonable, is deeply flawed when applied to software.

Ugh...this reminds me of the last Apprentice I watched where Trump asked everyone on one of the teams who their weakest player was. None of them wanted to answer but they all ended up naming Gary Busey. Staged or not, the entire exchange was incredibly awkward and seemed like a sadistic management style. Busey afterwards was hurt and withdrew socially.

Similar to what others have said, I think any feedback given in public needs to be productive and very careful to avoid shaming people. Pointing out that Ted missed his target and finding out why in the meeting is uncomfortable, but it's not labeling them as the weakest or as a serial failure.

I would probably ask Ted in the meeting why he missed his target and what tools or resources he needs to not miss it next time. The meeting is the perfect time to find out what resources or assistance others can or should provide to hit the goal.

The problem with this approach is that there's a difference between public criticism and public shaming, and most people (myself included) have an imperfect grasp of that difference. There's a time and a place for both, but the workplace is usually neither the time nor place for a shame session.

This is not only a problem for team leaders, though they see it through a different lens than others. For a team leader, the problem lies in figuring out how to publicly criticize a team member without obliterating team morale, which can over time do even more damage than the original problem. If the article's examples are any indication, its own author is not very good at this either: the meeting comes across grossly inappropriate if not outright sadistic in its treatment of Ted.

But that's a leadership-specific thing. If we're going to say that public criticism is part of good leadership, then we can say people who aren't good at it are not good leaders. There is, however, a flip side: it counts on team members to be able to split some very fine hairs, to take criticism without allowing it to affect morale. Almost no one can really do this well, yet this management style requires all team members to be able to do so. It's the team-full-of-rockstars mentality all over again, except that this time they need to be rockstars at something that doesn't actually have anything to do with the task at hand.

Has anyone seen a situation like this before where it turns out Ted just wasn't really up to snuff as a team member? In my (limited) experience, this has never turned out to be a recoverable situation; the team basically hobbles along a) until Ted quits, b) until Ted is fired, c) forever.

So what do you do when you have a guy who continually fails to complete his tasks? I mean you can't praise him publicly. It's obvious to everyone that he fails.

You need to let him know that he is not meeting expectations and I feel that should happen privately. And if he continues to fail, then there has to be consequences, otherwise the team will think it's unfair. Other team members have to meet expectations, but Ted is special and can repeatedly fail and get away with it... so the whole team starts slacking off too and cite Ted as the reason why they can slack off.

Sooner or later, someone has to convince Ted to change or fire him.

I get the point they are trying to make, but I think there is a middle way.

On one extreme you have not comment, and then challenge Ted privately. At the other extreme, you have the option of telling Ted in his meeting his performance is poor.

I think, in a status update meeting, there is a middle path which is to challenge Ted on the reason his deadlines were missed, and to drill down on those reasons and further challenge them if they're not adequate. That way you're not personally criticising Ted, but you're letting him (and the team) know that he has things that need to improve.

This is one of the problems that the Agile/Scrum methodologies address. The team is a self organising group where each individual commits to a certain amount of work and the team periodically presents their results to management (aka the Product Owner). There isn't a layer where Management assigns individual tasks and measures performance, it is all done within the team and the team is judged as a whole. Which places the responsibility on the team itself to manage their own performance, which is what the article is saying should be the goal. If Ted isn't pulling his weight and getting through the tasks that he has agreed to do, it affects the whole team and there should be peer pressure (which can be positive) to perform better. The Scrum Master is there to remove any obstacles that are preventing him from getting things done. The article is talking about building a self managing team which is what Agile is all about.

i think this has an interesting parallel (isomorphism if you enjoy abstract algebra) to society in general;

if you shame someone like that, they won't feel good and it probably won't make them perform better at work. you have to be reasonable with them too, if you're too mean they won't like you which doesn't foster good teamwork. except here the company is the country and deadlines are economic achievements and such.

that being said i appreciate the sentiment here, you have to feel responsible to the team because you're a part of it, upon doing that you'll get the best out of people i find, although thats never an easy balance to find either.

This is common in much of the finance industry, well, at least banks anyway.

In fact, I would be surprised if anyone could come up with a more systematic and brutal example of this method than that practiced, oddly enough, at the world's largest hedge fund, Bridgewater Associates.

The founder even has a manifesto that represents the basis of the "radically transparent" workplace culture called "Principles of Ray Dalio":

http://www.bwater.com/Uploads/FileManager/Principles/Bridgew...

i might have missed it but where's the leaders accountability in this scenario?

