Welcome to the listening time podcast.
Hey everybody, this is Connor and you're listening to episode 82 of the listening time podcast.
I hope you're all doing well.
I want to thank all of my members, all of my super members, family members, and listening time VIPs.
Thank you all for supporting me and helping me do what I do.
I definitely wouldn't be able to record this podcast on a weekly basis and continue like this, if I didn't have your support.
So thank you for that.
And if you would like to support me and you're not yet a member, feel free to join my membership and you'll get a lot of extra content every month.
And you'll also support me as I create this podcast and put it out there for all the English learners around the world to help them with their listening.
So if you join, you'll also get my specialized training.
And, in particular, if you become a Listening Time family member or a Listening Time VIP, you'll also get my advanced podcast episodes every month.
You'll get two per month where I speak fast.
And of course, I provide the transcript.
So this will help you practice with real English, with fast English.
And if you become a Listening Time VIP, then you'll be able to ask me questions every week and I'll answer them in video format in a weekly QA session.
Questions and answers session.
So if that's interesting for you, then click on the link in the episode description below this episode.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
All right, in today's episode, we're going to talk about criticism.
This is an important topic because we all face criticism at different points in our lives.
And sometimes we criticize others at certain points.
And this can be hard to deal with.
It can be hard to give good criticism or receive criticism sometimes.
So I think this will be a good topic to talk about.
Remember that you have the transcript available for this episode.
That's in the episode description below the episode.
So click on that and use it.
If you need to see what I'm saying, if you need help with understanding this episode, then you have the transcript there to help you out.
And if you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and share it with anyone else who might find it useful.
All right, let's get started.
Are your ears ready?
You know what time it is.
It's listening time.
All right, let's talk about criticism.
So criticism is everywhere.
We can face criticism at work, maybe from our boss, from a coworker, from a client.
At school, we can be criticized by a teacher or a classmate.
We can be criticized by our parents, by our friends, by our significant other.
We can be criticized in many situations.
In English, when we use the phrase significant other, we're talking about your husband, your wife, your girlfriend or your boyfriend.
This is your significant other.
So first let's talk about receiving criticism.
So when other people criticize us.
So I think one of the most important things to remember when receiving criticism is is to try to remove your ego from the situation.
Try not to feel like you are above criticism, like you should never have to hear anyone criticize you.
I think we want to have an attitude where we can receive criticism and it's okay.
It's not the end of the world and it's perfectly normal because we aren't perfect people.
Nobody is perfect.
I think that's the attitude we all need to have, and this will help us receive criticism in a better way.
So another important thing is to understand the other person's point of view, right?
The other person has a reason to criticize you and, whether or not you agree with it, they have their reason.
In English, that phrase whether or not just means yes or no.
So for example, I don't know whether or not I'm going to go to the party.
This means I don't know if I'm going to go or if I'm not going to go.
That's whether or not.
So, whether or not we agree with the other person's point of view, we have to Understand that they have a point of view that's probably different from ours.
So it's important to understand the other person's perspective.
Try to understand why they feel this way, why they're criticizing you.
It's important to try to understand that.
And when they give you their criticism, I think at first it's important to acknowledge their point.
Acknowledge what they said.
Don't try to immediately get defensive.
Don't try to immediately argue.
Don't try to invalidate their concern if they have a genuine concern about.
In English, when we say that you invalidate something, this means that you treat something as if it doesn't matter or it's not right, it's not true, it's not important.
This is to invalidate something.
So don't try to invalidate their concern right away.
Just try to hear them out.
Try to acknowledge that they have a concern and that this is okay and you can talk about it.
And don't try to immediately argue and invalidate their concern.
I think that's also another important thing we can do when we receive criticism.
And then one other thing I think we should do is to categorize the criticism that we receive.
So we're going to receive different types of criticism.
So we might receive constructive criticism.
This is the best type of criticism and constructive.
We'll talk about that in a moment.
We could receive criticism that isn't constructive.
So it's not given in a very good way and it maybe sounds a little bad or makes you want to argue, and maybe the person doesn't say it in a good way or they are being a little bit mean or something like that.
And there's one other type of criticism that I would consider to be another category, which is ridiculous criticism.
I call it ridiculous because this is criticism that is completely dumb.
It's not valid.
