I hate having those discussions, where you have to tell your classmate or coworker to get their shit together. I've had people cry on me, bawling their eyes out - or they get stiff and defensive - I've never had anyone take criticism of their work performance well to date.
I'd rather be required to terminate someone's employment then admonish them for incompetency... it's cleaner, like the difference between the guillotine and the crucifix. Some people are bright and motivational and can make a criticism seem like a constructive or even friendly effort, I don't think I'm one of them.
Nobody enjoys being criticized for their work. Typically, I'm the person in my department at work with the experience and organizational skills to get derailed projects going again when we get stuck during the testing phase. When I have to intervene, I typically approach it as, "OK, we've got a goal here and we're not getting to it. What we're doing so far isn't working. Here are the consequences of failure, and here's how we get back on track. I need you to do x, y, and z..." and so on. Obviously it depends on the situation and the person, but generally it's important not to criticize the person, but rather to treat the situation as an opportunity for improvement and/or learning. In the past, I've had to take over specific tasks and sometimes entire projects from other people, usually because there are problems that are not getting resolved, or someone doesn't understand what they're doing. Fortunately, it's very rare that I have to deal with genuine slack-asses.
The person who cried was out of her depth I soon found, and I didn't have time to teach her from the beginning or smooth away her anxiety from a thousand and one personal issues.
Mostly what I've dealt with is people with large egos or general disdain for the whole thing who don't want to admit fault. The sort of poisoned work environments fostered in academic areas is palpable at times. The level of maturity is highly mixed, all sorts of personality politics take place, people's competency is far from assured, and most importantly some members are utterly unconcerned about academic achievement so long as they don't have to exert any effort. You can divide the work and provide all manner of organizational support, but short of actively doing all the work (which I've done on occasion) you can't be assured for the quality of the outcome.
The egos get worse in bureaucracies, and the competency little better. Still, I don't have to worry about anyone's performance, not my responsibility.
