How Criticizing With Care Makes Leaders More Persuasive

Forbes

a day ago

How can leaders ensure that when they criticize other people, their criticism leads to change rather than defensiveness and resistance? Research shows an answer: pairing criticism with care.
Leaders criticizing with care avoids defensiveness and backlash to open hearts and minds.
Generally speaking, criticizing people for the harm they do to others is a challenging, although quite common, responsibility for all types of leaders. For example, team leaders might need to criticize team members for unfair treatment of their colleagues. Or, executives might feel they should criticize groups of people while speaking out on sociopolitical topics. Apple's CEO Tim Cook criticized conservatives for legislation that allowed businesses to refuse serving customers for religious reasons, and Whole Foods's CEO John Mackey criticized liberals for endorsing healthcare policies that he saw as too aggressively expanding government control and causing deficits.
But these criticisms may fail to persuade the people being criticized. How can leaders conduct honest conversations without inspiring defensiveness, denial, or backlash? That is an essential managerial skill.
As Troy Hiduke Campbell, chief scientist from On Your Feet, put it to me in an interview: 'The problem that research has pointed out is that people who are criticized become defensive and resist seeing any error in their behavior. And that defensiveness stops criticism from changing hearts, minds, or behavior. Instead, criticism often leads to costs for leaders.'
In the worst case scenario, the sting of criticism leads a criticized party to not only resist, but to retaliate. When a CEO criticizes a group, it can lead to backlash, like consumers who disagree with their stance boycotting the CEO's company. For example, liberals boycotted Whole Foods after John Mackey's comments, and Apple was put under scrutiny by a conservative group for operating in countries with human rights issues in response to Tim Cook's comments. In fact, a 2019 Aflac survey of over 1,600 American adults found that 53% reported halting use of company products because of disliking a company's stance on an issue.
Backlash can have financial consequences: when Starbucks' leadership was met with activist outrage as a result of its perceived support for Israel during the Gaza conflict, its sales dropped by 11% across the globe and its share price plummeted, losing the company around $11-12 billion in market value. The backlash ultimately led then-CEO Laxman Narasinham to be replaced.
And this isn't isolated: Edelman's 2023 Trust Barometer involving 32,000 respondents from 28 countries found that 63% of consumers globally will buy or boycott a brand based on its stance on societal issues — highlighting how missteps in tone or empathy can have lasting reputational consequences.
Showing just how sensitive people are to criticism, even subtle, merely implied criticism can backfire. As Professor Nathan Warren from BI Norwegian Business School said to me in an interview, 'We've found in research that anti-prejudice campaigns that focus exclusively on harm to a single group can be counterproductive. Audiences can interpret the message as implying that only one group deserves concern, and that others are morally blameworthy, leading to defensiveness and denial.'
This phenomenon can help explain why initiatives such as Starbucks' #RaceTogether campaign backfired. The 2015 campaign frequently appeared to people like it was confrontational or accusing customers of wrongdoing. This perception existed even though Starbucks' then-CEO Howard Schulz specifically stated in a memo to employees that they 'didn't want to point fingers or place blame' with the campaign. The campaign was mocked on social media and even in a Saturday Night Live sketch.
Of course, sometimes leaders don't care if their criticism is heard and leads to change; instead, they criticize because they want publicity or to show solidarity with the people who are harmed. But when criticism is aimed at changing the behavior of the people causing harm, from the conference room, to the board room, to the press room, leaders face the challenge of criticizing effectively — and there are few established strategies for this.
So what can be done? Recent research I co-authored in the Journal of Business Ethics with Troy Hiduke Campbell, Professor Nathan Warren, Professor Steven Shepherd from Oklahoma State University, and Professor Katie Mercurio of California State University, Chico, introduces an effective technique for persuading people to change their minds called 'dual concern.'
Dual concern combines criticism with an honest expression of concern about the criticized group's welfare. Here's an example: instead of a simple criticism like 'Managers are being unfair to their employees. They sometimes ignore feedback from their team and fail to show appreciation. This needs to change,' a dual concern criticism might say the exact same criticism, but also highlight the harms that managers experience, adding, 'But employees can also be unfair to their managers. They sometimes assume the worst about their decisions and complain behind their backs. This also needs to change.' Another technique is to highlight harm from a third party, by saying something like 'But managers are sometimes treated unfairly by executives. They are given shifting priorities without clear guidance and pressured to deliver results without the necessary resources.'
These additions acknowledge the harm that those accused of causing harm face as well. Regardless of the particular way it's expressed, dual concern messages get people to agree more with criticisms of their group, admitting that they need to change their ways.
In the context of anti-prejudice campaigns, dual concern is captured by this message from the #StandUpToJewishHate campaign. First pointing out that Jewish hate was on the rise in the U.S., the campaign then pointed out that Black hate, Muslim hate, and Asian hate were also rising - and called on everyone to combat hate against all of these groups as well as others.
As real-world examples illustrate, business leaders can express dual concern to avoid defensiveness even when their criticism of a group is not explicit. An example is how Serena Williams described her new venture capital firm: 'Seventy-eight percent of our portfolio happens to be companies started by women and people of color, because that's who we are. On the other hand, my husband is white, and it's important to me to be inclusive of everyone.' Research on dual concern suggests that if Serena Williams had stopped after the first sentence, men and white individuals might have inferred that she does not care about their outcomes, but the second sentence is likely to stop these groups from inadvertently feeling alienated.
Back in 2008, research led by Professor Matthew Hornsey from the University of Queensland echoed the need to criticize with care. These researchers found in a series of experiments that when critics paired their criticism with sincere comments about a criticized group's valuable qualities, or acknowledged that their own group had similar problems, the criticized group perceived the criticism as more constructive and were more convinced by it.
When leaders use dual concern criticisms, the criticized people feel more cared for by the critic, which reduces defensiveness and increases persuasion. As Professor Mercurio described to me in an interview: 'Dual concern works not because it softens the truth, but because it restores the relationship. You can disagree with someone's actions while affirming concern about their welfare.'
Focusing on concern matters as companies are called upon to prioritize social impact. A 2022 poll of over 5,700 American adults from Gallup and Bentley University found that 88% said that companies should make the world a better place, but only 24% agreed that companies do it well. Affirming concern can help companies to effectively take up the mantle of social responsibility and stand out.
Dual concern criticisms can be more effective than alternative persuasion techniques like pairing criticism with compliments (the classic strategy of 'I like you, but…') because dual concern criticisms rectify the (often mistaken) assumption that a critic thinks the criticized group is immoral and not worthy of concern. Criticism often leads a group to immediately think that the critic does not care about them, and dual concern helps to fix that.
In a world where leaders (and everyone) must at times criticize people for causing harm, we need better strategies to make this happen. For leaders, this isn't about sugarcoating hard truths, it's about being strategic with your influence.
Next time you need to call out harm or challenge group behavior, ask yourself: Am I balancing honesty with care? Do they know I still see them as people worth reaching? Dual concern isn't just a communication strategy, it's a leadership imperative.