How to Handle Negative Reactions When You Speak Up
Episode 467 | Author: Emilie Aries
How do you lean into your assertiveness when someone doesn’t appreciate it?
Here’s a hot take that will surprise no one: the world is still conflicted about whether or not it likes assertive women.
I’ve received some not-so-hot feedback in the last few months that has me thinking a lot about how we react when our outspokenness or our willingness to be assertive is challenged. Mostly, I receive positive comments: sometimes, women approach me after talks to tell me they appreciate my ability to “own the stage,” take charge, and be heard. A couple of times—usually in smaller group settings where I don’t have that authority inherent in being the leader—I’ve heard that my straightforward approach to communication might leave a poor taste in people’s mouths.
I haven’t always been able or willing to run the very real risks associated with speaking up while female, and I won’t pretend I can always just shake off negative feedback. But I have developed some skills to deal with these interactions in a constructive manner in the moment, even while the rest of my brain is screaming that I need to run out of the room to nurse my shame in private.
Here are three tips to help you navigate your next experience with negative feedback about your communication style.
Get curious, not furious
The urge to become defensive in response to negative feedback is totally normal. Often, our faces flush and we feel embarrassed, but there’s a lot of potential in an exchange like this if you can fight that instinct and instead leverage your emotional intelligence to respond thoughtfully.
Ask for more specifics. Can they give you an example of what caused them to have this impression of you? By asking this, you’re showing you are open to discussing the issue and also putting the onus on them to think about their claim and get more detailed in their feedback.
Pick your relationship battles
Last year, someone I was in an extracurricular group with became quite upset when I questioned his unilateral edict on something that should have been a group decision.
Sometimes, it’s very important to delve into negative feedback on your outspokenness because the relationship in question is significant in terms of your current or future career or a personal connection. Other times, such as in the case of the put-out fellow above, you’ve sparked the ire of someone who you’re unlikely to cross paths with again after the project is over.
I won’t pretend the micro-feud that sprung up from that interaction didn’t keep me up at night, but it’s a time when I should have taken my own advice: ask yourself whether the person presenting the feedback is someone whose respect matters to you. If the answer is no, give yourself permission to be disliked.
Tip #3: Take what serves you and leave the rest
Even once you’ve requested some more details and determined that this is a relationship you’re interested in maintaining, you aren’t required to address all the “problems” presented to you.
Instead, take the nuggets of truth that serve you and leave the rest. When I received some negative feedback from someone I respect, I mulled over it for quite a while and ultimately decided there were some helpful grains of truth—things I would do well to be more aware of when I speak out in group settings.
But it’s all too easy, especially as women, to assume that feedback should be implemented simply because it was shared. Every day, we come up against power, gender, and workplace dynamics that are beyond our control, and I’m not willing to shutter my authenticity or confidence to fit into a culture that is still celebrating the silent woman. I don’t want any of you to do that, either.
These tips are just the tip of a very complicated iceberg, and I’m not implying the shift to confidence and assertiveness is quick and painless. We don’t just flip a switch and become outspoken women. It takes focused integration of this approach, repeated time and again. Eventually, it starts to feel more natural to resist society’s ongoing attempts to turn down our volume.
The fact is, any time you set out to unleash your full potential, you’re going to come up against friction and get feedback you don’t like. If tips like these strike a chord, my book, Bossed Up: A Grown Woman's Guide to Getting Your Sh*t Together, has tons of thoughts and advice on owning your voice and taking charge.
Related Links From Today’s Episode:
Get Emilie’s book, “Bossed Up: A Grown Woman's Guide to Getting Your Sh*t Together”
SPEAK UP: An Assertive Communication Course
Learn how to SPEAK UP in the face of negative feedback:
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EMILIE: Hey, and welcome to the Bossed Up podcast, episode 467. I'm your host, Emilie Aries, the Founder and CEO of Bossed Up. And today I want to talk about being an assertive woman in a world that still is conflicted about whether or not we like assertive women.
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I know if you've been listening to this podcast or worked with me in the past, you probably think I'm just. I was just born this way, right? Like, I was very assertive. And in some ways, we were all way more assertive and unabashed and unapologetic when we were born than we are now in how society shapes us, especially as those of us who are socialized as girls and women. But it wasn't always like this. I wasn't always this outspoken of an advocate and someone who encourages other women to own their voice and know their power behind their voice and use it to advocate for themselves and others.
