- To enhance creativity, nothing helps better than care. It is the same at all stages of academic life, where narcissistic troubles abound. Care is the way to go.
- Remember the efforts involved in producing academic knowledge. Writing a book or an article, even if one disagrees with its content, requires a considerable effort. Remember your own efforts and sacrifices.
- Compliments always do good. Criticisms do good as well and they help improve. But watch your tone ! There is a way to express disagreement without destroying people’s self-esteem.
- To acknowledge that the Other can be right. No doubt, the most difficult aspect in scientific debates, but that’s where hermeneutic charity begins!
- Discuss someone’s text on her own theoretical and empirical grounds, and help her advance on her own terrain, not on yours (not at first, at least). Science being a collaborative process and not a military conquest, the objective is not to massacre but to collaborate and improve.
- Avoid useless questions only aimed at establishing your own authority. Just avoid asking questions if you have nothing to ask.
- These suggestions might seem naïve and obvious. I am not saying that academics should not engage in intellectual controversies. But, like in all forms of communication, the medium crucially matters.