Critical Feedback

You don’t like it, do you?

 

In an article published in the Harvard Business Review (subscription required), researchers found that most of us avoid people who give us feedback that is more negative than our view of ourselves.

Even if that feedback would help us be better employees, spouses, humans…

Conversely, we tend to work on relationships with people who only see our positive qualities.

It’s important to note that we are all mostly like this.

None of us like to hear negative feedback about ourselves.

Disconfirming feedback threatens our views of our own skills. It disturbs the mental image we have of ourselves. It doesn’t match with the narrative we have written of ourself.

It’s easy to spot in others, harder to admit to ourselves.

And it makes it all the more important that you find someone you trust, someone you like already, who will tell you the truth — including the parts you don’t like hearing — occasionally.

Who’s that person for you?