Four kinds of people

If you are trying to build something, to share something, or really just doing anything at all for the world… there are four kinds of people you’ll meet on your journey:

• Those who will support you no matter what, trusting your judgement even when things get tough.
• Those who support you, but worry about certain things you’re doing, and try to help point those issues out to you.
• Those who don’t support you, but still offer constructive criticism worth thinking about, even if isn’t easy to hear.
• Those who don’t support you, and care only about expressing their frustration or disapproval of your work.

These four kinds of people are not really four kinds of people, of course. It’s a continuum rather than four neatly defined buckets.

Still… having a rough sense of what your relationship is with each person who interacts with you and your work can be a very powerful way to cut through the noise and get to the essential feedback that helps you improve.

Your most loyal supporters are there for emotional support, and as a reminder that someone out there really does love what you do. They are not the best to ask for critical feedback though — because they are either too friendly to share their concerns with you, or they’re totally bought into whatever it is you’re doing and may have the same blindspots as you do.

Those who support you but have concerns are the people you can learn the most from. You don’t need to wonder about their motives, and you can’t assume they just “don’t get your work” or “don’t like your work”.

These folks are what is needed to go from a four star rating to a five star rating, or bring a project from “good” to “great”. You will never be able to make everyone perfectly happy, but understanding the concerns of those who support your work already is a great way to broaden your horizons.

Those who don’t support you but offer helpful criticism are worth listening to, too. From these folks, you can figure out how to clarify your message about what you’re trying to do with your work.

You can also identify the bits and pieces of critical feedback that might have been in the blindspots of you and your supporters, and work to improve on those points as long as it doesn’t conflict with your overall vision.

As long as you don’t put energy into trying to convince a non-supporting but helpful critic to change their point of view, you can learn a lot from them.

Those who don’t support your work and only attack it carelessly, are people you can freely ignore. Easier said than done, but with practice it gets easier to say “sorry, this thing of mine isn’t meant for you” or to not respond at all. These people aren’t worth your time anyway, it’s far better to spend your energy on others who will benefit more from what you do.

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These aren’t static roles where a person in one category will always be in that category forever, and they can shift quite a bit from project to project — even if the group of people you’re interacting with remains the same. But if you are looking for a quick filtering mechanism to process feedback in any specific situation, this one has worked pretty well for me!