There are days when working in HR feels a bit like being the villain of the film.
You have to deliver difficult news, set a limit or pass on a decision you know won’t please everyone.
🐾 I’m Nara, the mascot of HR professionals, and, like all of Spain, I’m still euphoric about the last World Cup match.
We’re world champions!
You probably already know the winning goal was scored by one of the most questioned players on the team.
From the very first match, Ferran Torres lived with criticism. Each mistake seemed to weigh more than the last. And even so, he kept training. He kept preparing. Until the moment no one expected arrived.
What struck me most was that, after the match, he said:
“This goal isn’t mine. It belongs to 47 million people.”
Something similar happens in HR. There are moments when you have to keep doing your job well while part of the organization looks at you with criticism, suspicion or little understanding.
That’s why, this week, I want to share with you some skills that can help you hold up under that criticism without letting it condition the way you work.
Skill 1
How to stop carrying criticism that isn’t really about you
There’s an important difference between someone criticizing you and them criticizing what you represent in that moment.
When you communicate a dismissal, an organizational change or an unpopular decision, the person in front of you can rarely argue with “the company” or “the process”. They do it with the person facing them.
In psychology, this is known as displacement. When a person can’t direct their frustration toward whoever really causes it, they usually offload it onto whoever is in front of them.
Understanding this doesn’t mean ignoring criticism; it means knowing that not all of it speaks about the way you work. That difference keeps you from ending up taking home emotions that were never yours.
Skill 2
How to protect your judgment when everyone expects a different answer
Criticism doesn’t usually change what you think. It usually changes how you start to act.
You start over-explaining. You put off difficult conversations. You justify decisions you’d previously have communicated naturally.
Not because you’ve changed your mind, but because the brain tries to reduce the chance of feeling rejection again.
It’s a very human mechanism. We need to feel we’re still accepted by the group and, almost without realizing it, we start deciding with an eye on avoiding a bad reaction.
That’s when criticism stops being an opinion and starts becoming part of your decisions.
Skill 3
How to keep a bad experience from conditioning the next ones
We all remember conversations that went especially badly.
The curious thing is that the problem is almost never in that conversation. It’s in the next one.
After a difficult experience, the brain tries to protect us so it doesn’t happen again. That’s why it anticipates risks even before they exist.
We arrive more tense. We weigh our words more. We spend hours preparing meetings we’d previously have faced with ease.
In psychology these are known as protective behaviors. In the short term they reduce discomfort. In the long term they make us work thinking about what happened yesterday, instead of responding to what’s in front of us today.
That’s why, before an important conversation, it’s worth asking ourselves whether we’re reacting to the situation in front of us… or to an experience we’re still trying to avoid.
We can’t always avoid criticism. It’s part of the job.
Perhaps that’s why one of the most important skills in HR isn’t learning to avoid criticism, but learning to keep it from changing the way you do your work. Difficult decisions will keep existing and so will uncomfortable conversations. What makes the difference is the internal state you face them from.
That’s why, at Humántica®, we work on something that often goes unnoticed: the internal state from which people make decisions, manage difficult conversations and respond to pressure.
Because talent doesn’t disappear when criticism arrives. What often disappears is the ability to access it.
If you think this kind of skill should also be trained in your organization, say “hello” to Berta. I’m fairly sure that if you meet with her, you’ll end up getting to know me too. 🐶 🐾
— Nara
P.S.: What do you think about criticism?
