How to provide negative feedback

Ok, let me get right to it. When providing negative feedback to someone there is two things you need to do:

Be Specific — Don’t just say this is horrible or bad; say exactly what is wrong. Let’s say you asked someone to create a survey, and it wasn’t done well. The wrong response is to say this is horrible. Instead, you should point to question six, and say, don’t ask more than one question at a time. Then point to question two and say, that is a leading question. You see, when you provide general negative feedback, it presents the person who is getting the feedback with a sense of hopelessness(well unless it is your opponent, in which case feel free to give general negative feedback); they have no idea what is wrong with their work. They might even think there is something wrong with them. I remember when I was learning to play pool; the majority of my shots didn’t go in. There was this guy one day who said to me that I rapidly changed the speed of my pool stick when hitting the ball and I should try to make it more smooth. Doing a quick mental recap of all the best players I have seen, I realize he was right; they all made the pool stick flow smoothly. In less than five minutes the quality of my game changed. If someone had come to me and said “Your game suck”, the quality of my game wouldn’t improve and his comment wouldn’t have aided me in improving my game.

No Personal Attacks- Don’t call the person lazy,stupid,slow or any other names attacking his person. Doing so will only cause the criticism to be rejected out right.