You know immediately that the person is just trying to make you feel bad or the person is just saying something that's completely untrue.
So this is ridiculous criticism.
So let's talk about each of these categories.
So constructive criticism is the best type of criticism.
It's good to give this criticism as well when you want to criticize someone else.
So constructive criticism is criticism that provides clear and actionable suggestions for improvement without insulting the other person.
So you're giving them a very clear and easy to follow method to fix something that's wrong with their behavior or their work or their, And you're not insulting them.
You're not trying to make them feel bad.
You're not talking bad about them.
You're not doing any of that.
So this is constructive criticism.
For example, when you give constructive criticism, you can maybe start by saying something positive about the person.
You can say something like, you're a great worker.
You've done a lot of great work for our company, and I really appreciate what you've done.
So there you've shown them that you appreciate them.
You talked positively to start.
And then maybe you can use some observation or data or something like that to identify what the weak point is or what you want to criticize right.
So after you say the positive things, you can say something like however, I've noticed in recent months that your sales numbers have gone down pretty significantly, or something like that.
And so you've used an observation, a piece of data, to show that there is some problem or something not very strong or not right about the person's behavior or their results, or whatever it is.
So you didn't just say you're a bad worker or your sales numbers suck or anything like that.
You're using a valid observation or data to bring up the problem.
And then you can anticipate that the person is probably going to get a little bit defensive.
Or maybe you feel bad and you want to show them that you understand them, their concerns, or you understand that their situation might not be easy or they might not realize that they're doing something wrong or whatever right.
You want to be compassionate about that.
You want to show that you understand them and not try to just criticize without understanding the other person.
And when giving constructive criticism, you should be able to be very clear and give clear suggestions, suggestions that can easily help the other person fix the problem.
And they can solve that by following these suggestions.
So that's a very good thing to include with your criticism.
And it helps create a plan of action for the other person.
So all of that is part of constructive criticism.
And I think this is a good way to give criticism when you want to point out things that need to be changed in someone else's behavior or their work or whatever.
And I think if someone gives you criticism like this, you shouldn't feel very defensive.
You should be able to hear what they're saying, understand it, and see how to fix it.
Even if you don't agree 100, you can see that the other person is just trying to raise a concern and help you improve.
Right.
So I think that that's one category of criticism.
Another category is criticism that isn't constructive.
So this is criticism, where someone tells you that you're doing something wrong or you're bad or whatever.
And they don't give you clear examples or they don't give you clear suggestions on how to fix this.
And they kind of just want to make you feel bad or just tell you that you're not good.
Maybe they're very angry when they say it and they're not being compassionate.
They're not trying to understand your side, right?
This would be criticism that isn't constructive and it might be true.
The criticism might be valid, but the other person gives it in a bad way.
So if someone criticizes you like this, you're probably gonna feel a little bit offended at first.
You're definitely gonna wanna argue a little bit.
And you aren't going to feel very good overall.
So I think when you receive this type of criticism, you definitely need to be careful, because your first reaction is going to be to resist this right.
You're not going to want to hear all of this and this might cause problems.
A big problem, especially if you receive criticism from your boss or someone above you like this.
And you definitely don't want to immediately start arguing and fighting and all of that.
But it's hard because when someone gives you criticism like this, it doesn't feel good and it might even seem mean or unfair, and so you have to really try to remove your ego.
Try to just hear the other person's main point, ignore the insults if there are any insults in there And just try to get something from the person's main point.
Because like I said, their criticism might be valid.
They might just be criticizing you in the wrong way.
But their criticism might actually be something that... is true and that you should fix.
So, for example, let's say you want to give someone else criticism.
A way to avoid giving this type of criticism is to use those tips that I gave you for giving constructive criticism.
And And don't do things like this where, let's say, you say to your wife, I don't like your cooking.
My mom cooks better.
Things like that.
This is definitely not constructive criticism, right?
You start with something that's really negative, maybe even hurtful, for the other person, and In English, when we say that something is hurtful, this just means that it hurts the other person.
So if someone makes a hurtful comment to you, this means that their comment hurt you, right?
And so you started with a hurtful comment, and then you compared your wife to your mother and said my mom cooks better.
So that's a terrible way to give criticism.
Comparing someone to another person and saying that the other person is better than them.
