Accounting
The power of public criticism
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Management experts have long advised firm leaders to praise their people publicly and reprimand them privately. However, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, like Bridgewater founder Ray Dalio, advocates criticism in public.
As Huang describes in his new book
From where I sit, public criticism can be constructive if the goal is to create a better firm and better client experience. Again, to make public criticism work for you, the first thing to do is normalize the feedback. Let’s face it: at most firms, people are not comfortable receiving constructive criticism about themselves or their colleagues — and that’s a problem. Because if you can get to the point that public criticism can be normalized at your firm, then your team can learn from each other’s mistakes. But if you keep all criticism private, no one can learn from it except the person being criticized — and many others will likely make the same mistake.
Instead, if you say: “Hey, we are going to have public criticism going forward. Not of the person, but potentially of the behavior or action.” That may make your people uncomfortable at first, but in the long run, public criticism will significantly accelerate learning at the firm level when you have shared mistakes.
Culture of accountability
In addition to normalizing feedback and accelerating learning through shared mistakes, public criticism is an excellent way to build a culture of accountability. An accountability culture is one in which everyone takes ownership of the things they do and say. Again, as a leader you must reinforce that the team is not going to be insulting each other. Instead, you’re going to be speaking openly and removing ambiguity by making expectations incredibly clear. And if there’s a problem, or if people are falling short, reaffirm that it’s OK to have these conversations in public. Because if you relegate all of your firm’s criticism to a private office, you’re impeding your team’s ability to learn and get better. And you’re making people fearful of open, unvarnished feedback.
As Nelson Mandela said, “I never lose. I either win or learn.”
As I’ve found throughout my business (and parenting) career, growth only happens when you are willing to change and do something different than before. And the only way you will do that is if people are pointing out the things that need to be done differently. Winning is nice, but learning is more valuable.
The right way to criticize
I know some of you reading this article are ready to fire off comments about how public criticism creates a toxic culture. Again, being critical of something is different than insulting someone. By criticizing the right way, you won’t be damaging morale or creating a toxic culture. You need to be clear about what you’re criticizing, which is typically a specific point, with clear feedback about how to improve it.
Again, the purpose of criticizing publicly is to make your firm better. You’re focusing on specific issues that must be fixed; you’re not denigrating someone’s character or threatening their compensation or job security. You’re not doing character assassinations or gaslighting them. Public criticism is not punishment. When engaging in public criticism, make it clear to everyone within earshot: “This is an opportunity for growth that we want you to have, but we don’t want to remove that opportunity for the rest of the firm.”
As I wrote in my article
Real-world example
My team and I were recently in a group meeting with a client. The client said to one of the team members: “Hey, it’s great chatting with you; you’re always great about responding.” And then the client said somewhat jokingly to one of our seniors, “However, I do have a real problem getting hold of you,” while pointing directly at him. The client’s point was that our senior team needed to make themselves more available to clients. That was clearly a public criticism of our seniors and that as a client, she expected a higher degree of communication from senior people on the team. That dialogue was constructive for everyone involved. And we were able to go back and say: “OK, what do we need to adjust here to ensure that our most senior people are available to our best clients?”
Key takeaways
1. Make public criticism a regular part of your company’s culture and operations. Make it normal for people to communicate about things that have gone wrong. It’s not a one-time outburst or public humiliation exercise.
2. Celebrate accelerated learning through shared mistakes.
3. Lean into the culture of accountability.
Public criticism is an opportunity for growth, not a punishment. Once you frame it that way, it completely changes the way people communicate at your firm. Public criticism isn’t about protecting people’s feelings, it’s about delivering better experiences for clients and preventing multiple people from making the same mistakes. Tell anyone receiving public criticism: “We’re not talking about you as a person. We’re talking about an issue at hand. Let’s fix it together.” By the way, this approach works just as well with remote teams and employees as it does in person.
It’s all about “wins and learns” in your regular team meetings. The lesson could be: Here was a mistake that occurred. This was negative feedback we got from a client. This was a mistake we made on a tax return. Here’s how it happened; here’s how we fixed it.” The win was that the client was very appreciative that we acknowledged the mistake and fixed it so quickly. You should feel comfortable discussing these things in public and encouraging your team to do the same.
Put mistakes on the open agenda and review them constructively rather than critically. That will go a long way to making continuous improvement part of your firm’s culture. The Japanese call that “kaizen” —
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