How to Receive a Negative Feedback for Your Own Benefit

Step by step guide to making the best out of negative feedback.

Have you ever received feedback that has made you sad or angry or both at the same time! Have you ever felt like giving up due to negative feedback! If yes, then you know how difficult it is to handle criticism.

In my fifteen years of professional career, I have received innumerable feedbacks. They are mixed bags of encouraging and demotivating comments. Each of them has played a role in my growth.

Feedback comes in all forms and from all directions to us throughout the day. We ignore many of the input without giving a second thought about it. But some feedbacks stick to us. Mostly they are negative feedback. Negative feedback has the power of grabbing our attention for a long time.

Negative feedback has more substantial power over us. It hurts when we receive negative feedback about our work. We feel like we are a complete failure. But negative feedback does not have to be so damaging to us.

We can use negative feedback to improve our work and our behavior. Such feedbacks, when received and analyzed appropriately, is often helpful for our growth.

Here are a few points, once we understand them, can help us receive criticism appropriately and turn them into the most powerful tool for our personal and professional growth.

1. Nobody is perfect

“To Err Is Human”

We are all human beings with our own shortcomings. We all have positive and negative sides to us. It is essential to know that no one is always correct. All human beings make mistakes.

Once we realize that we all have something or other to improve in ourselves, it becomes easier for us to accept the feedback from others. So, the first step is to recognize and agree that we all make mistakes. It is important to know that no one is always right.

2. Understand that feedback is necessary

“We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.” – Bill Gates

Both negative and positive feedback are necessary for one’s growth. Again, we are all human beings with our own faults, but most often, we are blind to our own mistakes.

because we cannot see our own mistakes easily, feedbacks from others are actually a helpful tool to open our eyes to see them

We believe we are always right, which cannot be farther from the truth.

We need to know our weaknesses to improve on them — and because we cannot see our own mistakes easily, feedbacks from others are in fact, a helpful tool to open our eyes to them. We need people to tell us where we are going wrong and what we can improve on.

So, the next step is to accept that feedbacks are necessary for us. They act as a mirror to our flaws.

3. Receive feedback with an open mind

Always keep an open mind while receiving feedback — especially the ones that are highlighting our shortcomings. We should not receive negative feedback as someone pointing out our failures.

“There is no failure. Only feedback.” – Robert Allen

It is difficult for us human beings to listen about our failures and especially from people whom we consider outsiders.

So, once we realize that no one is perfect, and we understand that feedback is necessary for us, we are ready to admit that we need others to help us improve and grow. It becomes easier for us to listen to the feedback and analyze them with an open mind.

We need an outside perspective to develop ourselves, and we should be ready with an open mind to accept the feedback whenever they are given to us. By doing this, we are going to increase our own productivity.

4. Analyze the feedback objectively

“Examine what is said and not who speaks.” – African proverb

Many times we take feedback based on how our relationship is with the one who is providing the input. If we are not on good terms with the person or we do not accept their ideology, then we tend to assign a particular negative bias to their comments.

Our mind terms neutral feedback or constructive suggestions from such individuals as a negative judgment about us. We take it as a personal attack rather than points for improvement. This does not help us in objectively analyzing the feedback.

Don’t let your preconceived notion about a person bias your view about their feedback.

Take the feedback at its face value. In your brain, detach the comment from the person who gave it. Do your own analysis of the remarks to find out if it has any merit in it.

With an open mind, we can objectively analyze the comment and will be able to find values in most of the remarks. We can use that valuable feedback to improve ourselves and also our productivity. This technique has helped me every time in making the best out of feedback.

5. Know when to discard a feedback

You must have noticed that negative feedback impact us to a much greater extent than positive feedback. If you received multiple positive comments on a given day, but at the end of the day, you received one negative remark — then the negative feedback stays with us and clouds over the positive ones.

The single negative feedback drives our emotions for the day rather than multiple positive feedback.

“Mistakes should be examined, learned from, and discarded; not dwelled upon and stored.” – Tim Fargo

Like our mistakes, even negative feedback should be examined, and once we understand what to improve on — we should discard the input. Pondering over them for a longer time is counterproductive.

Let the negative feedback teach us how to grow and then be gone from our minds. Instead of dwelling over the negative feedback, allow the positive ones to take their place, and drive us for the rest of the day.

Positive feedback improves our mood and helps us feel motivated. So, permit positive feedback to take over the spirit and dilute the impact of negative feedback.

And — if we don’t find value in some comments, that’s alright too. Discard the additional feedback after objectively analyzing them. Understand that it was not helpful; moreover, don’t let them have any adverse effect on you.

Understanding that feedback is necessary for us is the most crucial point. Once we realize it, we open ourselves up to receive any criticism without preconceived notions. Our minds start analyzing the comments objectively.

We all handle feedback differently, but one thing we will all need to agree to is that feedback is essential for our growth. They are the building blocks for our development. Used right, feedback will help us in improving our overall productivity.

Next time you get difficult feedback, do not lose your heart. Use the aforementioned techniques, and make the best of every one of them by guiding yourself to become better — both personally and professionally.

Thank you for reading the article. You might also like to read: