reprimandNobody likes to be reprimanded. It’s actually like, almost demeaning, in so many ways. You do a job, you do a task. Your ex, your wife, your girlfriend, your husband comes home, and the first thing they do is to criticize you. They tell you what a shitty job you’ve done, or how you didn’t do something right. You’re being reprimanded.

Being reprimanded is a terrible thing. Remember as a kid when your parents would reprimand you, and how it felt? What it felt like to sit there and have the wrath of mom or dad all over you? It’s not fun. As a matter of fact, it’s something that every person cringes at and recoils inwards at when someone’s reprimanded. They don’t even hear what the other person is saying.

Think about when you’ve been reprimanded. Do you even hear the person? Do you even listen to what they’re saying? The second they criticize you and they come at you with all that energy, are you even hearing a thing they’re saying? Do you hear any of it? The answer is no.

You don’t hear a thing. They might be saying a lot of valid things, things that actually can make you a better partner, better coworker, better worker, whatever it might be. But you’re not hearing it because they attack you. And when someone is being attacked they recoil inward, and all they want to do is come out fighting.

Your mind goes blank. You can’t think, you can’t concentrate, you can’t do anything. So let’s say you’re in the position, and you have an employee or your partner sucks at something they did. Let’s just put it exactly the way it is. And you have to go about critiquing them, or reprimanding them. Or yelling at them because you’re pissed off.

How do you get somebody’s attention? The way you get somebody’s attention is to come at them with love and kindness. Everything is about love and kindness. You get more with honey than you do with vinegar. So if somebody really didn’t do the job that you wanted to, let’s take a work example. Let’s say you’re supposed to do this program, and the program’s all wrong, and they did some of it right but a lot of it wrong, and now you’ve got to go get it done again, and you’re going to hear it from your superiors. And then you get angry, and you yell.

Instead of doing that, you need to look at them and say, hey. Let’s talk about the job you just did. You did a couple things really well on this job. I love the design image that you did. I love the way the X, Y, and Z flows. I love the fact that you took the extra time to do the contact form right. And do that, a little added touch. But you skipped a few things that aren’t going to work. You see, you didn’t do this, and we need this so the client sees it. You didn’t do this because the company needs to collect this data, and it should be done this way.

So you see, what happens here is that you’re talking to them with sugar first. You’re critiquing but not criticizing them. You’re getting your point across without reprimanding them. No matter how angry you are, and they could fuck up immensely, you’re not attacking somebody at first. Because don’t forget, the minute you attack somebody, you’re never going to get anywhere you want, ever. It doesn’t work that way. So think about it. The next time you want to get something your way, you got to go and you got to massage a little bit. You have to show a little bit of kindness. That’s how things are going to work out better for you.