Another important tip to help us develop resilience in handling harsh criticism is a little thing called empathy: to detach yourself from the situation and put yourself in the shoes of the critics. To experience and understand the criticism from their perspective and circumstances and context, devoid of judgment: Not agreeing or disagreeing, just understanding.
Essentially, it all comes down to what Stephen Covey defines this as the fifth habit in his book, "7 Habits of Highly Effective People": Seek first to understand, then to be understood.
There could be underlying personal and/or professional reasons behind why they behave the way that they do. Maybe they are struggling with other challenges. Maybe their own competency is falling short. Maybe they themselves are terrible at empathy or anger management.
It doesn't necessarily justify unprofessional or disrespectful behaviour, but at least when you are able to see it from their perspective, you can objectively understand where they are coming from and acknowledge how difficult it must be for them, and for us too, if we were in their shoes. This gets us into collaborative problem-solving mode, and in fact even allow us to learn the other side of the experience: what NOT to do, if you faced that same situation on the other side one day!
Of course, this is easier said than done. Why would I empathize with my supposed tormentor, right?
What I've learnt is that, if you practice this well, you are a lot more effective to achieve a higher objective in the big picture, beyond ego or personal gratification.
Back in my junior days, I remember making a technical presentation to a subject matter expert who was very disrespectful and arrogant. Interrupting at every point, antagonizing the meeting participants, and refusing to listen to what we had to say. Even though, ironically, our proposal was actually supporting him and his team - it's just that he was too stubborn to listen!
It turns out that prior to our meeting, he had been through series of meetings wherein other people refused to listen to him. Objectively speaking, I could see why: he wasn't an easy person to work with, and was notorious in his not-so-pleasant work ethic. In fact, when I shared with my colleague that I will be presenting to this SME, my colleague advised "Faisal, it's Ramadhan, make sure you exercise patience".
I didn't understand at the time, but after experiencing the meeting, I saw why. With a demeanor like that, naturally people wouldn't want to listen to you, let alone work with you. Which fueled his frustration and arrogance even more!
Then we realized, the solution is to just let him talk. Even though it was OUR presentation. When he was done and I realised that we were actually in alignment, all I had to do is to re-package the entire presentation to his perspective and how it will fulfill his needs. And voila! He concurred and even supported our proposal offline.
In the recent workshop which I got bashed, I managed to get some private 1-on1 time to talk to the main person who gave me a hard time. Turns out, at this point of time, he was new to the role, and was struggling with challenges related to our team counterparts. When I could see it from his viewpoint, it changed the way I received his tough feedback. Of course, it still hurts, but at least my rational mind can understand and can bring myself to see the merit of his criticism, and we could eventually find common ground to an agreeable solution.
Empathy isn't just some lovey dovey concept that HR tosses around to make people feel good. When implemented well, it allows us to gain perspective to our surroundings, give us an insight to make better objective judgment.
Finally, a Question: What if, after practicing empathy, we find that a person is disrespectful for no other reason that he/she is simply an arrogant jerk?
Go back to tip #5: that's their problem, not yours!
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