Ep# 20 Resilience Under Fire: Navigating Criticism with Grace

Hi there and welcome to the Women's Room Legal Division podcast. So today I wanted to talk about a topic that I was inspired to think about because I came across a couple of young lawyers recently who were clearly suffering somewhat because they'd gone through the experience of getting told off for not doing something quite right at work.

And they were really struggling with this. And I could see they were just feeling really, really bad about it. And it really took me back to times in my career where. Things haven't gone well, and I've been absolutely told off, whether it was by someone more senior, sometimes even a peer, or certainly clients.

And so I wanted to talk through it a little bit and think about ways that we can handle it as optimally as possible, recognizing that it will, Always, always be difficult. So I'm not talking about, constructive criticism that someone sits down and gives you, or that you receive in an appraisal also sometimes difficult.

And I will talk about that at some point when I do a podcast all about feedback and how to give really good feedback, how to receive feedback. But I'm really talking about being told off real time. So someone being quite cross. and telling you that they're not happy with you. And I guess there are two reasons why I wanted to talk about this.

One is to help you deal with it when it does happen, and certainly not to hold on for it for more time than it's useful to. And then second, I want to talk about it so that you can be prepared in advance for the fact it may happen and have thought about how you will deal with it when it does because I can pretty much guarantee you that no matter how amazing, perfect, fantastic you are, it is going to happen at some point and it will probably feel pretty horrible.

And you've probably heard me talk on other podcasts about rejection. So we have a really primal need not to be rejected. If we're rejected, when we're babies, we're going to die. and if you think about it, when you're a child, when you, when you are a baby, most people, what most people are experiencing in early childhood is pretty much unconditional love.

And then something happens. That makes us realize that, oh, my goodness, that love isn't always unconditional. Sometimes it might be being told off or suddenly realizing, you know, that a sibling comes along. You're not the most important person in the universe. And so we're sort of always striving to get back to that place of certainty and security.

And certainly being told off can sometimes take us back to some of those early. moments of realizing that, you know, unconditional love and complete and utter joy at our very existence and breathing isn't perhaps going to carry on forever. And then the other problem is that lawyers are generally just not used to getting told off or doing things badly.

often they've done incredibly well all throughout their academic career. So they've done really well at school. They've sometimes been head boy or head girl, rarely told off, rarely get anything below an A. And often are quite conformist in terms of personality types. That's why the law attracts them.

The law's all about rules and about, you know, how we, how we apply those rules in our daily life. So often people are quite conformist, but certainly A type personalities who drive themselves really hard. Some can sometimes be perfectionist. So you can imagine for those sorts of personalities with that sort of background and experience of academic life.

Getting told off can be incredibly difficult, particularly getting told off in the sphere of work. So we might be a bit more used to it in our home environment, but when it comes to academics or work, we're certainly not used to it. And obviously sometimes being told off will be completely justified. We might have done something wrong.

We need to be reprimanded, but sometimes it won't be justified and that can feel really difficult. Sometimes it's delivered. Well, the message delivered well, but I have to say that more often than not, it's delivered really badly, sometimes appallingly badly, sometimes accompanied by yelling and high emotion that is also very difficult to receive.

and again, it will often take us back to a memory from childhood. So it's, you know, it's a really difficult thing to handle, but we probably don't think about it much because I guess we're always hoping that it's never going to happen. And we're always going to get things a hundred percent, right? So, so I'm going to break down.

Being told off, into a few phases and at the end, I'll recap to go through those phases. So you can think about how do you want to deal with it? So I guess whatever happens, happens, you've done something wrong. Well, someone perceives that you've done something wrong. So the first thing I want to do. To you to think about is your immediate reaction in front of that person who is telling you off.

So in front of your critic, so you're probably going to, you know, want to just either run away or defend yourself. This phase is really about survival. Without making anything worse. So what I want you to do during this phase is not follow your instincts. I want you to take a deep breath and I want you to not respond.