Maybe I'm lucky but, throughout my career I have witnessed or have been a part of teams that pulled off the miracles under ridiculous conditions that were the direct result of poor planning and unreasonable timelines. The occasion where an individual worker bee was not pulling their weight has been a very rare occurrence compared the number of times managers failed to plan appropriately and they rarely have held themselves accountable.

I hate being in team meetings where we're discussing a failure and avoid talking about individual actions/responsibilities leading up to the issue. Don't make it personal, but do make clear what went wrong and who made mistakes.

If everyone is responsible, no one is responsible.

Principle #15 here weighs in on this: http://www.greenwichharborpartners.com/uploads/Principles_by...

i can't believe the amount of negative responses here.

in my experience, when more people criticize it makes teams nicer to work with. someone screws up, you can tell them, and they'll fix it no harm done. usually this dynamic goes away with a real "manager" thrown into the mix.

take dynamic young companies for example. the boss has no qualms being called out by his coworkers. "hey, you did that wrong", "oh xyz is right, thanks for correcting me". in case of basho that was a public tweet. does it mean people think that guy is stupid? I think that guy is probably nice to work with.

don't forget that conflict exists. it always does. treating your employees like stupid kids that, and every negative emotion as non existant is irrational.

every war/major conflict happened because people have tried to suppress these natural conflicts in a sea of false happiness.

I see many comments disagreeing with the article about criticizing Ted in public, and I also disagree with that. However, the article makes a fine point which is to make the team members accountable to the team and not to you (the leader).

This seems like atrocious advice. Here's the bit that seemed especially misguided:

"Ted may tell you that other team members made it difficult for him to meet his deadlines, that it's not his fault; at that point, you're likely to become a human ping-pong ball, shuttling back and forth between Ted and other team members trying to understand the problem. The information to solve this problem lies with Ted and the other team members."

Note the pejorative way Roger characterizes the effort needed to understand the operations of what is (ostensibly) his own team: "Shuttling back and forth like a ping-pong ball trying to understand the problem."

That's one way of looking at in. Another way is "doing your (expletive) job."

If the manager doesn't understand what's happening with the way his team is working, that's a serious problem - even in cases where the team isn't failing. "Researching" the issue by herding everyone into a room for a round of mutual recriminations has got to be the worst approach possible.

Far better to grasp the problem discreetly through a series of private conversations in which people feel they can be candid, work out possible solutions from there, and get everyone together when you're ready to discuss viable solutions. That way, the team participates in the decision, while the manager retains control of the situation by displaying a vital combination of leadership and situational awareness.

At no point should any manager undermine his own authority by running a session like the one described here, in which the clear subtext is "I have no idea what's going on with my team, and I'm too lazy and/or incompetent to figure it out myself, so I'm just going to tell them to lace into each other and observe from the sidelines." Aside from fostering intense distrust among colleagues, the manager undermines the respect and authority that his own job depends on.

So no, this isn't a good argument against the normally solid rule about delivering criticism in private.

The only exception I can think of to the "criticize in private" rule is when what's called for is actually punishment for abuse of colleagues. For instance, if Ted had no trouble meeting his deadlines, but couldn't talk to women without making sexist remarks, then it's entirely appropriate to shut him down in public - preferably in full view of whoever he demeaned, along with anyone else who witnessed his affront. Concluding by saying that you'll fire him on the spot if you catch him doing it again will not only get through to Ted, it will also light up the grapevine, putting everyone on notice that the No Asshole Rule is in full effect.

But again, that has nothing to do with performance, except to the degree that people perform much better when they feel that their managers are looking out for them, and are fearless about protecting anyone on their staff from humiliating attack. This is the stuff that deep loyalty is made of. Roger's advice points in the opposite direction, fostering the "everyone look out for themselves" climate that leads to major losses when the "team" that operates this way goes up against a truly solid team with a strong and respected manager.

At some point in life you have to step out of diapers and accept challenge, accept disagreement, accept envy, accept talk-down, accept criticism.

Either way, there is no correct way.

If he is the'boss', he should bring Ted into his office and explain him what is going on and suggest improvements.

If this happens to a co-worker who you are friends with you can freely talk to them about the issue.

In most cases I experienced, I tend to distance my self from people who 'do work with their mouth' and are generally full of shit if I do not manage them. It's up to their superior to recognize those faults.

Good manager/boss should recognize such issues and address them. You don't want half of your team growing desperate and frustrated that a single member is not pulling their weight.

I've got a different approach.

1) Train staff how to define SMART objectives (Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, Timely) 2) Let them create and present their objectives to the group periodically (weekly, monthly, quarterly) 3) Then let them self-report the outcomes for the prior period, and give the group a chance to discuss and give feedback.

With this practice I can put more focus on training and standards, get less involved in operational details, and worry less about my performance as meeting ringleader.