First of all, you need to answer the following question: what happened to make your boss criticise you? Is it linked to your behaviour and performance or to you as a person and your personality? Obviously, the second should not even be a point of discussion, but life often shows otherwise. If your boss doesn’t value you as a person, the brutal truth is that it's time to look for a new boss, instead of trying to change their mind.
If it is linked to your specific behaviour and performance, you can work on it. The fact that it is behaviour-based and not-person based is already a huge difference. However, whichever one is true, first you need to find out what the reason behind the criticism is. The best way to go about it is to start by doing the following:
Do some reflection work first. Start by reviewing things that you do well at work, look at your successful projects, your strengths, achievements and all the good work you have done up until now. Then reflect on the things that you feel you can and want to improve on, go through the things that didn’t go so well, for example, lost clients, project delays, conflicts with colleagues, etc. Think of actions you could take to improve the aspects of your work that you are not satisfied with.
Once you have done your “homework," go talk to your boss. Having done the work partially yourself, you should now know, more or less, what they are going to say. This way you diminish your own brain’s threat reaction that could result in feeling anxious, lacking confidence, and being defensive.
During this meeting, ask for specific feedback from your boss. If they say that you could improve your communications skills, they are not being specific enough. You need to ask them to provide you with a specific example of when you did not communicate in an effective way. What type of behaviour related to your communication skills do they want to see?
The next step is to check how it actually corresponds to the improvement points you have noted down for yourself. They are probably aligned. In this case, you could already propose improvements you have thought about and ask for their input. However, your boss might mention things you haven’t come up with yourself (your blind spot). Nothing to panic about! If you can’t think of any actions on the spot, ask for their opinion.
If you feel you need time to process the feedback and want to come up with your own solutions, do not hesitate to do that. Clear communication is key, and it is better that you ask for “thinking time” before agreeing to something you will not do anyway. This will only create resentment and further problems.
The best way for us to learn and grow is when we are surrounded by people that provide us with constructive feedback. Such feedback needs to be based on the assumption that it is given to let the other person grow and not to judge that person.
So, these are my key messages:
Have you ever had a boss that was not happy with your performance? What did you do about it?