You're going to go into a fight or flight mode. The blood will flow away from the rational part of your brain and towards the more emotional center of your brain where the amygdala is that triggers our fight or flight responses. If getting all the blood's going to go to your muscles to get them ready to run away or to, to fight back.

Because you're going to feel like you are being attacked and you are being attacked. And, and if you've heard my, my podcast about the voice in your head, it's going to be your chimp that will be in control. It's not your rational brain. And you'll either want to attack back, or you want to definitely go on the defensive.

And neither of those is going to work well with the other person, who's going to feel like you're just not listening. And, and they're probably going to be right about that. And in fact, that's one of the things about constructive feedback or developmental feedback that often we still, even if it's, even if it's delivered in a sort of calm manner, so not being told off, we often go into this fight or flight mode.

And so we do stop listening. And so people, you'll often hear people saying, I just don't understand. I keep them, keep giving them this feedback, but it's almost as if they're not listening. And the reason is because they are not listening because they're in fight or flight mode. So I don't want you to respond.

I want you to see what's happening in front of you, almost like a movie and take some deep breaths. Whilst they're talking or shouting or whatever they're doing. But I want you to look like you're listening. Ideally, actually be listening because it's useful to know what they're saying and to be able to remember what they're saying.

But I want you to look like you're listening. So using your body language to nod, listen to them, give them acknowledgement that you're listening to them, that you're hearing what they're saying. Make eye contact. So don't just look down. You're being told off. You're like the naughty child in the corner. I want you to make eye contact.

So you're confident you're listening to them. You're hearing what they say. And then when you do speak after taking some deep breaths, if you can stay in control, this is what I want you to do. If you really feel that you can't stay in control, I want you to get out of there. So say some sort of holding response, like I've heard what you said.

can I come back to you? I feel a bit emotional at the moment. So you can acknowledge that you're feeling a bit emotional, but say, I heard what you said. Can I come back to you and get out of there? The most important thing in this phase is to acknowledge what the other person feels and what they've said.

And often paraphrasing back what they've said can be used, can be really useful because then they'll feel like you have heard. I hear, so you're, I know you're really upset with me because I didn't send the thing out on time or I didn't do the thing the client wanted. but if you do nothing else, say, you know, I've heard what you said.

I, I can see you're really upset. So you're acknowledging how they feel. I can see you're really frustrated. I can see this is really difficult for you with the client. and the apology will calm them down, but it doesn't have to be for what you have or haven't done. It can just be about acknowledging their feelings and.

You know, whether those feelings are justified or not, and then you create some sort of holding response so that you can come back to them at a later stage. So maybe say, I'm going to go away again and see how I can solve this situation, or if I can make this situation better, or let me go and talk to X, Y, and Z, and I'll come back to you to let you know how I've I've dealt with it.

So you're trying to make them feel they've heard you calm them down and make them feel like you've got a plan if it's possible to make the situation better. One thing you could try. I don't know whether you'd really be able to try this. in a live situation is a tip from sort of hypnotherapy is if you've matched the person's energy.

So they're really, really frustrated. And I can see how frustrated you are and then just start to slow down and lower your voice. So you're leading them to a calmer environment. So you can start quite high with them and quite energetic if they're being energetic, but then try and slow your voice down, make it softer, make it slower.

Without coming across as condescending, so you can't do it too obviously, but you could certainly try that because what you're trying to do is you're trying to calm their emotional center down. So you started with yours by taking the deep breaths and not saying too much, not going on the defensive. Now what you want to do is try and calm their emotional center or their chimp is how I would put it.

Talk about it. If you remember from the chimp paradox podcast, where I'm talking about the voice in your head to chimps. So two emotional brains in two different people cannot negotiate, cannot talk to one another. You need at least a chimp and a human and ideally two humans. So two rational brains.

talking to one another. Then phase two is you moving away from the person who, the critic, the person who's told you off, and then your reaction when you're away from that person. And you may indeed need to vent at this stage because you may feel That you've been treated really badly, that it's completely unjustified what's happened.

