My most important rule is to keep things positive. One negative attitude or influence can bring down many. From my experiences in many years of playing team sports, I have seen it to be true that it only takes that one sour person. We did not need that influence, so they sat on the bench away from the rest of us. Positive attitudes should be allowed to flourish and produce free from all negative influences.
The same should be true of critism. Helpful critism is much more affective than pointing out everything that went wrong. Again, in sports, I would get tired of hearing what I did wrong. It was embarrassing enough to do it, let alone hear all about it. It would have been nice to hear something good that I did at the same time. Hearing all the negativity nearly caused me to quit. It becomes discouraging if that is all you hear about. I think that harsh critism is needed sometimes, and not everything should be sugar coated, but positive or constructive critism works best.
