Critique and candour - the essence of building good relationships (and high performing teams).

Yesterday, I came across a very inspirational LinkedIn post by Wolfgang Jenewein titled “The Good Fight Club”, in which he describes the importance of conflict in high-performing teams. I could not agree more: If you and your team truly work on innovative topics, you have to create the right waves and the right conflict to move things in the right direction. Yet, far too often conflict is still seen as something negative. As a consequence, there are (still too) many corporate executives that manage their business, their teams and maybe even their careers based on a “make no waves” approach. In the commentary to Wolfgang's post, some argued that one reason could be that teams lacked the adequate culture or tools to deal with conflict, risking to blur the boundary between "the personal" and "the topical".

Thinking of it, to me the most important aspects to establish a culture of “healthy conflict”, or what Wolfgang calls “The Good Fight Club”,  are exercising critique and candour. Incidentally, just like conflict, critique is often perceived as something negative. Yet, how do you create a culture of open debate amongst team members without learning how to exercise critique first? I think we all have experienced that receiving feedback can be quite uncomfortable......As a youngster in my parents shop, my father could be quite critical of me. When I showed signs of discomfort, he brushed it off by saying: “Would you prefer me to tell you what I think is wrong, or do you prefer if the customer tells you?” I didn’t dare to tell him that I thought the customer’s feedback may potentially be less painful and somewhat more acceptable. While he of course had a point, even back then I asked myself: How do you deliver good feedback and make critique acceptable?

Rachel McKee and Bruce Carlson describe in their book “The Power to Change” (2000) critique as “discussing an event to increase understanding and learning”. They further state, that critique “represents the single most valuable relationship skill for increasing effectiveness in the workplace”, and propose how you can deliver critique effectively:

• Include specific examples to support your observations.
• Administer critique in the “here and now”, as the most effective comments relate to immediately observable events.
• Ensure that the critique is non-judgemental, leaving the person that receives the critique “whole”.
• Make the critique succinct, and ideally based on pre-defined criteria to avoid lengthy discussions and to make it easier for your team to embrace critique.

Of course, critique can only be effective when delivered with candour. Jack Welch said a long time ago, that "a remarkable absence of candour in the workplace represents one of the most significant obstacles to companies’ success". Expressing what one truly thinks about a project, a result, an idea or an approach may initially be uncomfortable, but in the longterm builds trust, strengthens relationships, saves you time and money and simply increases your chance for success.

This is actually not only essential for innovation teams: When we tried to close sales during my consultant days, my colleague Graham Howard and I used to sit in the car after the customer meeting, and we would not leave the parking lot until we had candidly critiqued our performance. At first, even without anyone else being around, it was not easy for me. Hearing Graham say things like “You cut the CEO off mid-sentence” or “You did not express our value proposition really well” felt like a personal knock, even though of course I could see that in doing this I was not helping our cause. But with time it became easier, and eventually critiquing each other became part of the way we worked. Needless to say, our closing rate improved significantly, too.  Fast-forward to today, it is still the way I work! And I can truly say that those car-sessions with Graham, exercising candour and critiquing our performance, afforded me one of the most powerful tools as a leader and innovator, but also as a father, husband and friend. Thanks for that, Graham!

If you made similar experiences, or have a different view, I would love to hear from you!