Making the most of Criticism

In his book Emotional Intelligence, Daniel Goleman explains that you should see criticism as valuable info about how you can do better, and not as a personal attack. You need to guard against your impulses to be defensive and to avoid responsibility. If you do find it becoming too upsetting you could ask to resume a meeting later after a period to absorb the difficult message and to cool down a bit.

You should see criticism as an opportunity to work together with the critic to solve the problem, instead of seeing them as an adversarial in the situation.