I told my colleagues their project was terrible. Should I have kept quiet?

Some of my workmates were part of a subcommittee working on an internal project. I wasn’t asked to be involved and was not privy to many details. After some time, I was asked for my opinion after being shown what they had come up with so far. I asked if the team wanted my honest opinion, and I got an enthusiastic yes.

I told them what I thought: essentially, that the whole idea was unimaginative and trite. This was not taken well at all. Now I seem to be persona non grata among several colleagues I used to have friendships with. Should I have just kept my mouth shut?

I have to admit, I snorted when I read your full email. After I had a moment to take a breath, I could sympathise with your colleagues, who might have felt that their hours of work were vaporised in seconds by your scalding assessment.

But that sympathy doesn’t run very deep, and on further reflection, I still think there’s something laughable about excitedly asking for someone’s true opinion and then instantly rejecting it. And the person who provided it.

If you’ve read Work Therapy before, you’ll know I often recommend erring on the side of magnanimity at work. And I would certainly never suggest a person walk around their workplace making unbidden criticisms of others’ work unless that’s their explicit job. But I don’t think you broke either of those precepts here.

First, you’re clearly a plainspoken person. That’s obvious from your email, and it sounds like you’re known for this trait among your peers. Your colleagues came to you because of, not in spite of, that.

Second, you gave fair warning. It wasn’t like they were halfway through showing you their work as you sprayed them mercilessly with your invective. They asked. You strongly implied they might not like what you were going to say. They insisted. You told the truth.

And that’s the third part of this that makes me think you had no reason to keep your mouth shut: you were being honest. You weren’t motivated by malice. You didn’t criticise for the sake of it.

You saw that what they had come up with was tepid and clichéd, and you made that known. You didn’t take delight in giving your assessment; you simply refused to insult their intelligence with faint or fake praise.

Your criticism was candid, yes, but you didn’t slap them in the face and walk away. It was reasoned; you told the team exactly what you think made the current version underwhelming. You didn’t offer suggestions for improvement – you weren’t specifically asked and didn’t think that was your place – but you went well beyond “this is no good”.

Not everyone has t