#429 How Leaders Conduct Constructive Criticism Conversations – A Guide by Niels Brabandt
How Leaders Conduct Constructive Criticism Conversations – A Guide by Niels Brabandt
Written by Niels Brabandt, International Leadership Expert and Organisational Consultant
Leaders must sometimes express criticism.
While communication should never consist solely of silence or constant criticism, the necessity of criticism conversations is evident. Yet, many of these conversations are conducted poorly – often lacking structure, fairness, or professionalism. Niels Brabandt, a recognised authority on leadership and communication, explains why this happens and how to improve it.
All too frequently, leaders resort to monologues, condescending lectures or even punishments without evidence. These failures now find public exposure via employer review platforms, damaging both leadership credibility and organisational reputation. According to Niels Brabandt, creating a professional and effective culture of criticism is not optional – it is essential for modern leadership.
Criticism: Necessary and Two-Sided
Criticism is often expected — and deserved — from people in positions of leadership. Consider the case of a politician who lost a laptop, only for it to be returned honestly by a homeless person. The "reward" was a copy of the politician's book. That politician is now the Chancellor of Germany and has recently been criticised for insensitive remarks about diversity. The learning curve remains questionable.
In sports, a former footballer claimed that young people today lack a strong work ethic, suggesting that many aspire to become influencers instead. Niels Brabandt questions whether professional athletes are genuinely in a position to judge the realities of hard work in everyday life. Similarly, in the workplace, some managers deliver "work ethic" lectures rooted in their own life as single, child-free individuals – disregarding the differing contexts of others. When staff respond critically, such leaders often reject it outright.
Brabandt highlights: These leadership blind spots call for action – not arrogance.
Structuring a Criticism Conversation: Niels Brabandt’s approach
A criticism conversation differs fundamentally from a feedback conversation. According to Niels Brabandt, there is no place for small talk or light-hearted openings in these meetings. A criticism conversation is only warranted once previous feedback conversations have failed. Starting with casual chit-chat could create a misleading tone, downplaying the seriousness of the issue.
Brabandt recommends the following structure:
Get straight to the point.
Present the criticism with clear, documented evidence.
Accept that the burden of proof lies with the leader.
Apply the presumption of innocence.
Offer the other party a full opportunity to respond, explain, or remain silent.
Allow them to bring third-party support if desired.
Niels Brabandt advocates for a three-step mediation approach when disagreements arise. If a consensus is reached, the agreed-upon next steps must be summarised – ideally by the employee – to ensure a shared understanding. If no agreement is reached, the leader issues a formal instruction and explains the consequences of continued behaviour. This moment includes a forward-looking statement about future expectations.
The employee always has the right to request a written summary of the findings and conclusions. No matter the outcome, the following steps must be crystal clear. Delaying action or hoping the problem resolves itself is not leadership – it is avoidance, and it undermines a leader's social legitimacy, warns Brabandt.
From Theory to Practice: Executing Effective Criticism
Too often, criticism is delivered informally – in passing, or under unclear circumstances. Niels Brabandt points out that employees often do not even realise they've been subjected to a formal criticism conversation. Every employee has a right to be informed about their mistakes – and just as importantly, a right to improve.
Leadership development must include learning how to conduct these conversations properly – a skillset many leaders have never been trained in. As Brabandt explains, many leaders act instinctively or emotionally, which jeopardises fairness.
Criticism conversations must be evaluated for quality. Brabandt strongly encourages:
Equal rights and responsibilities for leaders and team members in all conversations
Constructive feedback for leaders, not just staff
Regular quality assurance of criticism conversations – not as punishment, but as a tool for leadership development
A professional, honest, and well-structured culture of criticism, as advocated by Niels Brabandt, fosters an environment that encourages feedback from both sides. This culture empowers employees while strengthening leadership performance and organisational growth.
Final Thoughts by Niels Brabandt:
Criticism is not an attack – it is a leadership tool. Authentic leadership is demonstrated in how criticism is given and received. With professionalism, fairness, and courage, criticism conversations become the cornerstone of continuous improvement – not just in theory, but in day-to-day reality.
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More on this topic in this week's podcast: Videocast / Apple Podcasts / Spotify
For the videocast’s and podcast’s transcript, read below this article.
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Niels Brabandt is an expert in sustainable leadership with more than 20 years of experience in practice and science.
