Responding to negative criticism with lower developmental level skills can lead to an escalation of conflicts, violence, and the loss of valued friends. Among the benefits of utilizing higher developmental level skills are increases in how much people like and respect us. To encourage readers of this blog to think about the most helpful ways to respond to criticism, I presented a post titled “Responding to Criticism:…
Readers of this blog well know that I often discuss immature and mature ways to provide negative criticism. Originally, I presented a post titled PROVIDING NEGATIVE CRITICISM: FIVE LEVELS OF MATURITY. There, in addition to providing an outline of what I believed was a good starting point to think about this topic, I asked readers for suggestions on how the outline could be improved. Many…
On this blog, I often discuss immature and mature ways to deal with criticism. The advice that I offer is designed to be helpful to males and females alike. But recently, in an Op-Ed piece in the New York Times, Tara Mohr argues that when it comes to criticism, women can benefit from advice specifically targeted to the unique cultural situation that they find themselves in. The…
One day I happened to be flipping through the New York Times when I came upon a story titled Dealing With Digital Cruelty by Stephenie Rosenbloom. It had been a year since I had written a post about a particularly sad incident of internet cruelty. Back then, 12-year-old Rebecca Sedwick had leaped to her death after being cyberbullied by a coterie of 15 middle-school children…
Readers of this blog know that I have put forth a model of how to respond maturely to criticism. To help readers to rate their own skill level, and that of others, I have, in earlier posts, outlined five levels of maturity. Level 1 is viewed as the most immature level, level 2 is viewed as a little more mature, and so on. Let’s take…
For most of us, improving our skills at dealing with criticism takes some practice. If we do this in a safe situation in which we will not expose ourselves to potential embarrassment, we can think more clearly about what is going on. Once we become very clear about how we would like to handle various situations involving criticism, it becomes easier to apply these skills…
Last week my blog post asked, “Does Your Fearfulness Make You a Coward?” While attempting to answer this question, I pointed out that viewing yourself as a coward when you experience fear consumes time and energy. Moreover, it is way too simplistic. Fear is actually a highly valuable emotion. It motivates us to take some wise precautions. And the fact that some people can fearlessly perform…
Leonard Pitts, Jr. is a columnist, author of three novels and winner of numerous awards including the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary. When I heard that he was speaking at Flagler College, having enjoyed reading his insightful column for many years, I eagerly went to see him. Mr. Pitts’s formal presentation was well received. Then, he began to take questions from the audience. His responses to each…
In the above For Better or For Worse comic, we can see that a little interference with what Mom wants to be doing might not upset her to any great extent, but there may come a point when enough is enough and suddenly there is a kind of explosion. Even a little before the point of the explosion, some acts that normally wouldn’t be much…
One day Beetle Bailey and Sarge have a conflict: As you can see, eventually the conflict is resolved. But a few days later, the two have another conflict. Again and again other conflicts spring up between these same two individuals. These recurring conflicts come about with a distinctly higher frequency than usual for two people in the types of situations in which they live and…