So you may need to vent and that's completely fine. ideally don't vent at another person yet. Go somewhere, somewhere private. Go to your room. Go to the loo. Go out on a walk. Mutter to yourself as you're walking along. Write down how you're feeling. But try and do a bit of venting on your own first of all.

And then if you need to vent to someone, ideally Do it to someone who's not at work. I mean, if you have really, really close friends at work, then potentially do it to them. But remember this, this is a workplace often, if you're in this highly charged emotional state and you go and talk to someone, they're going to remember, they might well tell other people about it.

So ideally vent alone, if you can, or otherwise to a close friend or family member, who's not. And I think getting outside, doing something physical to really calm down this fight or flight, reaction that you're having. So deep breathing, particularly extending the exhale. So you're going to try and basically trigger or bring alive your parasympathetic nervous system to calm down this fight or flight reaction.

So get outside, get a cup of coffee. No matter how busy you are, going back to your desk at this stage is not going to be easy. You could even, you know, go to the loo, jump up and down a few times, take some deep breaths. Then come back to your desk and then think through phase three, which is, can you do anything to solve the problem or make the situation better?

So you'll only be able to do this when you're in a calm state and your rational brain is able to think things through. So, think this through before starting to analyze what the person said and all the terrible things they told you you were or you hadn't done right. Think through, is there anything that I can do to make this situation better?

Because that's going to make you feel better if you can come up with a plan. And it's also going to make the other person feel better. So, so, you know, what is, is there some sort of action that I can take or is there some sort of plan? That I can formulate and take some action to go one step towards better.

If you're not sure, if you're really not sure about what you're doing, then do go back and check in with your critic to check that they think that's what you should do. Because again, you're probably still in a bit of a heightened state. Sometimes we can take action in that state that actually makes things worse.

So just make sure you're calm, you're thinking things through. If you're really not sure, check in with the person who, who, who told you off. Or someone else to check it feels like the right thing to do. But even coming up with a plan that you can tell the other person about is going to be really good, even if you don't execute it immediately.

And now you coming up with that plan, trying to work through, can I do something to make it better? Will have calmed you down enough so you can go into phase four, which is analyzing the feedback. So, I want you to try really, really hard here to ignore the tone, ignore how irritating it is the way they delivered the feedback, ignore how unfair it feels that they don't understand how hard you've been working and that you're only a human being.

So, I want you to try and get rid of the emotion and see, is there anything useful? In what's just happened that I can learn from. So, you know, did, did I in fact do this thing late? How would I stop doing? How would I make sure I didn't do it late before? Did I send the wrong piece of paper to someone? Did I send an email to the wrong person?

So, what is it I did wrong? Did I not? Did I not leave things in the best state before I went on holiday? Could I have done something different? And you will want to resist this with all of your body and all of your brain, because you won't want to accept that you've done something wrong. At least that's my understanding of, you know, how I tend to feel.

But just try and think, okay, Is there something I could learn from this so that I don't end up in this situation again? and then, you know, you want to try and squeeze any bit of value you can out of this not very nice experience. even if it's just how to deal with someone who's completely unreasonable and is making unreasonable demands of you, like, what could you do differently next time so that they feel their demands are being met, even if they are unreasonable.

And at the end of this, I will talk about where criticism is completely unreasonable or you're being bullied. so in fact, often when we are in these difficult situations, people will be looking at us quite closely.

And often, This can be when people are most impressed by us. So when something really difficult has happened and we handle it well and with maturity and calm, they can actually be really, really impressed. And one of the things I always say to people when they're not prepared, don't get a promotion or a bonus that they want.

Often, you know, people will be watching them very carefully, and they will be really impressed if they seem to be handling the situation. What's happened really well and really maturely. So, you know, I don't want you to go into some sort of shell or put up a barrier. It's not going to be good for your long term relationship.

Going back and telling the person how you're dealing with this issue could be really good for your, for your long term relationship with the person and your general reputation around the office.so before you do go back, a couple more things I want you to do before you do go back and speak to your critic.

after the initial outburst, first thing is really to try and look at things from their point of view. So you can see things I'm asking you to do things that get a little bit more difficult at each stage. And obviously this is very difficult, but hopefully by now you're so calm. You thought, can I take anything away from this experience?

