Imagine you have years-worth of research and it is dismissed by a 15-word rejection letter from a journal editor. That has happened to us.
September 14, 2022
Imagine you have years-worth of research and it is dismissed by a 15-word rejection letter from a journal editor. That has happened to us.
Or peer reviewers write demeaning, anonymous commentary about your work. That has also happened to us.
Or student evaluations critique your appearance or the way you speak. Yes, that’s also happened to us.
Academics also get negative feedback on research grants and funding applications, conference submissions and mainstream writing outlets, like The Conversation. And, yes, we’ve experienced all this, too. And we are not alone.
We are experts in management and psychology. The good news is, there are strategies available to help you overcome and even use negative feedback to your advantage.
Feedback is unavoidable
Feedback is a key component for any academic career. It is part of how the profession maintains rigor and quality in what it does.
While it can of course be positive, research shows, it tends to be negative. And this comes at a cost to individuals, their sense of self worth and their mental health.
Academia is not alone here. Managers across all industries use feedback to enhance workplace performance and online reviews are a fact of life for businesses. Yet, despite this, not many people know how to do it well. And, the receivers are not always able to use the feedback in the way it was intended.
On top of calls to improve training for academics, managers and leaders on how to provide helpful feedback (we do this here and here), being able to use the feedback we get is also important for our well-being.
Tough feedback can hurt and shake our confidence. Yet it may be necessary to process this feedback to grow and develop as professionals. And this is where positive psychology can help.
Positive psychology is the study of strengths and virtues over human deficiencies and diagnoses. It focuses on promoting strengths—like courage, optimism, and hope—as a buffer against mental ill-health.
Six things to do when you get negative feedback
1. Empathize with the person giving feedback
Do you remember receiving formal training for providing feedback? Probably not.
