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Effective Ways to Face Criticism & Feedback

October 02, 2014

This article speaks to the challenges women face to perform their jobs competently and make difficult decisions, while simultaneously coming across as behaving nicely toward everyone.

Learning to respond to praise and criticism, without getting engulfed by it, is a necessary skill to possess in the workplace. Feedback provides applicable insight about the people we want to reach, influence, and engage. A new study by tech entrepreneur and linguist, Kieran Snyder, found differences between workplace reviews given to men and women. Female employees received more negative feedback, including some kind of personality criticism, than male employees. Many women do not have a “tool kit” that will allow them to persevere in the face of such criticism. Often women do not voice their ideas or pursue their most important work because of dependence on praise or fears of criticism. This New York Times article provides effective ways for women to interpret feedback and criticism.