Feedback is a gift. It gives you new perspectives and helps you improve things. People feel like feedback is a gift the most when it’s positive. But all feedback is like a gift — even if it’s criticism.
If you don’t care about something, you won’t want to give feedback on it or criticise it. But if you care, you’ll want to improve it by letting people know. James Baldwin once said, “I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticise her perpetually.” I love this idea of wanting to perpetually criticise something because you like it and want to improve it — it’s a great attitude to have. The most common example of criticising out of love is when parents critique their children to help them do more or avoid something.
It’s easy to get frustrated by people who aren’t giving feedback to help — only to critique with malice. Even if what they said isn’t useful, at least you’ve learned about their character. In cases where you don’t know who they are — like internet trolls — they’re doing it because — well, they’re trolls. It’s nothing personal.
As a product manager, I’m always looking for criticism because it’s my job to deliver the best user experience. Most of the time, feedback is initially unhelpful and vague — sometimes it can even feel like pure criticism. You have to dig deeper by asking questions like, “Why don’t you like it?”, “What makes you think that?” and “Why do you feel that?”. Eventually, the feedback will almost always be useful. It’s best to focus the feedback on understanding the problems better — not on finding new solutions.
The way that people give and receive criticism can be very different across countries. This affects how direct the person giving feedback is and how much the person receiving the feedback feels personally attacked. Check out “The Culture Map” book to learn interesting insights into this. The book really helped me in my job to better understand ideal communication styles when dealing with people from different cultures.
So, the next time you receive criticism, put your ego aside and treat it like a gift that they care enough about your work or you.