Okay. Let's just think about them. What's really driving them? What sort of pressures are they under? Were they perhaps really stressed? Did they have a client who's being really unreasonable? who's putting pressure on them? Or a boss who's been being really unreasonable? What, what drives them? Have a think about what drives them.

You know, what, what do they really care about? They might be a people pleaser, or they might be a perfectionist. you know, so is that really driving them? Are they insecure in some way or, or are they, you know, they're coming up for a promotion, so they're very worried about how everything they're involved is going to, going to look.

They need to look good to others. So just think about what, what are the pressures that are applying to them? And can you understand them? And can you even maybe empathize with them if you were in that situation as well? So, you know, if someone's feeling really insecure, you've done something that's going to make them look bad.

then perhaps you can see as a human being why they might be reacting the way they are. Doesn't mean that they're right to react the way they are and doesn't mean they're the best boss, or the best work colleague to be reacting the way they are, but can you perhaps understand it a little bit more?

And that will just help you when you're going back and dealing with them. And then the next thing I want you to do is ideally write it down I want you to do a sort of analysis of exactly what happened. So what happened? What did you feel? So you probably felt? I don't know. Attacked, fear, anger, sad, frustration, maybe.

What did you say to yourself? So what did you feel first? What did you say to yourself? So maybe it was things like, this is just so unfair. I'm working so hard. Can they not see how hard I'm working? I'm doing my best. I don't think they really appreciate me. Now other people are going to think badly of me.

They're going to tell other people this is a nightmare. Maybe I'll get a bad review. Maybe I won't get a bonus. Maybe I'll lose my job. maybe it'll be hard to get another one. You can see there's a risk that we go down into this cycle of, you know, Oh my God, you know, this is a nightmare. Everything's going to go horribly wrong now because of this telling off.

And ultimately, if I keep saying to you when, when you're telling me about this, if we were working together, if I kept saying, what does that mean? What does that mean? So I'll lose my job. I think ultimately you'd probably come down to something like. Maybe it means, you know, maybe they think I'm not good enough.

Maybe that means I'm not good enough because usually there's some level of insecurity that's causing us to react with an emotion if we don't hold onto it for a long time. So generally, when we have an emotional reaction, apparently, that emotional reaction, the initial response goes on for about 90 seconds.

After that it's, it's only maintained if we start using our brain To elongate that emotion with the thoughts that we're telling ourselves in our head. So often that will be what's going on when you're in this emotional fight or flight response in terms of what you're saying to yourself and you're continuing those emotions of fear, anger, frustration.

So then I want you to think about what could you say to yourself instead? So you know what your emotional reaction is, what you might have been saying to yourself in, in your head, but what else could you say instead? So maybe it could be something along the lines of their reaction may have nothing to do with me.

They may just be having a really bad day and I can understand that because of the pressures they're under X, Y, Z.their reaction doesn't mean they don't value me as a whole person. Person as a whole employee. It just means they're not happy with the piece of work that I delivered.I can make this right.

I can make this better. If I go back to them in a rational way, they'll see I care and I'm sorry, and be confident that I can still do good work. It's only one mistake compared to all of the other amazing work that I've done. I'm only human. I know I did my best. if you didn't do your best, then, you know, maybe you're, you're just human.

I can't always do my best all the time. I'll do better next time. So thinking through some of the things you could say to yourself instead, and I would love you to, if you could write these things down. So write down, You know, what would I feel if I got told off? What am I likely to be saying to myself?

And what could I say instead? And it's these, what could I say instead that you want to, I want you to try and really solidify in your brain so that if and when this does happen to you, they're sort of there for you to call upon. And, you know, one of the great ones to, you know, to just, you know, have in your head is life is not fair.

