“Advice is like snow; the softer it falls, the longer it dwells upon, and the deeper it sinks into the mind.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Criticism can be hard to receive, even when it is useful.
Part of the difficulty is that criticism and insult can feel similar in the first few seconds. Both can make us defensive, both can make us want to explain ourselves, and both can shift our attention from understanding the point to protecting our pride.
In work, useful criticism is often not the loudest or most dramatic feedback. It is the specific observation that shows me something I could not quite see from where I was standing.
Feedback Reveals Blind Spots
The most valuable feedback is not always about something we already know. Often it is about a blind spot: something visible to other people but not yet visible to us.
A blind spot is not obvious from the place where I am standing.
That is also why criticism can feel so personal. If I already agreed with it, it probably would not sting as much. The hard part is that the other person may be naming something before I have a clean story for it myself.
Receiving It From The Team
I do a weekly survey with my team. It is optional, but I usually get a few pieces of feedback each week, and it often gives us useful topics for 1:1s.
I know it takes effort to fill it out, and it takes even more effort to say something critical to your manager. So when someone offers critical feedback, I try to treat it as valuable before I decide whether I agree with it.
That does not mean everything changes because someone is unhappy. A project may have been canceled, and that may still be the right decision. A priority may have shifted, and the tradeoff may still stand.
But if the feedback is about how I communicated the decision, how I handled the conversation, or where someone felt surprised or dismissed, that is something I can learn from.
What Might Be True In It?
When I receive criticism, I try to separate two questions:
- How did it feel to hear?
- What might be true in it?
The first question is natural. I do not think there is much point pretending feedback never stings, but the second question is the one I do not want to skip.
Feedback may sting, but contain valuable, actionable insights.
Even if the criticism is only partly right, there may still be a signal worth keeping. Maybe the conclusion is wrong, but the perception is real. Maybe the person misunderstood my intent, but their misunderstanding tells me something about how my actions landed.
Taking It As Support
One mental reframe I have found useful is to treat good-faith criticism as support.
If someone is taking the risk to tell me something uncomfortable, they may be trying to help me succeed.
That does not mean every criticism is correct, and it does not mean accepting unfair feedback without judgment. It simply means I try not to throw away useful information because it arrived with discomfort attached.
I do not have to agree with all of it immediately, and I do not have to act on all of it. But I do want to pause long enough to ask whether there is something in it that could help me become easier to work with, clearer to understand, or better at the job I am trying to do.