That was a joke, I never resort to that.  Mostly was describing how hard it is to tell someone older that their work product is miles out of line of where it needs to be, whereas with someone younger it's much easier to frame it as a development opportunity.  I sometimes forget that I'm not speaking to people on the blog so its hard to read my tone of voice and that not everyone relies on the same set of references. 

Fear, sarcasm, and ridicule is an old pilot training joke that we instructors used to talk about having strong feedback for our students when they did something really dangerous or really wrong.  It was more along the lines of being able to rely on the inbuilt authority of being a rated pilot trying to teach someone something and sometimes you have to pull out the "I'm rated, you're not." card when telling someone how bad of a mistake they made.

Whereas in this situation its often, having them present in meetings and seeing the issues I have to deal with and discuss the issues afterwards and helping them ensure they see/become able to do the same things.  Basically relying on an inbuilt authority coming from doing the job well and having experience so that I can use that authority of, "I have the experience, you don't." at the times when I need them to shut up and deliver/learn.  

We're talking levels of problems here.  I imagine you're thinking of a situation in which only a few edits are necessary or maybe a few larger ones are required.  Mostly because when I talk about this with my friends I get the same advice.  

If the issue was a few edits are required or I could bring across a couple of points in terms of what I need to see that's one thing.  What I am talking about here is a hot mess that is completely unusable, like I can basically just .  With a younger resource it's easier to have this conversation as I can frame it as, "This is what I am looking for, here are the reasons it needs a lot of work, here are the edits I need you to do, and then I will handle the rest, we can talk about how to structure future deliverables and the number of check-ins that are appropriate for the future and I'll be less intrusive as you get better at this."  With someone with 30+ years of working experience, it's harder to have that conversation as I don't necessarily have the authority that comes from longer experience(In terms of the field I am in, I do have more experience, but that doesn't always translate to someone who has been working for as long as they have) and they are used to being able to be left alone and so me using the same number of touchpoints reads as controlling rather than developing and helping. 

It gets harder when I try to explain specific issues and I can tell they don't understand what I am getting at as they're often not familiar with the types of situations we are preparing deliverables for and so they don't have a good frame of reference(Again for younger workers this is easier as I can frame the situation for them).  

I am all about having respectful and direct conversations, about edits and things I need.  The issue is when what gets turned in is WILDLY out of line with what would be acceptable for professional deliverables, it might just be getting my head around realizing that not everyone has been forged in the same fires when it comes to presentations and working papers.