As you grow either in your job, professional life, or personal life. We all want to get positive attention from others and create a positive image. While sometimes it will be positive—but when things go badly, not so much. If you’re facing criticism, what’s the best way to respond? Here are some strategies that can help when you’re in the eye of the storm.
Accept that criticism is part of your life.
It’s life, you’ll inevitably go wrong and disappoint people from time to time. If you focus too much on the failures, you’ll risk losing confidence, clouding your judgment in the future.
Don’t focus on fairness.
Rather than focusing on whether or not you deserve the blame, focus instead on solving the problem, responding to anyone who’s been harmed, and learning from what happened.
Set the record straight with facts, not emotions.
Defensiveness will only fuel people’s derision. If there’s inaccurate information feeding the frenzied reactions, do what you can and replace it with facts.
Be humble, transparent, and open-minded.
Ask yourself what lessons you can learn from the experience. Do you need to do things differently? Have you made unfounded assumptions? Look closely enough, and you’ll find important insights.
Take action and rework, and grow.
Commit to a new direction, clarifying what you’ll change and how you’ll avoid repeating the problem—and keep yourself updated and keep progressing over time.