And in fact, recently, it's funny because I've been, like, reminded of how challenging it can be, how risky it can feel to be an outspoken woman in recent weeks and months. And it's kind of funny because, you know, people have really different reactions when they come across an unapologetic, assertive woman.
For instance, a couple of days ago, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion with the Chamber of Commerce here in Denver as part of our leadership Denver program. And granted, because I was a panel moderator, I had some authority in the room, right? So the fact that I was commanding the conversation made sense. It felt logical to people. And so it was kind of cute when somebody, a woman, an older woman, came up to me after the event was over, and she said, you know, one of the highlights for me today was just watching you just really own that stage and command that room. And just the way you really were outspoken and moderated this panel so well was such a delight to watch. And I love that feedback. It, of course, made me feel warm and fuzzy.
And it actually reminded me of a couple years back when I was leading a 500 person workshop with United States of Women summit. I think this was 2017 past client of mine. I was leading a whole leadership discussion, and one of the women came up to me afterwards and said the same thing. She was like, I was just amazed to see at the time, I was a much younger, slightly younger, I should say, woman. And she said, you know, a young woman who was just really commanding so much authority in this huge room. Washington, really inspiring to watch. And I thought, okay, great. Yay. They like my assertiveness, they're picking up what I'm putting down, and there's always some population of the world that seems to appreciate that.
And then there are moments in my career when I've been given the opposite feedback. And, look, sometimes it's about that person's perception, sometimes it's about their socialization, and sometimes, I would admit it's about the context, right? Because if I don't have authority, then when I leverage power by owning my voice, it can be really surprising to people and a little off-putting to people.
And that came up recently in a team environment where I'm a member of a team. And the dynamics were like, I was not in charge of anything. Actually, three different teams in the last year that I've been a part of through the various hats that I wear in my personal and professional lives. And when I have asserted myself, when I have taken charge, when I have made my voice heard, when I have dared to be an outspoken woman. Whoo. I was reminded time and again in the past few months that not everybody appreciates that.
And I know that's probably really familiar to every single one of you listening to this right now, because this is not news. A woman makes voice heard and world doesn't like. It is, like, not a headline that's ever been written, because it's, it's probably more common than the alternative. And what I will admit is, when I get that feedback, whether it's from, a team member, a boss, a colleague, a friend, a peer, it deflates me. It causes me, like, everyone to spin out a little bit.
It's really easy to kind of get in your own head, second guess yourself. Like, was I out of line here? What could I have done differently? Would have not upset this person? Or, you know, how should I tiptoe around this person to manage this relationship better? Or on the alternative side, you know, getting angry and defensive and wanting to come to my own defense and explain myself and call this person out for their unconscious, sexist expectations of me.
And I think a question that I get from so many women who I've worked with over the years who are in this spinning out phase, whose instincts are rightfully so, to rescind, to draw back, to mute ourselves, to avoid the discomfort of unsettling others again, to avoid ruffling feathers again and be liked by everyone. Our instinct is to quiet ourselves, to mute ourselves, to never speak up in that way again if it's going to be so risky to our relationships. I totally understand that feeling. I have felt it myself. Not only decades ago when I was just starting out in my career, but also very much now. I feel it today.
And so what I want to talk through today is how we can be really conscious in that moment when we get negative feedback, to speaking up assertively, like how we interpret that feedback and how we choose to behave and act from there, is something I want to do really intentionally and really thoughtfully. Because if we just default to wanting to perfect, perform, and please everyone around us, if we default to trying to be this good girl and win everyone's approval, which is a totally understandable, natural default mode to fall into, if we unconsciously do that, we will self silence. We will lose our power of our voice, and I don't want that to happen.
So three things to think about the next time, you and I, I'm sure I'll play this back to myself when I need it in the future, but the next time you get negative feedback for speaking up, the first thing I want you to do is to get curious, not furious. So the worst thing you can do here is double down and get super defensive and escalate the situation further. It's kind of like the idea of defaulting to your gut reaction, versus consciously responding and leveraging your emotional intelligence to respond thoughtfully.
So in that moment, when I say get curious, I usually default to asking questions to really try to hone in on what is causing the negative feedback to occur, what's causing this dynamic? So, when I was given some negative feedback recently about being too outspoken or just coming across in a way that I didn't want to come across, even though I had a physiological stress response, like adrenaline was coursing through my veins, I'm sure I was getting flushed in, or at least I felt like I was getting flushed as I was feeling rather embarrassed by this feedback.
