I heard the same criticism in employee surveys, exit interviews, and even from people on my senior leadership team.

I was too critical.
Hard to please.
Rarely satisfied.

And each time I heard it, some version of this thought went through my mind:

But am I wrong?

Usually, I thought I wasn’t.

The proposal could be stronger. The project could be better managed. The presentation could be clearer.

I could see exactly what needed improvement, and that was the problem.

I was right about the work.

They were right about what it felt like to work for me. 

Being Right

Being right made it harder for me to recognize when something else was also true. 

When people told me I was too critical, my mind went straight back to the work. It always could be better.

So instead of getting curious about what they were experiencing, I kept coming back to my point. 

And it wasn’t as if I was asking my team to meet a standard I didn’t follow myself. 

I could finish something good and immediately see what was missing. What needed another pass. What I should have done differently.

I evaluated everyone else by the same standard and thought I was just being honest. 

Eventually, some people checked out.

They did the minimum because they assumed I would change what they did anyway. 

They stopped volunteering ideas in meetings. 

They were reluctant to take risks and became less creative.

Progress slowed to a crawl because they were afraid of getting it wrong.

They didn’t feel successful because the first thing I noticed was what could be better.  

It took me longer to understand why their feedback about me was so hard for me to hear.

The Receptor

When explaining this concept to another founder, I described how criticism only gets a reaction from us when there’s a receptor for it.  

Tell me my blue hair looks terrible and I won’t give it another thought. I don’t have blue hair.

There’s no receptor for it. Nothing for the comment to hook onto. 

But tell me something I secretly worry might be true about myself and suddenly I’m defending, explaining, replaying. 

Because there’s a receptor.

That doesn’t mean the criticism is completely true.

But it does mean my reaction may be telling me something.

Not a Verdict

These days I try to treat feedback as information, not a verdict. 

At a minimum, it tells me about someone’s perception of me. How they experience me. 

And that’s worth knowing because people respond to how they experience us.

Even criticism I disagree with may reveal something I’m missing.

If the way I communicate makes people less willing to take risks, think for themselves, and bring me their best ideas…

That’s something I want to know.

I don’t have to choose between:

They’re right. I need to change.

and

They’re wrong. I can ignore this.

There’s another alternative: 
What else could be true?

Maybe I change something, maybe I don’t.

But before I decide, I want to understand what I might be missing. 

I still believe in high standards, and I still notice what could be better.

But seeing what’s wrong doesn’t mean I’m seeing the whole picture.

It’s easy for me to think other people want to hear what could be better.

I’m not always as comfortable hearing it about myself.

Sometimes the feedback I most want to argue with contains information I need. 

Especially when I’m sure I’m right.