Leading In The Face of Criticism

How do you react when your pet project is criticized? How about when a project you use and love is criticized? When it's the same criticism you've heard over and over you and are tired of hearing it? That's happened yesterday to the Drupal Views project when a tweet sent out of frustration turned into a swarm of tweets, IRC conversations, and back room talk. For the most part, the situation could have been handled better by everyone involved.

What happened?

Let's just say quick reactions, emotions, and defense mechanisms ruled the day. In the end I don't think anyone was satisfied and I have yet to see anything constructive come to light. There was name calling, anger, people trying to defend themselves and others, and a mess of unproductively.

What We Can Do Better Next Time

This situation could have been handled much better. Instead of acting the way many did with passion, frustration, and emotion the criticism should or could have been molded into actionable tasks and ideas.

Here are a handful of things we can do that can help these situations:

• Don't respond to your emotions. It may be hard to do. Sometimes I will walk away from the situation for hours or even a day before responding to something so I can do so with a clear head.
• Turn the criticism into something constructive. This could be as simple as pointing someone to a place (like the issue queues) and asking them to describe the problem and what they see would be better. If you have more time it could be good to engage the conversation to see what they see.
• Be a diplomat. For some reason the role of attaching and defending soldier comes so naturally. Instead, play the role of diplomat.
• Ignore Them. Sometimes it's better to ignore criticism and move on than let it get to you. If it eats you up that can make you unhappy and can even cause health problems.

Critics Not Going To Stop

One of the responses I heard numers times was that critics need to act different. If we create something with any popularity it will have critics. They will be there no matter what we desire. And, the only people we can change are ourselves. So, asking them to go away or asking them to act differently just isn't going to get them to do it.

People Smarter Than Me

A while back there was a Google Tech Talk called "How Open Source Projects Survive Poisonous People" which touched on this subject. It's done by a couple guys who have lived and learned how to deal with these situations successfully. You can see the video below.

Disclaimer: This post isn't directed at anyone. I've learned a lot of these lessons the hard way and just want to share them in the spirit of community growth.