Niels Brabandt: Professional Training, Speaking, Coaching, Consulting, Mentoring, Project & Interim Management. Event host, MC, moderator.
Podcast Transcript
Niels Brabandt
Sometimes things go wrong and then leaders need to give critique. The main issue is that often in organization, people say, my leader isn't very good at doing that. Either you hear nothing at all for a long time or publicly, in front of the whole group, in front of absolutely anyone, you get torn apart brutally. And then people say, well, you can't be weak, you can't be soft, don't be so sensitive. Is something that some people say, which is of course utterly unacceptable. As a leader, we have to talk about how to give critique properly and professionally. So when we talk about how to give critique, let's face it, something will go wrong sooner or later.
Might be minor things, someone is a bit late, or might be major things, someone is just working too slow constantly, or the quality they produce is simply not good enough. And of course you then have to talk to them. And these levels of critique is something that many people wish to have in other areas as well. Give you very simple area here, politics. And I give you an example which you probably think I made up, but you can still Google it. And no, it's not made up. Let's assume you're a politician and you lose a laptop.
That's of course bad because often there are government secrets on there and we have that. However, a homeless person was honest enough to give back that laptop. And now of course, one question arises.
What is the politician going to do? And that politician, by the way, this happened in Germany, where else? That politician decided to send that homeless person their book.
I'm not making this up. By the way, this is Friedrich Mats, who's now chancellor in Germany, who, and I think his book was even called we have to Damn More Capitalism. That's of course something a homeless person immediately loves to read. And you wonder why has this person no self reflection? Often even worse, by the way, it's in sports. We had the German football professional who originally Polish, he still plays in Poland, but he's played a lot in Cologne and Munich. Lukas Podolski also has been a national player for a while, for quite a while actually.
And he also has a couple of enterprises which he runs, which many sports people do when they get a bit older and can't, of course, can't play forever. And he says no young person wants to work hard anymore. They all want to be influencers. And let's face it, when it comes to working hard, maybe football players, I know that you have to train hard and everything. However, the main reason why you are still there is genetics. You either have it or you don't. Plus of course hard training, but is hard football training.
Those 90 something minutes a day, is that really hard work compared to people working in steel production? In my opinion it's not. So when you have low self reflection, it gets worse from there. However, we also have this in the workspace, not only with the employee side, but also with the employer side. I give you two examples here. One employee in a talk said to their leader, well, when you think I don't do my work properly, because that was the point of critique, they heard that they don't work fast enough, others are able to solve the amount of tickets and they weren't. They were constantly behind with work.
And the suggestion of that employee was, you can hire an assistant, you give me an assistant and I onboard that assistant doing my work and then everything will get better from there. What a real world practice solution, isn't it? So when people say I can't keep up with the work I'm actually expected to do, so why don't you hire someone that you put below me so I can call myself a leader that actually does my work for me and I get paid extra probably for leadership work. And by the way, we have even worse examples on the employer side with a courier service where it's crucial that people are on time and deliver things in a speedy way. One courier was always too late. And of course people say, you have to talk with that person because other people in that team were really annoyed because complaints were piling up, things were going late, others had to catch up for that person's work. And suddenly the leader said, yeah, I solved it.
And then people wondered, how did you solve it? And the leader said, I told that person, every time you're on time, you get €5 bonus, €5 extra for being on time. And the others who were always on time get nothing. What an amazing solution, isn't it? So surprisingly, and that really surprised me, that courier still wasn't on time. And second, of course other people said, I'm going to be late as well because I want to have that five euro bonus. So could you please give me a bonus as well?
So, so we have issues on leaders and employee side. It is not a one sided game, it's not a one way street here. So when we talk about how to deliver critique, many people say, okay, when you deliver critique, it's pretty easy. You have an easy start, you do a bit of small talk and then you tell the person how much you appreciate them and how much you love that they work for this company. No, that's not what you do. There's a very simple reason. Because first you're talking about a feedback talk.
A feedback talk works completely different. A critique talk is the result of multiple feedback talks didn't have the result you expected them to have. So you already talked about this. But it never worked the way it should. It never had the results that you expected it to have. So now you go to critique. And by the way, when you start with small talk, it can easily go wrong.
Let's just say you want to give a warning letter to someone and you say, hey, how you doing? And they say, oh yeah, really great.
