How to Accept Criticism Gracefully

Everyone is a critic, and everyone, equally, is prone to criticism from time to time. Be it constructive or not, how you react to it is astronomically more important and telling of your character than the criticism itself. Read on for some ideas about accepting criticism gracefully!

Difficulty: Moderate

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Ability to listen
• Intelligence (optional)
• Patience
• A smidgen of self esteem and/or self worth
• A modicum of personal responsibility

1. 

   Comprehend what has been said or written. The key to accepting criticism with grace begins on either side of your head, or with your eyeballs, should you be reading your feedback. Why is this so important, you wonder? Because if you don't take a moment to ingest what you are hearing and/or reading before jumping to conclusions, you could make a critical mistake in interpretation.

2. 

   Grow thicker skin. Part of being human is the giving and taking of feedback. If you constantly take criticism, disagreements, and even lighthearted, innocent jokes as personal, malicious attacks, eventually you won't even be able to communicate with your lawn mower, let alone your landlord without suffering a nervous breakdown or bursting in to tears. This is especially vital within a working environment. When your superiors offer you advice or direction about errors or need for change, allowing your handle to fly off in their general direction is not going to bode well for you.

3. 

   Patience is a virtue for a reason. Patience allows us to prevent experiencing 20/20 hindsight. Patience gives your blood a chance to stop boiling, and your brain a chance to wrap itself around the real meaning of the message received.

4. 

   Honesty, and the ability to evaluate your own behaviors, characteristics and performance are all essential in accepting criticism gracefully. Every single human being makes mistakes. It's what you do with those mistakes that counts more than being called on them. Do you learn from them? Do you attempt to make changes in your work processes or in your attitude? Or, are you stuck on blaming everyone else for everything that goes wrong? Mistakes exist as teaching tools. Learn from them. Listen to your evaluations and criticisms. Educate yourself. Take your performance to the next level. Rather than wallowing in self pity, put the advice and information to work, and create improvements.

5. 

   Accepting criticism gracefully means exercising full control of your temper. It means not lashing out and attacking the person giving you feedback or criticism. Accepting criticism means having the ability to openly receive feedback in a gracious manner, hear it out, mull it over, learn from it, and either vocally or internally being grateful for the chance to conquer your weaknesses and improve upon your strengths.

Tips & Warnings

• Often, employers are judging employees based upon their ability to accept feedback and criticism. The reaction to something less than pleasurable is a meter by which your employer can gauge future performance and accomplishments.
• Be receptive, in person, through body language. Don't clench your fists, grit your teeth, or look as though you're about to have a root canal. Breathe and listen. Ask questions for clarification. Display your willingness to improve.
• The moment you stop learning, you're dead.
• If you display irrational and unreceptive behavior to colleagues, and throw tantrums over minor issues, you may get noticed, however, that attention will more than likely not be positive.
• Be able to separate emotions from business, especially when it comes to reviews and criticism. Displaying anger or irritability demonstrates a lack of maturity that will hold you back.

Resources

• All About Improving Productivity
• Personality Testing

[langleycornwell]

on 5/13/2009 Excellent and very well written article about a sensitive subject. Thanks, 5*s.

[Miragi]

on 3/28/2009 Why, thank you, Glencap :) Glad you appreciated the article. Looking forward to reading your articles again, I've been kind of absent from eHow for a bit.

[Glencap]

on 3/28/2009 This is definitely close to my soul. I used to have a hard time with criticism. This article should be shared with all of those who are struggling with this issue. Thanks for the great work. And, I love your new avatar.

[arcsg81]

on 3/17/2009 All my life, i've been criticized..back then, i don't know how to deal with it. Along the way, i got used to it, however i turned out to be anti-social. When i tend to discover this article and applied it, definitely it helped me a lot! Really effective! This, i recommend to those i know is criticized harshly.

[arcsg81]

on 3/17/2009 All my life, i've been criticized..back then, i don't know how to deal with it. Along the way, i got used to it, however i turned out to be anti-social. When i tend to discover this article and applied it, definitely it helped me a lot! Really effective! This, i recommend to those i know is criticized harshly.