Because we all know absolutely life isn't fair, but we all really feel like it should be. So sometimes we will get told off and it's absolutely not fair. But, you know, sometimes life isn't fair. So, the next phase, which is pretty much the Final phase is about going back to your critics or going back to that person who has told you off, which generally will be a good idea as long as you're calm and you've been through all the steps that I've talked through.

So ideally sleep on it. Sleeping makes a huge difference. You know, our brains doing all sorts of reorganization and analysis. whilst we sleep, and you might feel quite differently about things when you wake up in the morning. so maybe sleep on it. You've done all your pre work, and what I want you to be now is strategic in the way you handle the relationship and how you handle the communication with them.

I don't want it to be about what's right and wrong, and you're explaining to them why it happened, because I want you to appear confident and not defensive. So again, go back to them, acknowledging, acknowledge their feelings again. You're trying to stroke their emotional chimp to get them nice and calm before you, before you talk to them.

you might want to tell them about the plan or the, that you've made or the action that you're going to take to make things better.if it's appropriate, you could ask them for more detail, if they didn't give you detail about what it was that you did wrong, and why they weren't happy, maybe you give them detail on how you're going to improve things in the future, if you're, you know, if you're often late with things, you know, how you're going to approach things differently in the future.

if, if you really did do something wrong, then take responsibility. So even though you might not want to say, you know, I'm really sorry, I know I didn't get that right. and maybe ask them their advice about how would you have done it, not in a defense for how would you have done it, not in that sort of way, but ask their advice about how do you think I could do things differently or, you know, how, how do you manage to prepare for these things?

Or if you're going away, how do you make sure everything's in, in good order? I would think about challenge, but again, I've asked you to. Try and be strategic about the relationship. So it's not about who's, what's, who's right and who's wrong. It's about how do you make this relationship as, productive and effective as it possibly can be.

And sometimes that won't involve explaining to that person why they were wrong and you were right. it might be acknowledging that they had some level of point, even though they weren't completely, you know, they weren't completely right about what happened, but sometimes just acknowledging that they were frustrated and that they were, they felt that you'd let them down in some ways can, you know, can be really helpful.

If they're still emotional and they're being, still being a bit extreme in their reactions. So saying, well, you're just always late. I can't rely on you. You know, maybe. Take them to a middle, a midpoint saying, I know sometimes I'm late. This is what I'm doing to work on it. So you don't have to acknowledge that you're always, always late because I'm sure that's not true.

you, but you could ask for more detail if you really do need it to understand how you can make things better. And as I said, asking people's advice always goes down really well. It sort of resets their brain into a different place where they, you know, effectively to some degree you're flattering them because you're, you're You're asking them how, you know, how would they advise you to do something differently?

And it means that they feel that you've really, really heard them. what might be interesting to think about as well is if they apologize, because if they have been over emotional in the way they've criticized you, then they might well apologize to you. So there, I would say, you know, be gracious. Tell them you appreciate their apology.

you could say things to them like, you know, I hope you know how important this job is to me. I hope you know how hard I try. you could say those things to them if they don't apologize, that might be a nice way to round off a conversation with them. So then, you know, hopefully it's all done and dusted.

You might actually leave your relationship in a better place. If you are still ruminating on what happened and how unfair it was, and you're suddenly finding yourself, you know, you're walking down the street and you start thinking about it again, or you wake up in the middle of the night and you're thinking about it.

I mean, that happens a lot, I think, particularly when we've been told off. what it means is you sort of haven't let go of the event. You haven't completely processed it. And if I think about, When I used to get told off by, you know, clients, which, you know, I used to get shouted at in the, in the good old days back when people did a lot of shouting and throwing in the office, you know, I'd get shouted at quite regularly by clients and I'd come home and cry for a lot of the weekend, which now seems crazy.

My husband was much better at dealing with it. He'd be like, they're a complete tosser. You know, I don't, you know, they were really angry. They're just a complete tosser. I'd be, I'd be crying. I got better at dealing with it. And I, you know, I can remember sitting somewhere sort of with literally the phone.

