THE FIRE WITHIN | Where Purpose Meets Bureaucracy by Darryl S. Diggs, Jr., Ed.D.
I can find what’s wrong with a thing in about ninety seconds.
Give me a strategic plan. Give me a master schedule. Give me a budget narrative, a discipline policy, a church program, a cookout setup. Ninety seconds and I can tell you where it’s going to break, fall apart, or go sideways. Some of us are born with a nose for the flaw the way other folks are born with perfect pitch.
In my personal life and in professional settings, I called it discernment. I called it high standards and expectations. I called it rigor. I called it I just care too much to let it go out like that. As I approach a new season in life, I am reflecting on the words I use and how they leave impressions on people and their work.
I taught in classrooms of thirty plus students, or lead within a large comprehensive high school, the principalship or central office, I found that there is no neutral feedback. There is no middle pile. Every observation you offer another human being either builds their capacity or takes reduces their capacity. It builds or it drains. It leaves them more able to do the work tomorrow, or less.
The “test” question
As a central office administrator and thought-partner to multiple organizations, I use this thought process as a barometer for my approach and presence in meetings, especially if the intent is problem-solving. I would like for you to test it against your own life:
Criticism becomes constructive at the exact moment my questions outnumber my conclusions.
The line that guides my presence and approach is heavily intertwined in my curiosity outweighing my certainty. Because if I have not asked questions and remained curious, then whatever I’m offering is not feedback on your work. It’s a performance of my standards. I’m holding your thing up against a picture in my head that you have never seen and could not have known about, and then I’m grading you on the gap.
That’s not criticism. That’s an ambush with footnotes.
The Curiosity Tax
So I built myself a toll booth. Five questions I have to pay before I get to speak. Not a suggestion. A tax.
1. What were you trying to solve? You cannot evaluate an answer if you don’t know the question. Most bad feedback is a correct response to a problem the person wasn’t working on.
2. What did it cost you to get here? Every plan in front of you survived a fight you didn’t see. A budget. A board. A union agreement. A parent. A deadline. What looks like a bad decision is very often the best available decision.
3. What have you already tried? Because your brilliant insight might be their Tuesday. Nothing dissolves credibility faster than triumphantly suggesting the thing they abandoned three months ago for good reason.
4. What does better look like to you? This one keeps me honest. It moves the standard out of my head and onto the table, where we can both see it and both argue with it.
5. Do you want my reaction, my read, or my hands? This is the question that has changed the most relationships in my life, so let me break it down.
- Reaction is how your work landed on me. Feelings. Impressions. Vibe.
- Read is my analysis. Structure, logic, gaps, risk.
- Hands is me in the work with you. Rolled up sleeves. Shared labor.
People are almost never asking for all three. And most of our conflict is somebody asking for a reaction and getting a read, or asking for hands and getting a lecture.
Ask which one. Then give that one.
Three signs you’re not constructive, you’re just correct
- People stop bringing you things early. They bring you the finished version, when it’s too late to help. That’s not respect. That’s self-protection.
- You’re never there for version two. Critics leave after the critique. Builders stay for the revision. Check your calendar. It tells the truth about which one you are.
- Your feedback works better as a post than as a conversation. If the line was sharper for the audience than it was useful to the person, you weren’t correcting. You were performing.
What I’m carrying into the work tomorrow
People need me to be invested. Being impressive is a one-way transaction. It costs me nothing and it leaves them holding the bill. Being invested costs me time, questions, and the quiet indignity of not being the smartest voice in the room for a few minutes.
I want my honesty to function like shelter and not like weather. I want the people who work with me, and the young men (my sons) who live in my house, to experience my truth-telling as something that covers them, not something they have to brace against.
I’m not there yet. I’m a critical man by nature and that’s not going anywhere. But I’ve stopped treating that as a fixed trait and started treating it as an unpaid tax.
Ask first. Then swing, if you still need to. You’ll swing better, and you’ll swing less.
Your turn. Think of the last piece of critical feedback you gave. How many questions did you ask before you gave it?
If the answer is zero, that wasn’t criticism. That was commentary.
Drop a comment. I read them all.
If this landed, share it with the leader in your life who has the gift of finding the flaw in ninety seconds. They’ll know why you sent it.
#TheFireWithin #Leadership #Feedback #EducationalLeadership #DiggsAtTheTable
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