What are some best practices for responding to criticism from your audience?

Radically accepting that you can’t please everyone is a way to acknowledge there will be people who disagree with you or criticize something you said. Don’t take it personal and and move on with your day.

After offering the LinkedIn Coaching Services for over 10 years (independently of LinkedIn Corporation,) we ran into what’s commonly known in social media feeds as ‘trolls’ or ‘haters’. A bit unnerving at first, for sure, because it’s simply human nature to take things personally. We’ve learned to be accepting of all opinions, remembering that everyone of us is entitled to have one. And they may not always favor or agree with our mindset! Differences of opinions make the world go round. Learning to tolerate and even embrace those differences is a huge advantage in business. We stick with what we know to be proven and most beneficial for our clients. And we simply don’t dwell on what others think!

My advice is simple. In a business that requires you to speak to an audience then you can't afford to have thin skin. If you think comments on social media will damage your confidence or motivation, then don't read them. You can't control someone's opinion, especially if its a stranger. Focus on what you can control. Seek guidance from a trusted source like a mentor or colleague and ask for their input on how to improve.

In my experience, it is best to "sit" with the feedback and revisit is over a short period of time. In our hyper-connected world, we often feel that we need to process and respond immediately; but feedback, good or bad, often looks (and feels) different with some distance.

All too often feedback is conflated with criticism and viewed as a negative. Feedback should always be used as a tool to improve. The way I look at it is, if someone took the time to give me the feedback, the least I can do is listen. The key though is you have to be able to evaluate your own performance honestly. Know your strengths and weaknesses. Otherwise any feedback will be useless.

I can't stress the usefulness of follow-up questions enough when talking about feedback. If you did a task, then someone gives feedback on that task, right away there are two viewpoints on how the task should be done. Remember they are looking at it from the perspective of the observer, while you are from the perspective of the participant. Any follow-up question should also be open ended (no yes/no questions). Ask how they would have performed the task. What steps would they have taken to overcome obstacles you ran into in completing the task. What are they seeking to improve overall. For example to do the task faster, use less resources, be more detailed, etc. Bottom-line is feedback should be a discussion, not an argument.

In my opinion feedback is never negative. Only our interpretation of the feedback can be negative. It should never be personal in nature, but designed to make us better at what we do. It's probably more important to learn how to receive feedback than just about any other skill. By doing so you can tap into the resources of the "old timers" who have doing the job for a long time and are a wealth of knowledge.