You like them better.
This makes the person that you're criticizing feel terrible, right?
So you definitely want to avoid giving criticism like that.
But if someone gives you criticism like that, then you have to try your best not to get really mad and argue and all those kinds of things.
So the last category of criticism is ridiculous criticism.
So this is criticism, where someone is insulting you about something that doesn't even matter or isn't even relevant to what you're talking about.
Or maybe it's criticism that is completely untrue.
The other person has some weird idea about you.
That's completely crazy, or you have no idea what they're talking about.
This would be ridiculous criticism.
And I thought that for this episode, it would be funny to include a few examples of ridiculous criticism that I've received during my time there, creating content for English learners.
I thought it would be fun to just include some of these examples and laugh at them a little bit.
One ridiculous criticism that I've received maybe two or three times as far as I can remember is people will comment on my YouTube videos or whatever and they'll say oh, your voice is so annoying, or something like that.
Right, so that might be true.
A lot of you might find that my voice is annoying.
I'm sure a lot of you like my voice because it's easy to understand, but I can definitely understand that it can get annoying, and listening to me for hours and hours.
But I think that's funny when people comment on my videos just to insult my voice about how annoying it is, and so, instead of just clicking off my video and going to another English teacher, they want to make sure I see how much they hate my voice.
So this is obviously ridiculous criticism because, even though it might be true and I'm sure the person feels that way it's completely irrelevant.
They don't need to comment that on my video.
And that's not something that really helps me out.
I can't change my voice.
Right.
And it's something that they don't need to say.
It doesn't really help them either.
So they just wanted to say it just to make me feel bad.
But I don't feel bad when I get comments like that.
It's definitely a funny thing for me.
That's why I'm including it here.
The word scam means that someone is trying to steal your money on the Internet or whatever.
They're trying to get you to pay them and then they're not gonna give you what you thought they would give you.
This is a scam.
So i've had, i think, one or two people say that my patreon membership is a scam because i don't provide the transcripts to my listening time episodes.
These episodes and i'm sure most of you have noticed that in every episode I say that the transcript is for free.
So if you're listening on Spotify or Apple Podcasts or wherever, you just have to go to the episode description.
Sometimes it's called the episode notes, depending on what app you're using.
And you just have to click on that and then click on the link to the transcript.
I provide every transcript completely for free.
It takes me a long time to edit that and do that, but I want to do it for all of my listeners, to help them out, and I don't charge them money for it.
But I have people that don't listen to me or can't understand me when I say that.
It's in the episode description.
And they think they have to join my membership to get those transcripts.
And when they realize that There's no transcripts on the Patreon page for the normal episodes.
They get really mad and think that they are being robbed.
I'm scamming them because they couldn't find the transcripts when in reality all of these transcripts are free and you just click on the episode description below the episode to see it.
So that's a ridiculous insult because it's completely not true.
People just don't listen when I talk about the transcripts every single episode.
And one other ridiculous criticism I received recently was someone telling me that they were embarrassed to be a member of my website and I was a bad person, a terrible guy or I forget what words they used.
But they said that I'm a patriotic American who doesn't understand other people and thinks I'm better than everyone else, and And I had no idea what they were talking about.
I had no idea where they got this idea that I'm some mean patriotic American that thinks that I'm better than everyone else.
I'm better than people from other countries.
That's crazy.
I mean, I've literally lived in another country for six years and I spend every day of my life talking to people from all around the world and helping them and learning from them, and my wife is from another country, my son is from another country.
I mean, this is just crazy criticism and I have no idea what they're talking about.
I've never said anything that this person is accusing me of.
So I thought that was pretty funny because I was so shocked at what they were saying.
Like, this is crazy what this person is saying.
But I wanted to include that here because I think it's a funny example of ridiculous criticism that I've received.
Thank you so much for having me.
And if you become a VIP, you'll be able to ask me questions every week and I'll answer those questions in video format in a QA session.
So click on the link in the episode description.
That's patreon.com slash listening time.
And of course, you have the transcript available in the episode description as well.
So click on that if you need it.
And if you like this podcast, please give it a five star rating and share it with anyone else who might find it useful.
All right.
Thank you for listening to this episode.
And I'll talk to you on the next episode of Listen Time.
