I have lots of experience of that kind of culture, especially choking down the criticism and it is ridiculously painful. The best thing I've ever experienced that helped me work through our general societal hatred of criticism (and it is that widespread, people have real problems understanding that professional criticism is not about them - so often I suck at it myself) was a book I might have mentioned before called 'Mistakes Were Made (But Not By Me)'. It uses handy real life examples to highlight mistakes/bad behaviour/general stubbornness of opinion and explain why the people making these mistakes were so resistant to admitting their mistakes/compromising/hearing valid criticism.
Once you understand why people find criticism so hard, it's possible to create the tools to work around that barrier. Unfortunately, because the problem is so widespread and ingrained into society's mindset, I think one of the first necessary steps is probably having a hard, frank discssion about the necessity of criticism and how the criticism is not about one person. Still, I bet you can make such a difficult discussion really positive and affirming if you frame it right. You're really good at handling things with tact and care when that approach is needed.
One of the best sentiments the book includes is a quote from um, some American politician (I'm going to plead poor memory and UK status here) who is asked how he continues to be friends with another politician who has done something wrong, even though he doesn't support the thing his friend has done wrong. The guys says something to the effect of 'When a friend makes a mistake, the mistake remains a mistake and the friend remains a friend.' which I thought was a really useful tagline for understanding professional seperation and the need for criticism.
I know you're not just looking at 'mistakes' here but at... um, the inability to countenance other ideas and take criticism, but I think this quote is really useful in those situations too. Friends are always friends/people are always people and must be navigated as such even in professional settings. But there must also be some seperation (on both sides of a conversation) from your positions as friends and your identification of any idea you have as a part of your core meaning, otherwise...nothing will get done essentially and the balance of relationships will be so off as to be ineffective/unfair to one party. Does that make sense? It's really tough to find the balance there, where you're caring and supportive enough that you treat human beings as if they're worthwhile people, but also are firm enough to get your own points across and generate discussion that leads to a useful conclusion. Managing is an art, but just from running the joint blog with you I can see you're awesome at it.
And compromise, compromise is just hard general. We all want our ideas to survive and we will stab everyone else's idea bunnies until ours rule the earth. What we struggle to see is if we kill all the other idea bunnies, our ideas are only breeding with each other, which, is not the way to grow healthy new idea bunnies (yes, I'm sticking with that incestuous bunny metaphor until the very end). But with good supportive management people can be encouraged to step back and breath before they get out their stabby sticks.
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Once you understand why people find criticism so hard, it's possible to create the tools to work around that barrier. Unfortunately, because the problem is so widespread and ingrained into society's mindset, I think one of the first necessary steps is probably having a hard, frank discssion about the necessity of criticism and how the criticism is not about one person. Still, I bet you can make such a difficult discussion really positive and affirming if you frame it right. You're really good at handling things with tact and care when that approach is needed.
One of the best sentiments the book includes is a quote from um, some American politician (I'm going to plead poor memory and UK status here) who is asked how he continues to be friends with another politician who has done something wrong, even though he doesn't support the thing his friend has done wrong. The guys says something to the effect of 'When a friend makes a mistake, the mistake remains a mistake and the friend remains a friend.' which I thought was a really useful tagline for understanding professional seperation and the need for criticism.
I know you're not just looking at 'mistakes' here but at... um, the inability to countenance other ideas and take criticism, but I think this quote is really useful in those situations too. Friends are always friends/people are always people and must be navigated as such even in professional settings. But there must also be some seperation (on both sides of a conversation) from your positions as friends and your identification of any idea you have as a part of your core meaning, otherwise...nothing will get done essentially and the balance of relationships will be so off as to be ineffective/unfair to one party. Does that make sense? It's really tough to find the balance there, where you're caring and supportive enough that you treat human beings as if they're worthwhile people, but also are firm enough to get your own points across and generate discussion that leads to a useful conclusion. Managing is an art, but just from running the joint blog with you I can see you're awesome at it.
And compromise, compromise is just hard general. We all want our ideas to survive and we will stab everyone else's idea bunnies until ours rule the earth. What we struggle to see is if we kill all the other idea bunnies, our ideas are only breeding with each other, which, is not the way to grow healthy new idea bunnies (yes, I'm sticking with that incestuous bunny metaphor until the very end). But with good supportive management people can be encouraged to step back and breath before they get out their stabby sticks.