Has someone ever tried to say something negative about you and you took it as a compliment?

My 11-year-old could have written better code.

Some people just get defensive immediately.

That's true - I didn't phrase my criticism how I stated it here. If I had phrased it that way, I could understand the defensiveness.

I attempted to be very constructive in it. I pointed out specifically what I didn't like and asked him to come up with improvements.

I had a meeting on Friday with a consultant we brought in to help manage some of our projects. We were to review his project management plan. Even though he kept trying to go on tangent trying to redo our processes, I thought it had gone OK. We had discussed some incorrect information he had and had compromised on a few ways he wanted to report information. Then afterwards he said that we needed to discuss our roles because we kept bumping heads. I told him I did not see it that way, that we were discussing and brainstorming. He had been very defensive from the beginning. Even tried to accuse me of wanting to give him bad information so that he would get in trouble for it. He just wants to do things his way without learning our procedures first. Not sure how long he will last at this point.

I have been that guy before years ago - not the accusing people of butting heads with me and all of that, but I have gone into places and not been a fan of their processes. It took me years to learn to stop saying, "well, where I used to work, we did it this way."

People just hate you for it, and rightly so - especially when it isn't your job to improve their processes (actually, now it is part of my job, and I have learned how to approach it more constructively so people don't hate me for it). No one cares how I did it at other places. No one cares if I have grand ideas for changing their processes. You can submit the ideas, but focusing on them just won't work and it will get you into trouble.

If he came in, learned our processes and then suggested changes, we would listen. That is not how it happened. And I do not know what Standard he is following. It is not PMI for sure. He tried to tell me that the Proj Mgt Plan should not have details in it. It is a proposal. I responded that it is called a plan and therefore is part of the planning stage.

Yeah, that is kind of the thing, you have to learn the process before you can decide if the process can be improved or not and where it can be improved at. You also have to earn some credibility. Being brand new, you can have a hundred years of experience, to your new coworkers, they have no idea if that experience was any good or not.

He said a project management plan *shouldn't* have details in it?? I would have promptly tossed him out the door for that. Having a different project management style is one thing, but having no clue about the most elementary project management concepts is intolerable.