But in that moment, I took a breath, I took a pause, and I said, can you tell me an example of what I've said or done that might have elicited that response or might contribute to that perception of me? And I think I also asked, in that moment, what do you think I've been doing that's contributing to that perception, or what gives you that impression of me? And that just caused the person who was giving me the feedback to have to really pause and think and be specific, [LAUGHTER] right? Because usually the feedback women get in response to being assertive is like, you're coming across as too bossy, too brash, too harsh, too something which is not very specific, right. It's not tied to any actions you're taking. It's not tied to any behavioral choices you've made. So we really want to get curious here and put the onus on that person to say, what do you think I'm doing that's perpetuating that? Or, like, be more specific so that I can help align the perception you have of me or others might have of me with my actual intention.
So I always, always, always recommend responding to feedback that is negative with questions so that you can truly understand where they're coming from. Even if most of you, like 99% of you, wants to run and hide under the covers and avoid the discussion altogether, you need more information, so ask for it.
The second thing I want you to consider in that moment, which can be really hard, is to consider the kind of relationship that you're navigating here. For example, in the last year, I really ticked off this person who I was working with on an extracurricular project related to one of the leadership programs that I was in. This one was related to, like, civic engagement, and ironically, civil discourse was our topic of choice.
And I must have said something, I mean, I know exactly what I said. I just spill a little tea here. I pushed back on this person unilaterally deciding when our entire group was going to meet, because this person said, he proclaimed, actually via email, without consulting anyone, we are going to meet weekly at 6:00 p.m. on Thursdays, which for anyone with children knows that's a terrible time. I'm not available at 6:00 p.m. on Thursdays on a weekly basis.
So I showed up to the first meeting, and I asked in that meeting if anyone else thought this could be a challenging time for them and seemed like there was some openness from other group members to explore alternatives. His response at the time was, if you can't make it, we'll just have the meeting without you. That's fine. And so, in the communications that followed via email over the next couple of weeks, I had the audacity of floating a doodle poll to get consensus from other group members as to when would be the best time for everybody to meet.
This person went into, like, full on tantrum mode, which was rather shocking given their seniority, and their tenure, and their leadership, and their, like, there's, this is a grown a** man that I'm talking about here. He basically refused to take part in the doodle poll. I called him to see if we could work things out. He stopped showing up to meetings. He started to disengage and kind of rebel to the whole group. He never called me back. And then he, like, started flamethrowing with some really escalating emails that he sent to, like, the executive director of the person, the poor person running this program.
Anyway, I really ticked this guy off. So in that moment, when I'm witnessing this person's behavior, I'm aware that I have tainted our relationship, and I have really jeopardized our relationship by being outspoken. But I had to ask myself in that moment, because this drove me crazy. By the way, my husband will be the first to tell you that I couldn't stop thinking about it and talking about it. And he was like, stop giving a s*** about this person. Like, he was like, this relationship is not important to you.
And it really caused me to pause and reflect on that. And this is what I'm asking you to reflect on in that moment. When you get negative feedback from somebody, in that moment, you have to ask yourself, is this someone whose respect really matters to me? Because you're going to drive yourself crazy, probably, either way, if you're anything like me, trying to repair the relationship. But the question becomes, how important is it that I repair this relationship? If this is my boss, it's really freaking important that I repair this relationship. But if this is a person who I'm working with on a group project for the next two months, then I probably will never speak to you again. Who cares? You know? Like, give yourself. Give yourself a little bit of slack.
I think we default, especially as very, if you're a very empathic person, we default to wanting to win everyone over and to really default to valuing our likability no matter what. And the reality is, you're not gonna be for everyone. I sure as hell am not for everyone. I'm sure I ruffle people's feathers. I wanna make sure the people whose feathers I'm ruffling are not the people who are most important to me and my future and my career. I'm not trying to make enemies. Right? I don't take relationship building lightly. I think it's good to make a good impression wherever and whenever you can, but, uh, you know, you got to pick your battles. And that falls into relationship currency and relationship maintenance as well as other places in life.
And if you come to the conclusion somewhat similarly to how I did that, you know, rectifying that relationship is not mission critical. It's okay to give yourself permission to be a little disliked.
