&gt;  People should learn to take harsh critique and not let it affect them too much personally.<p>Well, my straight-up critique is that you&#x27;re trying to pass your personal preference off as some sort of broad rule, and I think that&#x27;s bunk. If you like being a jerk, godspeed. But other people get to think that you&#x27;re a jerk and ignore you if they want.<p>&gt; Taking delicate care [...] but doesn&#x27;t pave the way for real progress.<p>That&#x27;s the opposite of my experience. My simple model for it is &quot;trust credit&quot;. If I&#x27;m generally kind and respectful, if I usually work to create good feelings, then I slowly build up trust credit. The more trust credit I have, the more people are willing to listen to difficult truths from me.<p>Today at work we did a project retrospective covering more than a year of work. There were a lot of difficult things to say. But what got us through was all the effort we put into building strong relationships as we worked together.