In Italian culture, feedback about someone’s work is received as feedback about them personally. There is no clean separation between the output and the person who produced it.
When you critique a proposal, you are—in the Italian reading—critiquing the judgment of the person who wrote it. When you praise a presentation, you are praising the person, not just the slides.
This means that critical feedback carries higher personal stakes than you might expect and needs to be delivered with awareness of that reality. Do not try to enforce a separation between person and performance that the culture does not believe in. Instead, work with this reality: acknowledge the person’s investment and capability, then address the specific issue. This approach respects the Italian understanding that people put themselves into their work, and that honoring that investment is a prerequisite for feedback that actually lands.
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