How Leaders Should Handle Public Criticism

Metadata

• Author: Ron Carucci
• Full Title: How Leaders Should Handle Public Criticism
• Category: #articles
• URL: https://hbr.org/2022/12/how-leaders-should-handle-public-criticism?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter_monthly&utm_campaign=leadership_not_activesubs&deliveryName=DM242400

Highlights

• Sometimes you’ll get things wrong. Given the thousands of decisions you likely make each week, you will inevitably disappoint or enrage someone.
  Keep your eye on your longer-term track record of choices, ideally racking up more positive outcomes than negative. (View Highlight)
• The cruel reality of leadership is that when things go wrong, you take a disproportionate amount of the blame. (View Highlight)
• But your defensiveness will only fuel people’s derision. If there’s inaccurate information feeding the frenzied reactions, do what you can to replace it with facts. Be careful to convey those facts as information you believe people need, not as a refutation of people’s unfair accusations. (View Highlight)