4 ms·
We're talking about cynicism and not criticism, correct? In my experience, cynicism is unproductive at best and anti-productive at worst. Criticism, of course,
by madrox 4y ago
We're talking about cynicism and not criticism, correct? In my experience, cynicism is unproductive at best and anti-productive at worst. Criticism, of course, is valuable and healthy.
Cynicism is a good and healthy thing to share with colleagues over a beer, but when you're on the clock will kill morale. Arguably dumping loads of money on a vaporware moonshot is also a morale killer, but sniping at it in meetings helps no one.
- hobs 4y agoExcessive cynicism in the face of actual positive change is bad, however when you have no power to change something, you resort to cynicism. If your employees feel no power to express themselves over your bad decisions, you've built a truly toxic system.
- projectazorian 4y agoThe tone comes from the top. If criticizing the CEO’s strategy is prohibited as “cynicism,” then lower level leaders throughout the company will take that as license to prohibit criticism of their own ideas. And often that type of criticism is far more productive.
- Aeolun 4y agoIf people are cynical in the face of positive change then that’s only because they have experience with previous examples of ‘positive change’ that turned out to not be positive after all.
- projectazorian 4y agoIt’s easy for bad leaders to redefine legitimate criticism as cynicism. When I worked for a company with a similar culture I saw this happen all the time.