How to handle criticism?
27 May 2008
Read by 2372 persons
During your professional life, you will not only receive praise or positive feedback. It is therefore not useless to know how to behave when your efforts seem to be reduced to nothing.
Your project, your file, your remarks have just been massively rejected by one or more colleagues. You feel depressed and discouraged, and you wonder if you are in the right place. Perhaps you are angry and want to rebel against what you consider an injustice.
The reason why you feel this discomfort is that you take this rejection too personally. As a result, you need more time to recover than people who consider things from a purely professional point of view.
Tell yourself that the professional environment is not, by definition, a friendly environment where everyone is friends. On the contrary, it is more like a sporting environment where competition plays a central role and where people are trained to win, but also to lose.
Tips for better handling criticism
Do even more
What matters is what you do, not who you are. When your boss rejects one of your proposals, it is not because he does not like you, but because he believes that your proposal was not good enough or because it came at an inappropriate time.
Learn to use professional rejection as a challenge to do better next time.
Be disappointed with your performance, but not with yourself
Imagine you see a great job pass you by. In such moments, it is essential that you are not disappointed with yourself, but with your performance. It is not because you were extremely nervous during the job interview that you did not get the job, but because you did not have enough experience. The rejection of your application is only a moment in your career. Tell yourself that there will still be many situations from which you will emerge victorious, just as there will still be times when you will be a loser.
Evaluate your own performance
Ultimately, you are best placed to evaluate your performance. You know better than anyone what you have accomplished, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and what your past achievements are. Continue to believe in yourself, even if you have just faced severe criticism.
Look ahead
It's not because you've just lost a battle that you have to cross out the rest of your career. Every career has its ups and downs. What matters is to get back up after receiving a blow and to focus on new projects and objectives.
Posted on May 21, 2008
references.be
Your project, your file, your remarks have just been massively rejected by one or more colleagues. You feel depressed and discouraged, and you wonder if you are in the right place. Perhaps you are angry and want to rebel against what you consider an injustice.
The reason why you feel this discomfort is that you take this rejection too personally. As a result, you need more time to recover than people who consider things from a purely professional point of view.
Tell yourself that the professional environment is not, by definition, a friendly environment where everyone is friends. On the contrary, it is more like a sporting environment where competition plays a central role and where people are trained to win, but also to lose.
Tips for better handling criticism
Do even more
What matters is what you do, not who you are. When your boss rejects one of your proposals, it is not because he does not like you, but because he believes that your proposal was not good enough or because it came at an inappropriate time.
Learn to use professional rejection as a challenge to do better next time.
Be disappointed with your performance, but not with yourself
Imagine you see a great job pass you by. In such moments, it is essential that you are not disappointed with yourself, but with your performance. It is not because you were extremely nervous during the job interview that you did not get the job, but because you did not have enough experience. The rejection of your application is only a moment in your career. Tell yourself that there will still be many situations from which you will emerge victorious, just as there will still be times when you will be a loser.
Evaluate your own performance
Ultimately, you are best placed to evaluate your performance. You know better than anyone what you have accomplished, what your strengths and weaknesses are, and what your past achievements are. Continue to believe in yourself, even if you have just faced severe criticism.
Look ahead
It's not because you've just lost a battle that you have to cross out the rest of your career. Every career has its ups and downs. What matters is to get back up after receiving a blow and to focus on new projects and objectives.
Posted on May 21, 2008
references.be
