Hi!
After learning a lot about feedback, leadership, criticism, project management and so forth I'd like to share some of these aspects with everyone to help us move forward as a community (and skills which can be applied to basically anything you guys will deal with in the real world). Welcome to "Enjl stop acting like the savior meme" - topic edition.
What you'll learn in this topic:
•How to react to criticism
•How to give proper criticism
•How to be a better leader
The third one might seem out of place next to the other two, but after classes I've taken on project management and leadership and observing the general communication between project leaders/staff and the general userbase of this community I can see that lack of leadership skills are part of what adds to the general hostility and conflict in this community. Keep in mind this is a topic for
everyone and everyone can learn from it.
I was GOING to write all fancy sentences about stuff in this topic, but then I did some quick google searches and... people already did it! Far better than I could have!
How to react to criticism
http://www.skillsyouneed.com/ips/dealin ... icism.html
How to give proper criticism
http://personalexcellence.co/blog/const ... criticism/
How to be a better leader
http://www.forbes.com/sites/mikemyatt/2 ... d-leaders/ (this title might throw you off, but it does a good job at getting traits of a good leader across)
My observations:
General hostility in this community between regular users is usually found when one party sees the other as too dense or immature to accept their feedback. There's a few things where both parties can improve here:
Both parties should...
•
keep it civil. It's easy to get angry at other people for saying something you didn't want to hear, but that doesn't benefit anyone.
•
Respect each other's ideas. Even when you're the more knowledgible person you shouldn't completely neglect the other party's ideas. If both parties are stubborn, nobody will get anywhere. Together you can to accomplish more than if you're trying to force something.
•
Don't ignore one another. It's unlikely for the other party to say something arbitrary. If they're not being clear about their reasoning, try to get to the gist of it. If you understand where they're coming from it's easier to find a solution everyone's happy with. Ignoring them doesn't fix anything.
•
Not be Dr. Obscure. You're not a super secret superhero whose thought processes could potentially disrupt the timespace continuum if you shared them with other people. In fact, not sharing them is bound to lead to misunderstandings sooner or later. Sharing your ideas and thoughts with the other party makes the topic at hand more transparent. By making your thoughts clear, discussions will stop being a puzzle to figure out what the other person is trying to do and you can more easily find a solution that makes everyone happy.
•
Have more patience with the other party and formulate their statements clearer and more nicely. If someone acts immature, it's best to help them improve rather than shun them. If you don't want to potentially spiral into a mentoring session or don't have anything meaningful to say, keep it to yourself. If your approach doesn't work out, revisit it and try a different one. Different kinds of people need different kinds of wording in the criticism they get.
You might've noticed that the big word looming over this entire thread is
cooperation, which is something that I've observed is lacking in this community and would greatly help in making the atmosphere nicer.
Even in community projects one thing I've noticed is that there barely is any communication. It's usually like "yeah take a level and we'll put it in". Why not have discord meetups together where you share your progress and ask for ideas and feedback from the others?
It feels like everyone's trying to avoid each other which leads to small cliques that hate on the beliefs and actions of other cliques. No-one ever thinks about talking to people from another clique and giving them some feedback and clearing up misunderstandings.
This community has the
potential to be a friendly environment, we just need to become less childish.
/rant
That said, please point out where I'm wrong and give me ALL the feedback you have. Oh, and Staff, please take a look at
"How to be a better leader" and see if there isn't anything you can do to resolve conflicts between you and the community. Points like 4, 6 and 8 are something a lot of people seem to have observed over the past months and I believe there are either some ways to improve or some misunderstandings at hand that should be cleared up.