CHAPTER 21

Resilience in the Moment

DURING DIFFICULT INTERACTIONS, you may begin to question your perceptions about yourself. For example, suppose a direct report says, “I didn’t attend the meeting because I didn’t think you valued my ideas.” In response, you wonder to yourself, “Maybe I’m not a competent manager after all.”

For many people, the sense that their self-image is being challenged creates intense emotions. These feelings can become overwhelming, making it virtually impossible to converse productively about any subject. For this reason, be sure to address feelings about self-image—in yourself and in the other person—during tough conversations.

Understand Self-Image

Your self-image comes from many different assumptions that you’ve made about yourself:

• “I’m an effective manager.”
• “I’m a good person.”
• “I care about my employees.”
• “I’m committed to my organization’s success.”

This set of assumptions may help you meet a need for self-esteem, competence, and appreciation from others. Few people like to view themselves in a negative light—as incompetent, uncaring, or disloyal.

Why Denial Is Common

Many people view self-image from an “either/or” mindset: “I’m either loyal or disloyal” or “I’m either caring or uncaring.” Unfortunately, this perspective makes it impossible for people to tolerate criticism and negative feedback from others.

For instance, if a colleague says, “I was really disappointed when you didn’t support my proposal,” you might conclude, “I can’t possibly be a loyal person if I don’t support my peer’s ideas.” If deciding that you’re disloyal feels intolerable, you may practice denial and shoot back with something like, “I did support your proposal.”

Other Reactions to Threats

Other reactions to self-image challenges include:

• Burying the feelings, adopting a detached manner, and resorting to generalizations: “Let’s calm down and establish precise standard operating procedures here.”
• Striking back at the other person defensively: “Are you calling me a liar?!”
• Refusing to face the disagreement directly: “Let’s just forget about it and move on.”

None of these responses enables you to listen to feedback and make the changes needed to improve the way you interact with others.

How to Respond to Criticism

by Peter Bregman

AT ONE POINT OR ANOTHER, we’ve all been blindsided by criticism and reacted poorly. I remember once leading a project that I thought was going great—until my two colleagues took me aside to tell me I was being controlling and overbearing. I immediately became defensive. I had trouble listening to them, and I became self-conscious and awkward for the rest of the project.

Surprise criticism about an issue you haven’t perceived yourself often has that effect. It emotionally overpowers you. But you can respond more productively. As you listen to the feedback and your adrenaline starts to flow, pause, take a deep breath, and then follow this game plan.

Acknowledge and set aside your feelings. We call it constructive criticism, and it usually is, but it can also feel painful, destabilizing, and personal. Notice and acknowledge to yourself the hurt, anger, embarrassment, or insufficiency you might feel. Recognize the feelings, label them as feelings, and then put them aside so the noise doesn’t crowd out your hearing.

Also, look beyond the delivery of the criticism. Feedback is hard to give, and your critic may not be skilled at doing it well, but that doesn’t mean it’s not valuable and insightful. Avoid confusing the package with the message.

Next, don’t agree or disagree. Just collect the data. Ask questions. Solicit examples. Recap what you’re hearing, all in the spirit of understanding. Let go of the need to respond. That will reduce your defensiveness and give you space to really listen.

Criticism, especially surprise criticism, is useful information about how someone else perceives you. Following these steps will help make sure you can fully understand it and can learn from it.

Peter Bregman is CEO of Bregman Partners, Inc., a global management consulting firm that advises CEOs and their leadership teams.

Handle Threats to Your Self-Image

Several strategies can help you effectively handle challenges to your self-image:

• Understand your self-image. List all the assumptions that influence your perception of yourself. By anticipating that you might experience defensiveness over threats to these particular beliefs, you may be better able to control negative feelings if they do arise.
• Adopt a “both/and” mindset. Instead of assuming that you can be, for example, either competent or incompetent, remind yourself that you and others are a mixture of positive and negative. You’re likely competent at some things and not so skilled at others.
• Accept imperfection. Acknowledge that everyone makes mistakes at times. The key is to learn from them.

Adapted from “Address Emotions” in the Harvard ManageMentor topic “Difficult Interactions” (Harvard Business Publishing, 2016, electronic)