Reaction to negative feedback?

The way you behave with other people determines the way people behaves to you, so react with:
- Silence that is golden.
- Pausing for a moment when person finished complaining is helpful and in turn it lets you think before speaking out with questions for clarification.
- Listening to others is a generous act and very powerful. Listening not only to listen to what is being said, but also to the message beneath the words, paying acute attention to what we see & hear, as well as recognising the importance of getting people into the most resourceful state to solve your own issues – Active listening can create productive meetings, build strong relationships and find the insights to solve complex issues.

Definitely YES!!!! I like what Vuong Hoang said about that feedback was a part of our live. What's more critical is it is helpful for us to see the 'Blind Spot' of ourselves somehow.

Even I often ask my friends for feedback, especially the 'negative sides' because as what Vuong Hoang said we could learn so much about ourselves, others, and the areas of improvements.

An Open Heart for Learning is what I often keep telling to myself whenever the feedback comes. This also means I am aware of the positive intention of the feedback giver - it's all about whatever feedback they tell us is a good doorway for improvement.

Just to add up on the feedback, at a certain level, feedback is an assumption or opinion filtered by a person subjectively. I don't mean it's wrong. It is just a different way of looking at things. Open to feedback does not me you have to follow or believe it's totally true. It just means I could see a different lens of the reality so that I could 'update' the blind spot of my whole picture. when we receive a negative and/or positive feedback, ask ourselves also what data may lead to the frame of feedback. By asking this, we can reflect our reality and learn most from the feedback.

so an open eyes for learning from the feedback man transform a negative feedback into a constructive one for us.

cheers then,

Agree or not, the fact is all of us are effected by feedbacks from others, both positive and negative feedback. Something negative is not always a bad thing and it can be turned into a positive. When receiving negative feedback, I think first we should ask ourselves if there is anything useful we can take from it. Are we doing something wrong? Can we learn from this to improve our tomorrow? If there is merit to the comment and we can learn from it, we should determine the lesson, learn it and move on. Let go of negative feedback which is simply just a false one obviously. Give yourself some time to get away from the situation and even forget about it for a bit.

There are simple 5 steps that will help you to deal with negative feedback.

1. Pause first; Don’t react.
When receiving negative feedback, it’s natural to want to defend yourself immediately. Has there been a time when you received a negative criticism, and your first instinct is to say: “No, this isn’t true..” “You’re wrong..” “No, that’s because…“?
However, no matter how negative the comment was, you have a choice in your reaction. Reacting defensively tells more about you as a person than about the comment itself. Remaining calm and composed helps you deal with the feedback better. If you feel riled up, give yourself some time to cool down first before engaging further.
Whenever I get a negative feedback, I rarely ever respond immediately. If it’s a real-time conversation, I would always pause for a few seconds to process the feedback in my mind. If it’s a delayed communication, such as over email or a comment at my blog, I’ll leave it there for a couple of days while I let it sit in my mind. I found that when I read the same piece of feedback at different times, it conjures up different thoughts and emotions. Hence, referring back to the feedback at different times and aggregating the feelings help me to put things into context. Sometimes we may interpret a comment in a wrong manner and looking it at another time helps us to consider from a different perspective.

2. Understand what the person’s concerns are

Every feedback, whether negative or positive, comes from somewhere. Something you said or did made the person react this way. You can choose to ignore the feedback, but then you’ll never know what was it that triggered the person. This means there’s a possibility of this issue recurring in the future.
Use active listening and understand where he/she is coming from. Some questions to ask yourself include:
What is he/she concerned about? What are the key issues?
Why is he/she reacting this way?
What did you do/say that triggered him/her?
Write down these answers so you can evaluate them in step 3.
Sometimes, the person giving the feedback may not be aware of the real areas of concern. He/she might just be saying ‘I don’t think this is done well’ or ‘I don’t like how you are doing this’, without supporting reasons. This doesn’t mean you should dismiss the feedback, because something did trigger it. It’s up to you to probe the person and discover what the actual reasons are.
I found a tip that really helps in understanding his/her concerns is to put yourself in the person’s shoes. Imagine you as the person and think about how he/she felt. This will make it easier to understand why he/she commented that way. Whenever I do that, it instantly becomes clear why the person said the things he/she said, and helped me to understand his/her concerns.

3. Assess if the feedback is true.

Evaluate the feedback objectively. Do you agree on the feedback? Is there any truth behind it, and would this be an alternate perspective you missed out originally? Is it something you should look into?
Sometimes it’s hard to maintain an objective stance, especially since you are right in the middle of this. I found it’s helpful to seek out friends to get alternate opinions. You can ask them: (a) Their overall assessment of the feedback (b) What they think are the areas of concern (c) If they saw any truth behind it. As your friends, they will be more than willing to listen and help evaluate. Besides, each of them will have his/her own unique perspective to add to the plate.
Often times when I get negative feedback, I would talk it over with some of my good friends and process the feedback with them. We would objectively discuss and evaluate the things that could be work on. It becomes kind of like a mini-troubleshooting discussion, and it can be very enlightening. Having these alternative viewpoints helped to maintain the objectivity.

4. Reply to the person in kindness

Since the person took time to share his/her feedback with you, you should take time out to give a proper reply. Generally, I use the following flow for my replies:
Reiterate his/her concerns, and confirm this with him/her so both of you are on the same page
Let him/her know your point of view, whether you agree/disagree, along with supporting reasons why
Create a open space for discussion
Align/agree on the conclusions/next steps to move forward. Sometimes it’s possible that there can’t be an agreement met, and if that’s the case it’s about agreeing to disagree
Thank him/her for sharing.

5. Recognize receiving negative feedback is a positive thing

Ultimately, I see negative feedback as positive, because it shows there are people who want you to become better. As in Randy Pausch said in the The Last Lecture, critics “are the ones telling you they still love you and care”. If the person didn’t care at all, he/she wouldn’t even have provided the feedback, would he/she?
Negative feedback also tells us our opportunities for growth. No matter where we are in life, all of us will have blind spots we don’t know about. These blind spots prevent us from reaching the next stage of growth. While negative feedback may not be pleasant to receive, they give us a different perspective to consider. By learning from more different perspectives, we can grow much faster.
If I look back, the times when I learned and grew the most were when I received negative feedback, not when I received positive feedback. How would things be if everyone around you simply praised and complimented you all the time? It would be nice at the beginning, but after a while you become oblivious on how you can improve. This doesn’t mean positive feedback doesn’t play a role – it helps to encourage and inspire us. Negative feedback has its own role to play too. It is when I receive criticisms about my work that I become more aware of things I was blind to before and how I can better improve next time. Especially when the negative feedback triggers some sort of emotional response, I know that means it has struck some chord inside me, and I would look inside to understand what’s making me feel that way. Often times that helps to trigger a new breakthrough in my personal growth, which I then proceed to share with my readers on my blog, which benefits many more people.

6. Learn from the feedback.

There’s always something to learn from every feedback. Ask yourself:
What have I learned about myself?
What have I learned about others?
How can I improve? What can I do differently from now on?
Your learning can either be about (i) the feedback (ii) how you dealt with the feedback (iii) or both. Whenever I get a negative feedback, I would process it and think about what I can learn from. I could ignore it, but then that means nothing came out of the experience. So far, I have learned new from almost every negative feedback I have received. Add this up over time, and that’s a lot of new things I have learned. No doubt, these have been critical in my personal journey of growth.

I hope this tips and learnings will be helpful to you in dealing with negative feedback.