“How Do You View Giving and Receiving Criticism?” - Boyd Clarke

Being open to criticism is one of those things that we tend to think we're better at than we really are. It's never fun to listen to someone tell us what we're doing wrong, but like Boyd points out, criticism is often necessary if we want to grow.

So how can we give and take criticism that fosters growth without being discouraging or discouraged? At least part of the answer has to be humility and transparency. If we can help cultivate workplaces that are safe places to fail, it might become a lot easier to learn from our mistakes.

Want to hear more? You can find this and dozens of other videos over at the High Calling YouTube channel.

TRANSCRIPT: The challenge with receiving criticism is that it's very hard, sometimes, for you not to take it personally. Obviously, if I'm dealing with my employees and trying to get them to grow, sometimes I will be giving them what I hope is constructive criticism. If you're not being criticized, you're probably not—through your creativity, initiative, and drive—pushing the envelope. Sometimes it's terribly unfair. When I was a small company CEO in a public company, every once in a while—if I felt particularly masochistic—I would go on the Yahoo message boards and read what people were saying about me. It's striking to read what people will say about you when they know you can't figure out who they are. So you look at that and you understand you're not going to please all of the people all of the time. You're not even going to please some of the people all of the time. So you just have to learn to ride it out. It's not fun, but it comes with the territory.