4 Ways Administrators Can Cope With Tough Feedback

School leaders need to have tough skin, but feedback can still be hard to take. Here’s how to gain perspective and learn from it.

This comment was written in an anonymous staff survey over 10 years ago, but I still remember it today: “I think she doesn’t dress professionally enough.” The rest of the survey feedback was productive, was positive, and gave me a sense of what to focus on next. But do you think I remember any of that? Nope. 

That’s right. Even as a seasoned administrator, I totally got caught up in those unhelpful comments from the cheap seats instead of diving into the useful feedback that could’ve boosted my leadership game. I basically just sat there, soaking in the suckiness of it all.