It's Positive to Be Critical

It is perhaps one of the most important traits of a project manager that they are able to listen to and discuss criticism and concern of the ongoing work without taking it personally and to then make a clear judgement on how to deal with it.

This is particularly the case within website project design and development work where project managers have to be responsive to a whole host of criticism that can come from a very wide range of stakeholders in any particular project.

As a project manager that is faced with criticism, firstly make sure that the full reason and detail of the critical analysis has been received and discussed. This may be hard to do because it's human nature for someone to want to cut short any comments that aren't positive. Doing so, however, allows the reasons behind the verdict to be understood and that can only help to come up with a satisfactory solution.

After the listening has been done, the next trap to avoid is of falling into a defensive position. This is often not the best way to come up with a sound and reasonable judgment on the actions to be taken from the feedback. Look at it from the customer point of view and through the user's eyes to see if there really is merit in what is being said.

Perhaps the hardest part of the job above and beyond the stages detailed above is to feedback to the critic that their comments, while justified, may be out of scope of the project or that it is not recommended in the expert opinion of the supplier. Making this retort aggressive and then not stating the reasons is a great way to start an argument and to embed negative feeling into the relationship - so avoid this approach at all costs.

Once project managers of all walks of life get into the habit of using this kind of approach there will be much less hostility in receiving feedback and, indeed, it may well be encouraged and welcomed as it is with us.