Turn Criticism into Growth

(bright upbeat music) Often we have this outsized reaction to feedback, even when it's good, even when it's delivered with kindness. One day I got a phone call from the partner at my firm. "I've heard from the clients that they think that you are too cold when you are communicating with them." Coming back to them when you're less in an emotionally heightened state can be a really effective way of processing, and then incorporating that feedback and ultimately even feeling grateful for it. It ended up strengthening my relationship with a partner, because I realized that the only reason she was giving me the feedback was because she wanted to be helpful and she wanted to support me as a manager and support her team. (bright upbeat music) Hearing what you're not doing well does not feel good. Even people who say they wanna learn from the mistakes they've made, report feeling unhappy and unmotivated after receiving critical feedback. Ideally, the more feedback that we get, the faster we get at processing it and recognizing, oh, I'm in the part where it feels bad. Cool, I just gotta let this run and then I will be in a place where I can take action on it. You don't have to hear constructive feedback all the time, but no one gets substantially better if they're only hearing praise. But adopting a growth mindset allows you to get the information you need to improve, and make it more likely you'll get promoted. (bright upbeat music) If someone says, you always do this, you never do this, you sometimes do this, ask for a specific example of when you displayed the behavior. You can also ask, can you share the specific impact on you or the team so I can understand why you're requesting a specific change? (bright upbeat music) Allow yourself to fully feel the uncomfortable emotions that come from receiving constructive feedback. You can't skip feeling bad. Instead, make time to feel bad and accept the emotion. Remember, you're trying to get feedback that will help you grow, otherwise you won't have the data you need to improve. It's so important to remind yourself that the person who is giving you advice is trying to help you. If they didn't care, they probably wouldn't be giving you advice. It's like if you have food in your teeth, a good friend will point this out to you, but someone who doesn't care probably won't. And the next activity will help you process the uncomfortable emotions that come with receiving feedback....