Such an amazing week. We just purchased a house. My honey and I, also amazing. I'm actually in the best mood in the world. So why are we talking? You said, yeah, well, warning letter time, right? And it's not going well from there.
The opening always is. You go straight into the topic. There's a very simple rule. There's only one way to break the news. Break it. One way to break any kind of news. Break them.
So you have to bring them to, you really have to sit down and say, look, we had multiple complaints about you being late. And very important here is the burden of proof is always with you. In due course of the talk, you have to deliver the proof. And here's a very important point because maybe some people know that when someone comes up and says, yeah, you know, we have this one person always late, could you please talk with them? And by the way, never mention my name. It's really important, but never mention my name. And very important here, when you have something which is severe.
So for example sexual harassment, the victims have the right to stay anonymous. That is legally guaranteed. But anything else, let's say someone is late or their work isn't of the quality you expect them to do either. It is important and people are willing to put their name forward. And if they are not willing to put their name forward, then it is not that important because otherwise you are establishing a culture of complaints. Every week someone will turn up and say, you Look, I have 17 complaints. These are the people, these are my complaints.
Don't mention my name, but get it solved right by next week. Thank you, bye. And that of course can't be what you want to have in your organization. It is crucially important that first you open getting straight into the topic. And from there, when you have multiple topics, there's the so called primacy, primacy recency effect. Meaning people remember the most the opening of the talk and how it Ended. And when you look at that kind of structure, it works the way that you start with an easy topic where you think, oh, we're going to agree on that pretty quickly.
And you end with an easy topic, easy in inverted commas here. So you have, you, you need to have a good opening of the main topics and a good closing. When you say I only have difficult topics, then there is no trick. Then you have. Then you simply have to go through it and it's probably going to be very hard. However, when you have the opportunity with multiple topics, be sure that you always put them in the order of easy, difficult, easy, difficult, easy, difficult. Ending on easy.
Very important, because otherwise people will feel that the whole talk was very stiff, very tough, and not very pleasant. And you do not want them to have that. Of course. And now very important is as soon as you say yes, you're late. And you of course hope that the other person says, yeah, I'm sorry. And the reason is. And then you have a reasonable talk.
But you will have people where you say, look, we had multiple complaints by this, this, this person. You're always late and the whole team has to wait at the machine because they cannot work with three people. There has to be four. So they're all standing there and have to work longer due to you. Could you please be on time? What do you think very important here, by the way? Number one, anyone has the right to be heard.
When you accuse someone of something and you come to a conclusion without hearing them, you're going against basic democratic legal principles. Anyone has the right to be heard. Anyone has the right to get to know what they're accused of. And anyone has the right to see the evidence. And when you do it any differently, your principal is worth nothing. These are rights, human rights that people have access to no matter where they are. When you say, oh, yeah, in my organization, we're a bit more straightforward leaders, there's something you obey.
That's not culture. That is straightforward offense against the law. And by the way, if that ever goes to court, good luck. From there, you need to go to that courtroom with a big, big wallet. So as soon as you ask someone, what do you say? Because asking is always better than making statements. You will have some people making a reasonable approach to find a solution, but you will have people who say, can't be.
I'm never late. No, it's just wrong. And now we talk about the three bridges. Three bridges we are going to build to continue with the flow of the whole discussion. Bridge number one, in that case, for example, will be that you say, look, we actually have the evidence here. I just printed out your whole timestamping and it always shows you always between 3 minutes and 14 minutes late. And of course some people will use that bridge and then you have reasonable talk.
Some people will say, can't be, must be wrong with the machine, must be wrong. Total nonsense, no. And then of course you have to say, okay, we can check the machine. This has effort and it has consequences. When we find out that the machine is okay because it has been officially calibrated by a neutral person, then we have to immediately go to the conclusion. Do you actually want that? So of course we're building another bridge here.
So we built the first bridge, actually asking, what do you think? Second bridge, do you want to go down this route? And when and when someone really says, yeah, yeah, absolutely, I'm never late, I am never late. Last bridge we built say, okay, look, I will get back to your team, the people you work with, and say everything they say is wrong. And we have to check with the machine when this turns out to be wrong. There might be the situation that your position is no longer tenable. It's not a viable solution for us to, to keep you here.
Are you sure that you want to stick with that story? And then usually people stick to what the facts are.