You know, there's that book out there. I've had it on my bookshelf for ages, but have never actually gotten around to reading it. Perhaps this is the time in my life in which I should, The Courage To Be Disliked: The Japanese Phenomenon That Shows You How To Change Your Life And Achieve Real Happiness by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. If I'm pronouncing that correctly, I think that's a must read for me this coming year, because that seems to be coming up for me now more than ever.
And it brings me to my final point here. When you find yourself getting negative feedback for being an outspoken person, for being an assertive, god forbid, woman, I think we have to just give ourselves permission to take the feedback that serves us and leave the rest. You know, when I was given feedback from someone who I feel like I really want to maintain a very good relationship with recently, who gave me the feedback that was important for me to hear, that I was ruffling feathers in this other domain, and that I was coming across in a way that I probably didn't want to be coming across, I leaned in, I got curious, not furious.
I re-stated my intent by saying, wow, that is certainly not my intention here. What do you think I could be doing differently to help rectify that situation? Because I'm really trying to make friends here, and I'm really trying to be a collaborative partner in this team here. And I took what I could from that conversation. I spent a few days, if not weeks, kind of mulling it over, talking it over with folks who I trusted, and came to the conclusion, you know what? There's some really helpful grains of truth in what was being shared with me. There wasn't a ton of actionable advice, but there's some nuggets of truth there that I need to really acknowledge, and I need to be more self aware around so that I can manage my perception actively.
And then I also need to acknowledge that I'm up against some dynamics, power dynamics, gender dynamics, workplace dynamics, that I have no control over. And I personally don't want to lose my voice, or lose my authenticity, or lose my sense of self and my confidence that I've worked hard to bolster over the years, in order to fit in, in a culture that rewards passive, demure, self-deprecating speech, because those psycholinguistics are contagious, you know? I don't want to default to making every suggestion I have in the form of a question. Have we considered if we maybe tried this instead? That can be a really great strategy if you need to be delicate in a particular context. But I don't want that to become the default way that I share my opinions.
And so I think you just have to see the feedback for what it is. You have to think about the person who's giving you that feedback and what their perception, what their lived experiences are, where they're coming from. And then you've got to interpret how you want to internalize that for your own life and your own career, and how you might not want to internalize that. How you might want to externalize that and say, this has more to do with gender dynamics, then it has to do with the person that I want to be or the way that I want to make my voice heard. And only you, as Smokey the Bear says, like, only you can really make that choice for yourself.
I get into this in more detail in the chapter in my book, Bossed Up: A Grown Woman's Guide To Getting Your S*** Together all about cultivating a boss identity. It's like, look, if you want to be a certain confident, powerful iteration of yourself, you want to, um, unlock and unleash your full potential. Like, you are going to get some friction, you are going to hear some feedback that you don't like along the way, and you have to decide. You have to be the author of, like, what narrative you let in to shape who you are and how you behave moving forward, and what you explain away as something having to do with context, environment, or just the way our society works and how our society views women. Especially for women of color, who are ten times more likely to get negative feedback than I, a white woman, who dares to make my voice heard.
So all this to say, wow, this has been a lot longer of a podcast than I thought it was going to be. But I guess I did have more to say about this than I thought, because it's complicated. Like, you don't just flip a switch one day and become an outspoken, assertive woman. It is an iterative process that requires kind of resisting being pulled back into how society wants us to sound, which is very quiet, quite frankly, or just not at all non-existent. The world has always been more comfortable when women don't make our voices heard.
And so if comfort is your top priority, sometimes saying nothing is the best course of action, or saying less, or being more demure, like those are strategies for communication that might serve your particular goals with a particular audience. But I don't want to make that my default. I don't want to self-silence to appease a world that I think might have negative feedback. For me, I would always much rather make my voice heard, at the risk of ruffling a few feathers along the way, than be kicking myself after the fact for not speaking up.
If you want to learn a lot more about the dynamics and tactics around becoming a more assertive woman in a world that has a lot of mixed feelings about what that looks like and what that means, you should check out SPEAK UP, my eight week assertive communication program, which you can learn more about at bossedup.org/speakup,
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and you can sign up for the waitlist there to become the first to know when we next offer the live course. Until next time, let's keep bossin’ in pursuit of our purpose, even if it ruffles a few feathers along the way, and let's keep lifting as we climb.
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