Held away from my ear as someone shouted for about 15 minutes because one of my associates had put the phone down on him. you know, by that stage I was thinking I was able to divorce the criticism and the telling off from who I was as a person, or as a whole. So, again. You know, just trying to have confidence that you are good at what you do.

There will be things that go wrong. Sometimes there will be mistakes, but really what you're trying to do is deal with this person who's in a highly emotional state and you don't want it to, to come in, To you and make you feel bad about yourself as a whole person. So like we say about children, it's not that you're a bad person.

It's just that action that you did was not good. So, you know, they're angry with you. They're cross with you. It doesn't mean anything about you as a person or as a lawyer. and if it's still really coming, you know, you can't let it go. I would do some things like, we quite often did at work with my people in my team.

you know, we'd put their name on a piece of paper, we'd screw it up, we'd jump up and down on it, we'd tear it up, we'd throw it in the bin. Sometimes doing something physical, if you really can't let go of it, can be really helpful. you know, and just think, you know, I want you to think about the criticism coming in, coming towards you, but there's a glass ceiling.

pain in front of you and the criticism comes in and it hits the pain. You can see it, you can acknowledge it, but then it just slides down to the floor. It doesn't come into your heart. You know, one mistake really doesn't define you. and then I guess I think it is worth saying something about if it really is inappropriate criticism, if it's continual and it's unjustified.

if it's too emotional, then you do need to think about, is there something you should do to make other people aware of this behavior? The worst thing you can ever do is start to try and please someone who's a bully. Cause if you really are being bullied, then trying to continually please them and not stand up to them.

Is just going to escalate the situation. So, so I think you need to think about it is the behavior really inappropriate. Maybe write down what you would say to this person, if you could be open with them and say how you feel and the impact their behavior is having on you, because then you'll be able to look at it rationally.

It's in writing. You are doing this to me. You're saying this to me. This is how this is making me feel. It's making me feel insecure. It's making me feel like I'm not good at my job. It's therefore making it harder for me to do my job. So think about writing it down and analyzing exactly what's going on.

And that will probably tell you whether it's at a tipping point of whether you need to go and tell someone else about it. And if the answer to that is yes, then, then I would think about going and seeing HR and talking through with them what's going on and asking their advice about what you should do.

things are much, much better nowadays. people are expected to behave professionally and reasonably in the workplace. Obviously not everyone can maintain this. 100 percent of the time, everyone's under a lot of pressure. Often they don't have enough sleep. So we have to, you know, accept that people aren't always going to behave in a perfect manner.

But if it tips over into over into inappropriate behavior, then I would really encourage you to take action because it's very unlikely that you're the only person that is suffering with this problem. As we've seen from many of the many issues that have come to light in the past few years, it just takes one person to speak up and really Change things.

So, so quick recap on what to do. So first of all, think about how you are going to react and how you are going to handle this when it happens, because it is likely to happen. So step one, immediate reaction in front of the other person. Just get out of there, say as little as possible. Step two, your reaction away from that person.

So vent, but ideally vent alone or to someone you really, really trust. Step three, think about, can you solve the issue? Can you make one step towards better to make things a bit better? Can you come up with a plan? Step four, analyze what just happened. Analyze the feedback. Is there anything useful you can take away that's going to help you be even better in the future?

Step five, think about your critic's point of view. Can you understand them a bit more? Can you understand what drives them? Step six, most important, do this trigger analysis. So what did you feel? What words were running through your head that you were feeling? and then what could you say to yourself instead, that would be a more rational reaction and then go back to the person, who told you off, who criticized you and go back and tell them how you're going to make things better.

Tell them that you've heard them tell them how you're going to be different in the future. Yeah. And then just make sure you let it go and don't think about it anymore. So look, I really hope this doesn't happen to you, but I do hope that if it does, you can just put on this podcast and listen to it and it will make you feel much, much better.

Remember, you are an amazing, amazing person with lots of brilliant qualities. This is just one thing that went wrong. It's just one person who's told you off. It really doesn't define you. and you may well learn from it. Thank you very much.