The problem
Professional communities can become supportive without becoming educative. When everyone is careful, agreeable, or quick to affirm, important assumptions remain untouched.
This protocol provides four simple critique moves that preserve relationship while deepening thinking. The aim is a community that is both relationally supportive and intellectually demanding.
The four critique moves
- Probe — Ask for the reasoning underneath the claim. What makes you think that? What evidence or experience is shaping that interpretation?
- Surface — Name an assumption, value, or taken-for-granted idea. What assumption seems to be underneath this? What are we treating as obvious?
- Complicate — Introduce another perspective, context, consequence, or tension. What might we be missing? Who might experience this differently?
- Reframe — Offer a different way to define or interpret the issue. How else might this be understood? What changes if we frame the problem differently?
A simple round
- Share — One person shares a claim, interpretation, plan, or dilemma.
- Choose a move — Each listener chooses one: probe, surface, complicate, or reframe.
- Listen — The presenter listens and takes notes before responding.
- Name the shift — The presenter names what shifted and what remains unresolved.
- Make it visible — End by identifying what the conversation made newly visible.
The presenter owns the interpretation. Listeners choose one move each so the round deepens rather than piles on.
Ground rules
- Critique the idea, interpretation, or practice—not the person's worth.
- Do not disguise advice as a question.
- Do not require immediate agreement.
- Make room for silence and revision.
- Ask whose perspective or consequence is missing.
- End by identifying what the conversation made newly visible.
Which move do you use naturally? Which do you avoid? What would make your group's dialogue more rigorous without making it less trusting?
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