Criticism Not Insult (Stop, Start, Keep)
Criticism is a gap between actual and desired; an insult is a judgment — feed back only the gap
- Difficulty
- Moderate
- Time to result
- ~days to results
- Steps
- 3
- Confidence
- 94%
Hormozi separates criticism from insult: criticism is the objective discrepancy between actual and desired ('you were late twice this week'); insult is the judgment attached to it ('you're lazy'). To improve a team, strip the judgment, name the specific behaviour, and tell them what to do instead — operationalised as Stop, Start, Keep.
Origin
Illustrated by a high-performing director everyone called 'a dick'; four executives told him to stop being one and nothing changed, until Hormozi converted the label into three specific behaviours to stop, start, and keep.
Core principles
- 01'Kind not nice': withholding correction is unkind because it lowers someone's odds of succeeding.
- 02Specific, behavioural feedback engages the prefrontal cortex; labels engage the amygdala and produce nothing.
- 03People rarely lose jobs over one thing — it's a hundred small things you could have fixed early.
- 04What you don't correct, you reinforce as the new minimum standard.
How to run it
- 1
Find the behaviour behind the label
Ask why you want to call someone lazy or a dick, and gather the concrete data: slow replies, incomplete work, cutting people off.
Pro tip Collect a few observable buckets before the conversation so you speak in evidence, not adjectives.
- 2
Convert to Stop, Start, Keep
Name what to stop, what to start doing instead, and what to keep. E.g. stop cutting people off; start waiting until they finish and asking if they're done.
- 3
Give the conditions, not the trait
Teaching requires a condition plus a behaviour: 'when X happens, do Y.' Deliver it as a specific instruction, not a character verdict.
Pro tip Frame it as a shared goal ('I want to decrease how often people call you a dick'), so it lands as help.
Watch out Berating changes behaviour but usually the wrong way; and staying silent installs the bad behaviour as acceptable.
In the wild
A skilled director was widely called 'a dick'. Instead of repeating the label, Hormozi identified 3-4 behaviours (interrupting, unsolicited advice) and gave stop/start/keep instructions.
→ The next week colleagues asked 'what happened to him — he's a new man'; he was never a dick, he just didn't know how to behave.
Rather than call Sandy lazy, Hormozi lists slow Slack replies, incomplete projects, and a disheveled Zoom background, then gives three specific corrections.
→ The behaviours become fixable instructions ('respond within 10 minutes in work hours', 'collared shirt, hair back') instead of an un-actionable insult.
Common mistakes
Delivering the judgment
Telling someone they're lazy or a dick gives them nothing to act on and only wounds, because the amygdala can't reason with a label.
Saying nothing to be nice
Silence reinforces the behaviour and sets it as the team's minimum acceptable standard.
Is it for you?
Best for
Managers who avoid hard conversations or default to vague 'level up' feedback.
Not ideal for
Situations requiring termination for values violations rather than coachable skill gaps.
From the transcript
“criticism is a discrepancy between actual and desired... 'you're lazy' is the insult”
“kind not nice... you're actually being unkind to someone by not maximizing the likelihood that they succeed”
From the episode
The Man That Makes Millionaires: Turn $100 to $10k With This Step By Step Formula & Build An Audience From 0 Followers! Alex Hormozi
Alex Hormozi