Constructive criticism and righteous rebuke

Constructive criticism

In the various roles I have taken on professionally, I have had to pay attention to how to criticize in a way that serves the person hearing the criticism. Constructive criticism is expected in my role as a supervisor.

Two acronyms have become common in management writing.

THINK poster: true, helpful, inspiring, necessary, kindTHINK will help you stay focused and benevolent during your conversation.
Remind yourself to keep your feedback True, Helpful, Inspiring, Necessary and Kind.

SMART is designed for setting goals, but it will also help you to weed out any opinions and unnecessary elements. Stick to the facts and solutions that are Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant, and Timely. [source]

Taking these to heart has helped me be a better manager, and a better person. The rub comes when I try to transfer these skills into my personal life, where people in my life are doing things that harm me, or themselves, or others.

Righteous rebuke

In the course of discussing On Repentance and Repair, by Danya Ruttenberg, the notion of “righteous rebuke” came up. It is one of the principles that are part of the Jewish Days of Awe process.

One should practice “righteous rebuke,” which means that it is a kindness to confront people who have hurt you, so that they may learn how to be better people.

Psalm 141:5

“Let a righteous man strike me—it is a kindness; let him rebuke me—it is oil for my head; let my head not refuse it”

This is hard advice for me to follow. My experience of confronting people about ways that I have been hurt, in the social sphere, has not gone well. If they are oblivious to the harm they are doing, they tend to be oblivious to any need to change. Oblivious, and resistant.

I was not the only person in the book discussion who found that “righteous rebuke” is a big ask. Why should I risk further psychological injury in order to attempt a (low chance of) personal growth in another human? My experience with previous attempts to confront someone with a way they hurt me that they didn’t notice is that they deny that it ever happened, or deny it happened that way.

The denial of the experience I had with a person is a form of gaslighting. That person is saying that I didn’t just misunderstand the situation. Instead, I imagined something that was never said. Or I heard it all wrong. Or I am just too sensitive.

Because this experience reflects a majority of my efforts to stand up for myself on certain issues, I have ceased to attempt to heal the micro-rifts in relationships around me. This year, I am going to look at that and figure out if I can be someone who can offer righteous rebuke. Every time I fail to heal those rifts, I accept that I am less intimately engaged with the person who hurt me.

I am not saying that I am an utter failure at constructive criticism in my social sphere. I am saying that I suffer from microaggressions that I seem to be unable to address in the course of a year. I would prefer to stop holding grudges about these moments, and instead, find ways to show people that they are hurting me, and others like me.

 

 

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