It can be hard to hear criticism about yourself, especially when it is at work, and can sometimes feel like a personal attack; there are, however, ways to look at it and deal with it.
- Reaction
Your reaction is an essential aspect of being criticized at work; your reaction can say a lot about you. Reacting calmly is rational as your reaction displays both your maturity and professionalism, which are both very important. You are being scrutinized and judged on your reaction, so as much as you want to flip in response completely, you must keep your cool and react calmly and professionally. By reacting childishly, you make yourself seem less professional, reflect badly on yourself, and give yourself a reputation.
- Personally
Try not to take the criticism too personally, it is not an attack on you or your character, and there are no ill feelings meant by it in any way. It is important that you can separate your work from your personality and remember that your work is criticized and not you. While it can be difficult to do this, you must ensure that this criticism does not impact your relationship with that person.
- Process
It is important that you effectively process the criticism; it can actually be very beneficial to you. Taking on board criticism and using it to apply further work is a great way to turn a negative into a positive. Criticism is not there to upset you, and you must remember that the purpose of criticism is to improve further work you do and correct any issues. As long as you take it on board and learn from it, criticism can actually be quite good for you and improve your work in the future.
- Gratitude
Whilst you really might not feel it at the time, it is common courtesy to thank a person for the criticism as this criticism will actually help you develop your skills in further work. Thanking a person for the criticism also shows your high maturity and professionalism, making you look even better. You will learn to take a lot from criticism, and it is an invaluable way to learn to improve your work.
- Forgiveness
You mustn’t be too hard on yourself; it is natural for people to make mistakes; everybody does this at some point or another, so you really aren’t on your own with this. Everybody has been in this position, and if you make the occasional mistake and learn from it, then you have nothing to worry about; you are your own harshest critic, so give yourself a break and don’t beat yourself up over it, at the end of the day it really isn’t the end of the world.
