Here's how you might do it. This is a real-life example I worked through with someone.
Situation:
- Bobby overheard me asking Caspar where his girlfriend was and whispered to me that Caspar hasn’t got a girlfriend
- I discretely replied that Caspar did have a girlfriend, hence my question to Caspar.
- Bobby was insistent Caspar hasn’t got a girlfriend.
- Bobby seemed confused.
- Bobby then asked Caspar if he had a girlfriend.
- Caspar replied that he did.
- Bobby told me I should have stopped him asking Caspar whether he had a girlfriend to save him embarrassing himself.
Question:
How should I have responded to the criticism?
- When I receive criticism, the first task is to assess whether the criticism is valid:
- Bobby might have felt embarrassed, but he did nothing wrong by asking.
- His embarrassment arose from some internal cause, not from the setting.
- His embarrassment is not an ill that needs to be prevented by others.
- Even if it were an ill, there would have been no way of predicting it, because it was internal in origin.
- Even if the criticism were valid, and intervening was warranted:
- Bobby was not open to being corrected in this thinking, in that particular situation.
- He would not, therefore, have been open to correction in his conduct, in that particular situation.
- Intervening would have failed.
- It would potentially have caused conflict.
- He could rightly have accused me of being interfering.
- Concluding, therefore, that the criticism was invalid, what should I say?
- Do not chide him for asking: although it is inappropriate, he’s touchy, so it would cause conflict.
- Explaining why he is wrong would also fail: he’s not open to correction on questions of fact, so he wouldn’t be open to viewing his conduct differently.
- The four options available are therefore ignoring, redirection, soft boundary, and hard boundary.
- Which of these is appropriate depends on many factors, including the general drift of the conversation, the actions of any other person(s) present, etc., the emotional state of the other person, one’s own emotional state, etc.
- Ignoring:
- If the conversation is generally moving forward, ignoring the comment would leave it behind in the dust of the road.
- Redirection:
- Changing the subject often works. Maybe ask Caspar a question or actively drive the conversation forward in another direction.
- Soft boundary:
- A quiet, non-committal acknowledgement that one has taken in what has been said can often make the problem go away: ‘Oh.’ ‘Really?’ ‘Gosh!’ ‘Ah.’ ‘Maybe’.
- Hard boundary:
- ‘I don’t think that’s right / I disagree with you but let’s discuss this another time / let’s move on.’
- Then change the subject to something cheerful and interesting.