Critique vs Criticism

How to give good feedback and still benefit from bad

“Constantly seek criticism.

“You should take the approach that you’re wrong. Your goal is to be less wrong.”

Elon Musk

Conversations can improve ideas

In How Do You Know You Have A Good Idea? I wrote about the most successful Founders — people like Steve Jobs (Apple, Pixar), Ken Iverson (Nucor), George Eastman (Kodak), and Jospeh C Wilson (Xerox) — all had the good judgment to be able to recognize and improve ideas. After the passing of these legendary Founders, the corporations they founded oftend suffered from a dearth of those ideas. It wasn’t because the corporations didn’t have any good ideas. It was because they couldn’t recognize and improve them.

Remember who started Prodigy, one of the first internet companies in the United States, because they were sure that online catalog shopping was the future of retail? It was former retail behemoth Sears & Roebuck, which has been bankrupt twice since then, while Amazon has grown into one of the largest companies in the world.

Ideas aren’t the problem. Recognizing them and improving upon them is the problem.

Conversations are the cheapest way to improve ideas. And one of the biggest reasons that people aren’t having them is the negative feelings that come from criticism.

For most people, improving the reward of improving the quality of their idea isn’t worth the shame and hurt they feel when someone criticizes them for sharing it. Rather than risk feeling that sting, most people would rather just keep their ideas to themselves.

Only the most innovative organzations are good at having the conversations that test and improve ideas. To become one of those organizations, your people have to get better at giving good critique of ideas and still benefiting when they receive crappy, hurtful criticism.

There’s a difference between the two.

Critique vs Criticism

Criticism is personal, destructive, vague, inexpert, ignorant, and selfish. For example, I get a lot of criticism on my YouTube channel, and some of it sounds like this:

Your presentation sucks because you don’t even do the math right, and I wanted to know the best option for the truck because I’m thinking about buying one. You also mumble too much and speak too quiet so I can’t hear what you said so I just skipped ahead in the video to the conclusion.

Critique is impersonal, constructive, specific, expert, informed and selfless. If I rewrote the criticism above to phrase it more like a critique, it might sound like this:

The presentation could be improved by including a comparison of net present values calculated for the truck’s lease and finance options with multiple discount rates to allow the audience to identify more closely with the analysis. There is an audio problem with the recording that made it difficult to hear, so I recommend re-recording the audio using an external microphone to ensure high sound quality.

In general, criticism is judgmental and focused on finding fault, while critique is descriptive and balanced. Here are some more differences:

Here’s a good example of criticism of New Car Buying vs Leasing, Part 1. I use the video to teach cash flow diagrams in my Engineering Business Practices class, and do a lot of mathematics that most people don’t understand. I think maybe the math offends a lot of people, because they write things like this:

On the other hand, these are good critiques of New Car Buying vs. Leasing, Part 4.

My guess is that the people who make it all the way to Part 4 don’t mind the math. They probably appreciate it. But my point isn’t that they like the videos better. My point is that they’re better at providing critique of it. Notice that the comments for Part 4 include constructive suggestions for improving the series?

Critique is for artists, not engineers?

In Is Engineering an Art or Science?, I wrote about the importance of critique in engineering design, and the oversight in typical engineering classroom that fail to teach it. That is, engineering is both and art and a science, but we teach it as if it were exclusively a science.

To help correct for this oversight, I ask my students to analyze movie clips and identify the elements of critique vs criticism, and open-minded curiosity vs defensiveness. For example, watch this clip from the movie Crazy, Stupid Love and see if you can identify the lines that represent good critique, and those that are more characteristic of criticism:

In Crazy, Stupid, Love Ryan Gosling’s character (right) is offering a mix of critique and criticism to Steve Carell’s character. Gosling comes from a position of expertise, is selflessly helping Carell, and is specific (“You can never wear New Balance sneakers, ever”), which is all characteristic of good critique. However, Gosling is also destructive (explaining what NOT to do).

When Offering Critique

Both criticism and critique are forms of feedback, but it should be obvious that critique provides a better learning environment. When offering critique:

• Make it all about the artist’s or author’s goals, from their perspective. One way to do that is to make “You…” or “The work…” the object of your sentences, rather than using the first-person “I” or talking about your own experiences. Keep the focus of your language on the object of your critique.

• Stay within your area of expertise. You might think you don’t have expertise, but remember that you are the expert on your experience as a reader. One way to provide constructive feedback to an author is to describe your experience of being a reader, including the thoughts you had while reading, the feelings you experienced, and whatever you did. Simply by describing your reactions, you can provide the author a better sense of their audience — i.e., the “experience of the reader” — in a way that allows them to improve their writing.

• Understand that improvement is a process that requires iteration between design, experience, feedback, and adjustment. Your critique is helpful if it helps the author make progress (not seek perfection).

When Receiving Critique (Criticism)

Critique is much easier to receive than criticism. Although both can be challenging, criticism feels terrible and most people become defensive. Nontheless, your ideas can still benefit from criticism when you:

• Have an open mind

• Pause when feeling the urge to become defensive, or counterattack

• Instead of blaming or making excuses, try saying “I don’t know.”

• Ask clarifying questions

Just as there is an art to giving criticism, there is an art to receiving it. In his blog, Dan Rockwell gives tips on how to receive feedback like a leader.

Receive feedback with openness, not defensiveness.

To benefit from feedback, he suggests asking:

1. Tell me more?

2. Help me understand what you’re saying.

3. What makes you say that?

In my own conversations, I often say something like “What about the work is (stupid, sucks, confusing)?” I learned that from a book called When I Say “No” I Feel Guilty (Smith 1975).

For example, in the Crazy, Stupid Love clip above, Steve Carell’s character exhibits several responses that are good ways to make both critique and criticism useless, including defensive rationalization (“These offer a lot of support…”) and counter-attacking the critic (“Are you insane? You could’ve hit somebody!”) Maybe this is why Gosling slaps him — to break down Carell’s ego to the point where Carell will accept feedback.

In this clip from The Devil Wears Prada, Meryl Streep’s character provides feedback that includes elements of both criticism and critique. Anne Hathaway’s character seems unable to accept Streep’s feedback… until she drops her defensive rationalizations and the sense of entitlement implied by recitation of her academic and professional accomplishments, and begins to receive Streep’s criticism in a constructive way that acknowledges how much she still has to learn.

One way to benefit from both criticism and critique is to keep a mindset of personal growth. Rather than becoming defensive or confuse feedback for something that defines who you are, accept the feedback as an opportunity for you to grow.

Structuring Critique

Many of us without experience in the creative or culinary arts are new to the practice of providing critique. To help structure critique, experiment with a reliable outline, such as this:

I. Summarize the author’s work from the authors point of view. In the Summary, it is essential to empathize with the author to understand the purpose of their work as they might understand it themselves. Only after the author is certain that the critic understands will they cease the struggle to be understood by explaining, rebutting, or seeking to debate the critic.

II. Critique the work.

• Place the work in context. What makes it original in comparison to related works?

• Diagram (or “map) the logic. Where there are conclusions or arguments, are they supported by the evidence presented?

• Evaluate the importance of the work. Are the principal points of the argument important? To whom?

• Assess the quality of presentation. Is the writing clear, concise and comprehensible?

III. Make actionable recommendations, which could mean suggesting revisions, additional sources or related works, or reframing the work (i.e., looking at it from a different perspective).