How to Receive Criticism: 3 Kinds of Critics You Can Ignore

An important part of receiving criticism is carefully considering the source.

Part of leadership is handling criticism, so I’ve tried to share some things to help you along those lines.

To start, I shared a five part series on how to give criticism with integrity:

Now, I am looking at how to receive criticism. The first step is to not take it personally. You can embrace and learn from criticism from both unfriendly and friendly critics.

As strange as it may sound, we actually need criticism. We need criticism, lest we think we are always right. We need criticism, lest we believe we are without fault. We need criticism, lest we separate ourselves from those we serve or who serve us with an honest critique.

But, we don’t need criticism from everyone. Simply put, you have to consider the source of the criticism. I do not take all criticism equally and neither should you. I am pretty active in the realm of the “Christian blogosphere,” so a number of my examples are from my experience there, but generally speaking, these principles can apply to your office, church, or otherwise.

There are three kinds of unhealthy critics to consider:

The Constant Critic

For example, one critic regularly sends a complaint letter (not an email, but one of those paper things). Over time, the complaint letters lost their value. Why? It was just another letter from the same person about a new issue.

Or, there are blogs that are one attack after another. Everyone is a heretic, liar, or whatever. The fact is that constant critics just do not need to be responded to like the honest critic who is not “enraged” all the time.

Some of these …