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Is feedback hard to swallow for women?

Thu 02 September 2010

, Yonda Poslavsky, Labour Psychologist

Women, in my experience, find it harder to deal with criticism or feedback as it is: something related to what they’ve done and not who they are. The question was brought to my attention again just recently. 

Someone approached me with her angst for public speaking. A week or two before her company presents the quarterly figures, they stage the presentation before their financial and legal managers. The idea behind this is to make sure the actual presentation runs smoothly. The lady in question has done quite a number of these pre-presentations, but somehow can’t let go of the feedback. She said she leaves the meeting sweating over the criticism, while her male colleagues aren’t even remotely bothered.

Insecurity
This may sound familiar if you have difficulties accepting feedback. After all, insecurity plays its part in one’s ability to handle feedback. Regularly I see women taking criticism as a personal attack. They are left possibly feeling somewhat rejected. This makes feedback hard to swallow, especially for women.

PerformanceMen tend to take criticism more objectively: it’s something related to their (performance at) work and not to who they are. They find it easier to distinguish between what they’ve done (or failed to do) and who they are. 

Expectations This is indirectly also related to women being more susceptible to anxiety, especially the fear of being inadequate or not living up to expectations. So how could women go about it? For starters, you could assess which part of the criticism is about you personally and which part has to do with your work. Once you’ve asked yourself this question, you’ll see that the overall majority of the feedback concerns your work and not your person. 

Female chess players Does this mean that men handle feedback or criticism better than women? Not necessarily, as was proved by an Italian study in 2007 on the results of female and male chess players. Women’s perception of their opponent’s abilities proved essential here. Female chess players had better results when they (were under the impression they) played against another woman. 

Not a chance

Knowing they were up against a male opponent influenced their results negatively, worsening their performance up to 50 percent. The researchers concluded that women assumed they didn’t stand a chance when playing against a man. The result is that women were often accused of ‘playing like a girl’ if they underperformed. 

Careful

My point is, we have to be careful in thinking that men by definition handle criticism better, because there is a good chance we’d be creating a self-destroying prophecy!