Judgment reveals more about the judge than it does about the object being  judged.

What you say about me, says more about you than it does about me.

Do you believe the statements above? I do. And they help me remember not to take judgment personally.

I presented a full-day seminar recently. Two people used the evaluation form to tell me the room was too hot. Two others communicated that the room was too cold. None of these evaluators were speaking about the room. They were each speaking about themselves and their experience with the temperature.

I remembered the notion that judgment is never about the object being judged when I read one critical evaluation following that seminar. On a scale of one to seven, this participant gave me a one. He went on to use evaluative terms of “boring, opinionated and rigid.” Descriptors stated that the session was all “sit and get”, too long, too many stories, too much reliance on the Power Point presentation.

“That evaluation tells more about the evaluator than it does about me,” I said to myself.  He was choosing to bore himself with my presentation.  His comments were about his beliefs, his mind set, his unique way of seeing the world. What he wrote on that evaluation form revealed a lot about him and little about me.

I considered the remarks carefully to see if there was information I could use. Then I compared it with the seventy-three other evaluations I received. The others gave me a favorable average rating of 6.76 out of 7. Positive comments included evaluative terms such as fantastic, wonderful, enlightening, and inspiring.  Comments stated that the personal stories  “touched me” and “help me remember the main points.”  Several people said this was the best workshop they ever attended. Heady stuff. My ego loved it.

Then I remembered, “What you say about me says more about you than it does about me.” The people who were rating me positively were also telling me about themselves. Their comments weren’t about me either. Their comments told about them:  their beliefs, their life experiences, the filters they use to see the world.

Darn! I wanted to think all those positive comments were about me.  I wanted to judge the judgments. I wanted to see some of them as right and the others as wrong. So, guess what? If I judge the judgments, that is about me. It is not about the people making the evaluations.

It would be so much fun to think all those positive evaluations were about me. They’re not. But I can do this: I’ll enjoy for a while that so many people chose to see the seminar as helpful and motivational. I can do that. That too, is about me.

Chick Moorman