“these are very difficult and emotionally costly conversations to have”
I don’t think this has to be the case. These things can usually be circumvented with sufficiently impersonal procedures, such as rating the application and having a public guide somewhere with tips on how to interpret the rating and a suggested path for improvement (e.g. talking to a successful grant recipient in a similar domain). A “one star” or “F” or “0″ rating would probably still be painful, but that’s inevitable. Trying to protect people from that strikes me as paternalistic and “ruinously empathetic”.
“these are very difficult and emotionally costly conversations to have”
I don’t think this has to be the case. These things can usually be circumvented with sufficiently impersonal procedures, such as rating the application and having a public guide somewhere with tips on how to interpret the rating and a suggested path for improvement (e.g. talking to a successful grant recipient in a similar domain). A “one star” or “F” or “0″ rating would probably still be painful, but that’s inevitable. Trying to protect people from that strikes me as paternalistic and “ruinously empathetic”.