Giving Feedback: A practical guide

Responding to criticism as a manager

Criticism is best dealt with in 3 stages known as the Triple A Principle:

Stage 1

Awareness – take all criticism as "legitimate" and then move to assess its merit.

Stage 2

Assessment – of whether the criticism is really valid or not. To determine if criticism is valid you should ask:

Is this something I have heard before from others?

Is the critic an expert in this field?

Does the critic have reasonable standards?

Is the criticism really about me, or is the critic upset about something else and taking it out on me?

Stage 3

Action – decide what you want to do about the criticism.

You may need more information to decide whether criticism is really valid or not. Let's look at Types of Criticism next.