However, we always build three bridges. When people have no interest in any bridge, after three bridges, you come to the conclusion and say, okay, we invited you for a chat. You really do not want to work with us. You simply want to stand your ground and say, I stick with the clearly proven wrong side on the matter. Here are the conclusions. Because there always needs to be a closure. And of course the closure you wish to happen is that you have a reasonable chat, people agree with you, and everything gets better from there.
However, there will be people who will not go down this road. And the closure when everything is friendly is always that you ask the other person, hey, just that we are both on the same page, can you please just tell me what did we agree on right now? And then the person will say, yeah, I'm taking an earlier bus and I will get up earlier and it will be better from here because I understand that the team can't wait for me, etc, etc. But you only, you only ask the other side, by the way, you ask the other side to prevent the following situation. Because when you make the conclusion, what could happen is that two or three weeks later you see nothing has changed and you say, hey, we talked about this. And they will say, really? No, I don't think.
I don't think we had that agreement. No, can't remember. Really? No, totally not so. So you see that when they make the conclusion and they summarize everything, they of course have a social obligation to follow up with that. And of course, usually you have a protocol that you sent with them, an email or anything that people know. This is now binding, legally binding as well.
However, when the whole talk is not friendly, you do not sit down and say, look, after you didn't cooperate in the slightest, here are the consequences. Could you please summarize the consequences? They will not do that. This moment is the point where you simply say, look, you didn't cooperate. You here we have to say, these are the consequences. You have to face the consequences. Everything else is going to you in writing.
And from now on you either change your behavior or further action will be taken. That is always the moment you do not want to have, but it will happen sooner or later. When you now say, sounds good, but we simply don't have a culture for critique talks in my organization.
It's just not there. In our organization, you hear nothing for a long time. No one's there. No leader shows up and suddenly someone turns up and you get torn apart in front of everyone. Or someone pulls you out of the group and say, mate, can you come to my office? Because things didn't go well, we really need to have a chat.
Come on, come on. And then anyone knows something's going wrong from there. That, of course, is unacceptable behavior from the leadership side. And often the unacceptable behavior is coming from the leadership side. So how to implement this in your organization? Number one is you need to get people into awareness. You need to create an awareness that people see.
It is crucially important to do critique talks. Feedback is very good and very important. But when you have 1 feedback, 2 feedback, 3 feedbacks and no behavior changes, there needs to be a critique talk. You do not have to invite HR or anyone else or the legal department in the beginning. However, when now people say, what about firing people? Firing people is not a critique talk. That's an exit interview.
Exit interview or simply a layoff interview. So when people leave, it's a completely different situation. Very important is first you need to have awareness amongst leaders how important this is as an instrument, which of course needs to be documented that people see you did everything within your power to help people to become better people in your organization, better employees for that, to get that awareness, you need professional training. And I can't stress it often enough, no, the 39 pound euro course is not going to make the cut. You need people who have the real world experience. You need people who have the scientific evidence and the qualifications here. And you need people who are methodologically and didactically qualified to bring it across.
You can book me or anyone else, however, that's not the point here. When you talk about training, an online video is something which people put on play and then they put in the background and then they simply keep on working. And also I can just tell you because I had these kind of trainings in two corporations where I worked before coming self employed and in the second corporation I said look, I already had that training, I know how to do this. And they say you're doing the training course again because you will always learn something new. First I thought no I won't. Then I took the class and I learned something new. Very important is that the training is conducted professionally.
When you go by the cheapest vendor, you will have absolutely no positive impact whatsoever. In addition to that however, you also have to implement follow ups. So for example, when you have certain leaders that who do critique talks but nothing changes, then sooner or later you have to look at consequences. Either someone sits down with them and talks them through how to conduct these critique talks or you sit with them in a critique talk and then look what they what are they doing? Well, what are they doing not so well because unfortunately quite often leaders tend to do monologues rather than dialogues. Most critique talks I've seen were simply not very good. Often because people weren't professionally trained.
And often people had no idea how to do it. But even some people who received the training, their training is seven, eight, nine years ago, they didn't get a second one and then they just fell back into their old behavior. It is important that follow up means managers. Leaders need to see that when your leader leadership behavior isn't great, you will face consequences as well. Because critique talks are not a one way street. When you do everything in a way that we just discussed, everything will become better. Your team will become better, the atmosphere will become better, your organization will be one and also you will change things for the better, sustainably.
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