How to Write a Professional Response Email for Negative Feedback from Your Boss

Receiving negative feedback from your boss can be a tricky experience if you do not know how to react to it. While it is no doubt challenging and maybe even disheartening, how you respond to an email with  constructive criticism can greatly impact your workplace success and your professional reputation.

In this blog post, we will look at how you can effectively respond to an email with negative feedback from your boss using some best practices, tips and even a sample email that you can copy and modify based on your needs. So let us jump in.

Tips to Remember

• Reflect on the feedback you receive before responding and put some thought into how the feedback might help you.
• Stay calm and keep your communication professional when receiving negative feedback even if it is upsetting or initially feels unfair.
• Apologize to your manager if it is applicable or necessary. Apologizing for your mistakes is the right thing to do and doing it while responding to feedback shows your awareness.
• Clarify if there are any errors in the feedback or if you have any questions about certain aspects of the feedback shared.
• Highlight your commitment to improve based on this feedback with clear phrasing around how you want to use this feedback and what should your manager expect.
• Keep the email positive and use this as an opportunity to improve instead of staying upset over something that was intended to make you a better professional.

Best Practices

• Draft a clear, unambiguous subject line that clearly states the purpose of the email and ensure that it doesn’t get truncated when viewed in the email inbox.
• Appreciate the feedback you have received and express your gratitude to your manager for taking the time to formulate the feedback and sharing it with you.
• It would be great to share your improvement plan with your manager so as to assure him of your commitment to move forward with the feedback shared.
• Close positively by thanking your manager and stating that you are ready to improve and make promises that you intend to keep at work.

Sample Template for Responding to Negative Feedback Email

Subject: Thank your for the feedback [Your Name]

Dear [Manager’s Name],

Hope you are doing well. First and foremost, thank you for taking the time to share this feedback. I know that this was not an easy undertaking and given the gravity of the situation, I believe this will help me improve immensely as a [Your Role].

Based on this feedback, I have formulated the following plan to address my shortcomings:

• [Action Point 1]
• [Action Point 2]
• [Action Point 3]

The goal is to make significant improvement in the aforementioned areas by [Deadline Date] and rest assured, I will be updating you promptly on the progress I make.

Once again, thanks for sharing this with me. I assure you that this will make me a much better employee and I cannot wait to start improving.

If you have any other suggestions, please do share them with me by replying back to this email.

Regards,  

[Your Name]

[Your Position]

Conclusion

Now that you have learned how to write a response email to a negative feedback email from your boss, go ahead and send it out. By using the best practices, tips and most importantly the sample shared in this post, you can be sure of your skills in drafting a professional and polite email for this situation.

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