Everybody has goals, dreams, aspirations, hopes, and in order to achieve them you must steadily improve in your skills. Nobody wakes up one day and POOF they saved a million dollars or POOF they are a CEO or POOF they lost 40lbs. Achieving your goals takes a steady, daily effort of hard work, making mistakes, learning from the mistakes, and steadily improving until you hit that big goal.
Mistakes and criticism come with improvement; in fact, they're a prerequisite to improvement and achieving your goals. If you never takes risks or make mistakes and never learn to improve how are you going to move forward?
It's important when dealing with criticism that you take it for what it's worth - a chance to improve. Not all managers or people are great at giving criticism (but hopefully it's something they're making mistakes and learning on as well) so it's important to keep a few things in mind when dealing with criticism (from the book "Real Success"...yes, I'm still reading it...long read):
- Don't take it personally - It's not you, but what you've done that is being criticized. Keep your emotions out of it.
- Accept it as part of the job - Criticism is part of the learning process. You cannot learn unless your mistakes are pointed out to you.
- Find good in it - If the criticism makes you aware of an unperceived weakness, faults or errors, despite your initial hurt, you can learn from it. Focus on the lesson.
- Remember the objective is to help you to succeed
Again, some people and managers are better in delivery of criticism then others. Although you can't control how criticism is delivered you can control your response to it. By keeping the above 4 points in mind when given criticism you will be able to take it, learn from it, improve from it, and take another step toward achieving your ultimate goals.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Not taking it personally, and learning from the criticism, are easier said than done. It's a good reminder to engage the brain rather than the heart sometimes.
ReplyDeleteVery true - easier said than done. By engaging the brain rather than the heart like you suggested, it makes your response more proactive instead of reactive. Thanks for sharing!
ReplyDeleteIt depends a lot on who is finding fault with whom. From some folks, you engage your heart and react. From others, you engage your brain and accept useful comments. Sometimes, I have found, neither works - as in politics and religion.
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