Appreciating assessment

Dealing effectively with criticism is a valuable skill Hardly a day goes by when I don’t receive a message from someone who is unhappy about something that I have said or written. Recently, on my radio show, when I suggested that a politician’s tweet was not in good taste, I received the following text from an anonymous listener. “Howard, I sit up and take notice when you talk about bad taste: you are, after all, the emperor of bad taste.”

- Howard Feldmanl

I am not alone. I have no doubt that we have all had an unpleasant peer review or had work harshly critiqued by our superiors and not known how to handle it. Receiving criticism is never easy and can sometimes make us feel discouraged and demotivated.

What is important, however, is to be able to determine when criticism can be useful and help us grow, and when to discard it as pure insult, with little value to us. How can we best receive criticism and how can we reach a point where it is actually possible to even appreciate criticism?

Fight or flight

Most of us, upon receiving negative feedback, become defensive and sometimes even aggressive. This is because we usually find it difficult to hear and properly process what the other person is saying to us. We tend to see criticism as an attack. As a result, we physically react and enter a fight or flight status.