Hard or soft? How do you want criticism today?

Last week I wrote about criticism, and what a minefield that is at work. Certainly if you are an old, blunt Boomer, and you have to give a younger colleague feedback that it is not so strongly used to. Then you soon get hurt souls, or even worse: the reproach that your colleague feels ‘unsafe’. Many readers emailed that they recognize that.

But is it always related to generations? No, right? Because everyone finds criticism difficult, whether you are old or young, bone or soft. That is because people so much want to belong to the group, and we don’t want to place ourselves too far outside – something with primal fears and reptile brains. But yes, criticism will have to be given anyway. Otherwise we will never get ahead. So you just say it.

Choose the military approach, a friend wrote. And give everyone resilience training at work. Let them make long daily marches in full sun without water, and scolds them every twenty meters like in Kamp van Koningsbrugge. Then everyone can take anywhere, and it no longer matters how criticism is given.

Maybe we can let everyone work in France for a while, a reader wrote – then everything in the Netherlands feels like a warm bath. Another reader had put rubber tiles in his office, as they suddenly appeared everywhere in playgrounds in the 1970s. Then everyone is securely taken care of, no matter how the criticism is given.

I thought: actually you should be able to choose how you want to receive your criticism – so hard, soft or medium – a bit like a cooked egg.

Or even better: maybe a chief translate officer (CVO) should come to every workplace that blunt feedback language can ‘translate’ into somewhat more moderate variants and vice versa – depending on the need. Or a Duolingo criticism, the ‘feedback whisperer’, who can download everyone on their phone (are you watch out for, software developers?!) And who can transform blunt criticism into the no cringe-variant. The longer I thought about it, the more enthusiastic I became.

And so I probably started ‘translating’ some examples of blunt criticism of nuanced feedback, and back. Other ways you can look at all that negativity! Then there will never be anyone disappointed or offended again. Super handy right? I thought so. They come.

HARD: You should be fired.

SOFT: What can we do to keep you for our company?

HARD: You stink.

SOFT: You smell like growth.

HARD: Do you ever get something off at all?

SOFT: Your pace is surprisingly stable, and you work with a lot of attention to detail.

HARD: Isn’t it a social workplace here?

SOFT: Your approach is so original that I could not place it right away.

HARD: Sjezus what a broddel work. Metered on paper, without points and commas.

SOFT: Gosh, how nicely you put that!

HARD: Are you already late again?!

SOFT: I think it’s great that you came to the office at all.

HARD: Can I keep something against you?

SOFT: Forgive me my Big Dick Energy, but I am curious what you think of this.

HARD: Unsafe ??! If there is someone with an ax at your door, or is unwanted with his hand in your pants, that is unsafe.

SOFT: I find it very unsafe that you experience my behavior as unsafe.

HARD: You really can’t do anything.

SOFT: I get the impression that you should reject your ambitions to our corporate culture.

HARD: Are you deaf or something?

SOFT: I hear what you say.

HARD: I think you are an arrogant screamer.

SOFT: I would like to do you a little more low-key see, with a little less Main Character Energy.

HARD: Stop looking at my tits.

SOFT: I think it is very cringe that you are in total denial for my boundaries just Eyes have for my gender normative Body Parts.

Do you still have nice translations from hard to soft? Mail me. Then the programmers can get started!

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