I am a sensitive person. In fact, when I was a child, I was so sensitive that it was difficult for me to handle criticism of any kind. Whenever a teacher corrected me in school, I burst into tears. Fortunately as I grew older, I learned how to handle constructive criticism. That’s a good thing, because the ability to effectively handle criticism is an essential skill that every professional needs.
This week, I received an email from one of my clients. I have been working with this client for over a year now and we have developed a great business relationship. The email politely suggested that I had been doing something incorrectly and provided a suggestion for improving my work. When I read the email, I did not cry nor did I panic. I took a moment to think about what the email said. It simply said that as part of checking the work that the client receives from myself and the others that work for them, one of the “work checkers” had noticed that I had been consistently doing something incorrectly. However, the thing that I had supposedly been doing is something that I distinctly remember making it a point not to do – ever.
I was not upset, but I was confused. Was I really doing the very thing that I had made it a point not to do? I wanted to be sure so I sent a polite reply asking my client to send along a couple of examples so that I could better understand what I was doing incorrectly. The next day, I got an apologetic email back saying that I had actually been doing things just fine. It turns out that the “work checker” had been checking the work incorrectly. I thanked my client for looking into the matter and mentioned that he should not hesitate to contact me with suggestions for improvement in the future. And, I meant it.
While it turned out that the criticism was unjustified, the situation that I encountered this week made me think about what I would have done if it had been a legitimate criticism. The truth is, if I am doing my work incorrectly, I want to know so that I can do it correctly. I am a grown up now, and the sensitive little kid in me that would cry at the slightest criticism now knows that it is okay to make mistakes. The sensitive adult in me cares enough to want to know what those mistakes are and how to correct them so that my clients get the excellent work that they deserve.
Photo by kahanaboy on morguefile.com.