When you run a company, from time to time, you may think your employees want to run the company their way. Perhaps, it isn’t that the employees want to run the company their way. Perhaps, they just don’t want the company run your way. In other words, they have differing views on how a company should be run and they think your approach needs to be changed.

When you are the leader of the company, that sort of employee feedback can be a very hard pill to swallow. When you are an entrepreneurial leader, creating the workplace for all those people, criticism can be a particularly hard pill to swallow. [Many entrepreneurs express this concern/frustration.]

Whether people want the company run their way or don't want it run your way amounts to a similar thing - criticism of the leader's methods. While for most people the natural reaction is to take offense to criticism, a better approach is to step back and figure out why your people object to your methods.

Whether you like it or not your people are annoyed with you. And their feedback is making that clear to you.

When you annoy people, you don’t make money!

When you don't annoy people, you have a chance to make money!

PS:  This isn't about who's right and who's wrong. It's about differing viewpoints and, depending on how you choose to view them, differing viewpoints are either opportunities to learn or sources of relentless frustration. [Perhaps, remembering "When you annoy people, you don't make money!" will help you make the right choice.]

When that need to criticize visits...

STOP!

THINK - what is about to happen?

I mean - really THINK about WHY you are about to deliver this piece of Criticism.

What gratification are you seeking?

Are your expectations are reasonable?

Are your expectations fair?

Or, are you simply acting out another piece of bad behaviour? Is another bad habit about to illustrate its control over you?

Or, is this need to criticize about how smart you are and how ambitious you are…is it about proving that to others?

Certainly by now you must have learned salty & stinging criticism does not work.

Or, are you incapable of learning such simple lessons?

Are you destined to continue to make the same mistakes over and over and over again?

Is that the extent of your self-control?

As a general rule, people of strong character do not complain about people they truly like. Certainly, people of strong character do not voice repeated complaints about people they like.

A mentor must, at the very least, like the person being mentored. A true mentor-mentee relationship goes far beyond just liking one another. Such relationships are founded on mutual respect and built on shared trust.

So, if someone says they are mentoring a person and in the next breath complains about that person then you know there is no true mentoring relationship. What the person is doing is simply complaining about another person. And, if the person is complaining about an employee then the person is simply criticizing an employee's performance. The situation is not about mentoring…it’s just another boss complaining about another employee....it's nothing special...it's common fare...it's just a display of a destructive bad habit.

When a mentor is mentoring an employee the mentor uses criticism most sparingly, if at all. In addition, the mentor refrains from sharing those criticisms with other people. That would violate the mentor-mentee relationship. A true mentor would not complain about a mentee to others. And a true mentor would use (at the very most) private and gentle criticism in performing the role of mentoring. The essence of mentoring is helping and good mentors know criticism is often destructive.

So, a boss who complains to others about an employee is not able to mentor that employee. The complainer is just a struggling boss. The person lacks, for one reason or another, the ability to constructively inspire and influence the employee to perform in a manner deemed satisfactory. The complaints about the employee are cries for help, whether the complainer knows it or not. That is the essence of the complaints. Needless to say, when bosses fail with employees the employees are caught between rocks and hard places.