Do you criticize?
brk: Situationally dependent.If you ask for my opinion, you're going to generally get pretty direct feedback.  Over the years I've managed to find the right balance (mostly) between tactfulness and directness.  I don't generally sugar-coat things, nor do I like when people try to "phrase" their criticism TO me.For the last ~11 years I've been working with various startup or turnaround companies.  You don't often have time to make sure that everyone leaves every meeting with their feelings and emotions fully intact.  But that also doesn't mean that you can or should be a flaming asshole either.I do not believe that my critical assessment of things has ever hurt a relationship that I would have wanted to maintain.  I have had situations where the person receiving the criticism was incapable of handling any negative feedback.  But in those cases, that individual usually ends up with a stack of imagined enemies and has zero future value to me anyway.