These are excerpts from the author’s book “Deep,” which contains eight of his small books published in the form of Wisdom Literature covering different aspects of life: Facing troublemakers, dealing with pain, personal financial issues, gastronomy, reading, criticizing, inspiring, and feeling always good to go.

Series 6: Criticizing.

Criticizing at Work

• Criticism at work is unavoidable. Always be ready to respond to criticism in the most positive way. With regard to your managers, it is best to counter their possible criticism of you with proactive actions that present you at your best, thus limiting potential criticism.

• The highly competitive atmosphere in work environments can make colleagues’ behavior seem to be personal targeting. Your calmness and objectivity in dealing with peers’ competitive behavior, no matter how hostile it seems to you, will lead to the most appropriate reaction, without excessive emotions that may cause losses, even if your emotions are justified.

• When repeated criticisms at work reach clearly personal levels, just ignoring them will not help to stop them. Let those who are trying to provoke you know that you—besides being engaged in serious, productive work—are able to confront them firmly.

• How others respond to criticism depends a lot on good faith. Strive hard to build trust with the work team, and that will reflect positively on their accepting your criticism.

• If you are a customer who files a complaint about something you do not like, the calmer and more objective you are when presenting the complaint, the more the concerned party will understand and be able to solve your problem. Don’t just rely on being right and overreact emotionally.

• Feedback requests and customer-service surveys often seem annoying, and it’s tempting to ignore them. It’s not practical to respond to all of them, but it is helpful to respond to some of them from time to time, especially when you have a brilliantly crafted suggestion that could solve a recurring problem or provide added value to the service.

• People in the work environment usually evaluate each other in a meticulous way. Apart from ill intentions behind any repeated criticism directed at you, try to remedy the matter that is the subject of that criticism, making it more acceptable to others or at least less likely to be criticized.

• No one is spared from being stereotyped to one degree or another. Try to see the improvement others make in their behaviors and actions, rather than looking at them in the same way you always have seen them.

• Make sure to direct criticism at work to those you supervise holistically with the necessary guidance, and provide an opportunity for correction in stages, as necessary. It is not wise to reward workers for getting rid of a defect by surprising them with another criticism; this would weaken their confidence and discourage them from being more positive in their work.

• If you have exhausted all available avenues to modify coworkers’ behavior, there is no point in adopting a negative behavior toward them. You then have two options: either avoid dealing with them, if possible, or accept them as they are, and deal with their mistakes, which you are supposed to anticipate, in the best possible way.