Don't Shoot the Messenger

I was reminded of an article I read in Harvard Business Review titled How to Handle Surprise Criticism. There's a lot of good advice in the article but the most poignant bits are:

1. Look beyond your feelings.
2. Look beyond their delivery.
3. Don't agree or disagree. Just collect data.

It was written about 6 months ago, the day before I shelved my first startup. I was in the thick of a new normal in my daily life experience: I receive a lot of surprise criticism - and I haven't historically been the best at taking it. However, in my quest to be an effective entrepreneur and executive, I've realized that the key is being coachable. Always.

I have found that this is a rare quality among managers and leaders since the autocratic, appeal-to-authority approach is the default mode for most people. I always thought that taking a stand, being vocal and challenging the conventional thought process was a form of strength. It's lionized in movies and NYT bestsellers. Yet I've realized that it takes quite a bit more strength to be cognitively flexible and emotionally mastered in the face of a critical onslaught... especially from someone with formal or institutional power.

For entrepreneurs that operate in the earliest stages of business discovery, you are confronted with a lot of passionate feedback about everything that you are doing wrong. People in general, are not emotionally mastered and they relate to their feelings, thoughts and perspectives as if it is the undeniable reality of what is happening (rather than coming from the perspective that they are just feelings and thoughts, separate from reality). When given the chance to make you wrong, most people will take it. Anyone who has been a server knows this. And I think it's mostly subconscious - most people would be disgusted with themselves if we showed a video of them ripping into someone without the power to defend themselves or dole out retribution.

But we don't have that luxury. What now?

Being able to take criticism as data collection by separating what's being said, how it's being said and the emotional undercurrent of the message connotes, to me, someone committed to mastering the art of living. Here's some recent examples in my life that reminded me of the value this skill will deliver:

* Hearing the faculty constantly create a new complaint about the coffee I deliver (for free) to them while I worked on my laptop in the lobby were it was served. No change was made to the coffee, yet the complaints would change every day. It's interesting hearing what people say about you when they don't think you are around. And over time I learned which ratio of grounds-to-water delivers the least amount of complaints.

*I watched, and loved, the TED Talk that General Stanley McChrsytal delivered on what he's learned in leadership. I've had a number of responses, ranging from inquisitive to cautionary, about McChrystal's questionability as a leader. Frankly, I don't care. Remember, it's about objective data collection - McChrystal gives a great speech AND he's got a questionable past. Sounds like every other human I know.

I learned about the literary fallacy of ad hominem when I got a C on one of my high school english papers. From that point, I opt to separate the message from the messenger. F. Scott Fitzgerald once said that holding two seemingly conflicting notions in your mind at the same time is a sign of marked intelligence.

You are free to discount someone based on the way they deliver the message or the fact that they made mistakes at some point in their life. As a result, you may just be missing out on a highly valuable (though poorly packaged) idea or perspective that could make a big difference in our life. You may also be signaling the upper bound of your ability to learn - a potential bottleneck if you want to significantly alter the trajectory of your life.