It’s happening. People are starting not to like you.
Strangers on the Internet — and people you know — don’t like what you’re saying. They don’t like your thought leadership. They dislike it enough to tell you in emails, DMs and comments (and almost certainly behind your back).
It makes your face heat and your skin itch and your stomach drop. But you’re proud of what you said. It was your unvarnished opinion, and you stand by it. What can you do to stop your bold momentum from crashing to a halt?
Change the Color of the Stoplight
Let’s get this out of the way first: There are two kinds of negative feedback, and they’re both a good thing:
- A friend or colleague respectfully disagrees or offers a different perspective. Great!
- You can have a fruitful dialogue or update your position to reflect what you’ve learned.
Someone hates what you wrote and tells you.
The latter will likely make you feel like garbage: you’ll want to defend yourself or placate them or argue. You’ll worry that since they don’t like you, others don’t either! You might second-guess what you said or berate yourself for going “too far.”
Feedback like this will feel like a big, pulsing RED LIGHT: a glaring STOP sign that you’ve said too much, that you were wrong and you should take it back and run away.
But you’re a bold woman thought leader. You’re not here to obey the status quo but to defy it. This is your voice, your message, your influence. You are building your legacy. And you don’t suffer fools, including when you’re being foolish: you know what this is.
You know the key is to view this kind of feedback as a GREEN LIGHT. To detach from what this feedback means about YOU, and see it as a bright, flashing thumbs-up to what you’re doing the work you’re here to do. And it’s ruffling feathers. It’s repelling the wrong people but attracting the right ones. You’re delivering the right message to those who need to hear it, and you’re making their lives better by doing so.
This is the Only Response You Need for Scathing Feedback
My client Suzanne O’Brien is a phenomenal career coach. Her 1:1 clients receive an average $70K increase in compensation after working with her; and her group coaching clients receive an average of $30K. She knows of what she does.
When she published How do I know if a Company is the Right Culture for Me? she got pushback. Someone was unhappy enough with what Suzanne wrote to send her an angry email.
The “problem” was this: in the free download that accompanies this article, Suzanne states an unflattering truth: “HR managers will lie.” And who did she get an email from? An HR manager who was offended by the unflattering portrait.
Suzanne’s no shrinking violet, and her response wasn’t either: I didn’t write that article for you, she responded.
No defensiveness. No arguments. No regrets. The article isn’t for HR. Suzanne’s clients are not HR managers. And Suzanne’s clients will benefit from the truth she tells, even though it ruffles some HR feathers.
You’re not for everyone. Neither is IPA. Neither are cats. The challenge is that we have a nervous system designed to keep us safe — it didn’t evolve for bold thought leadership. In our evolutionary history, “safe” was synonymous with “in harmony with the group” because left on our own, we were easy prey for the picking. Tens of thousands of years later our nervous system still feels threatened at the barest hint of otracization. That’s why negative feedback — a “threat” to our likability and therefore belonging in the group, according to our nervous system — feels so terrible.
You know what else? Mother Teresa had haters. Lena West said it on this podcast and I’ll never forget it. If Mother Teresa had haters, none of the rest of us stand a chance.
Sooth your System in the Face of Negative Feedback
- When you hit publish on a bold, outspoken article and it makes you want to shove your laptop under a pillow, repeat after me: I’m not for everyone.
- When you get a comment and someone thinks what you said is stupid, repeat after me: I’m not for them.
- When you get an ugly email because you said something true and they don’t like it, repeat after me: I didn’t do it for them.
You know the most magnetic, high-impact thought leadership will make some people uncomfortable. It says what some folks don’t want to hear. You know this, but it still feels bad when it happens to you.
So after you breathe deeply to calm your nervous system and remind yourself who you’re here for (reminder: not the haters!), take action. Action will always make you feel better. Here’s what I do when I get negative pushback:
- Text a friend and share. “I got a negative comment! Yay! Must be a green light!”
- Add it to my Green Light list, a literal Google document of grumpy pushback to remind myself that hate is a sign that I’m on the right track
- Ask for a hug. Usually from my partner because he’s around, but wow does it make a difference to feel the physical presence of someone who’s got your back.
Your Thought Leadership Evolution
Thought leadership is not an act, it’s action. Yours will always evolve — and feedback will help that happen. Yet as you refine and hone you WILL repel people. You WILL make people mad. The very act of a woman doing something outside the box of what’s expected of her makes people mad — it’s inevitable.
Our work is not to let it derail us but to fuel us. Turn what your nervous system will think is a red light into a GREEN LIGHT because you’re doing your legacy work. And as you repel the haters, your right-fit people will flock to you in droves.
I often hear the question, how do I make my thought leadership more magnetic? How do I SAY THE THINGS I’m here to say? It’s an important question, so I created a short email course with the answers. The 5 Pillars of Magnetic Thought Leadership divulges what your thought leadership needs to stand out all the way out. It’s data-driven, informative, it has examples, and it’ll give you the elements your thought leadership needs to attract the people who want to work with you.
Click here to join the free email course at 5magneticpillars.com.
