The Science of Giving and Receiving Feedback: A Practical Guide for Healthcare Professionals
Sonja Cronjé
May 22, 2026
In This Article:
Feedback is a skill – and it is rarely taught
Most of the healthcare professionals I work with want to give and receive feedback well. The intention is rarely the problem. But feedback is a skill, and without the tools and practice to develop it, people hold back from giving it at all, or receive it and get defensive before they've even processed what was said. Sometimes all of the above.
It's what happens when a skill this important goes largely untaught.
Feedback sits at the intersection of performance, relationship, and identity – which means it carries more weight than most workplace conversations. When done well, it supports continuous improvement, builds trust, and drives the kind of open communication that helps teams function at their best. There is solid evidence that feedback culture and psychological safety are closely linked to team performance and patient safety outcomes. When done poorly – or not at all – the costs are real.
The good news is that feedback, like clinical reasoning or communication, is something you can get considerably better at with the right tools and a bit of practice.
Why feedback feels uncomfortable – especially in healthcare
Feedback can feel exposing on both sides of the conversation.
For the person giving it, there's the worry about how it will go – whether it will be received well, the impact on the relationship, and whether it's even their place to say anything.
For the person on the receiving end, it can feel exposing, even threatening.
Healthcare adds a few extra layers. Hierarchy means feedback doesn't always flow freely in both directions. High standards and a culture of self-sufficiency can make it harder to hear that something needs to change. Clinical competence is often closely tied to professional identity – so critical feedback doesn't always register as something useful to consider or learn from. It can feel personal.
And for many clinicians already managing self-doubt or imposter syndrome, it can feel like confirmation of a fear they've been carrying for years.
It is worth understanding why feedback hits so hard. Research by Baumeister and colleagues on negativity bias shows that humans are wired to process negative information more intensely than positive. Critical feedback hits harder and stays with us longer than praise, even when the overall picture is positive.
The difference between being nice and being kind
One of the most common reasons feedback doesn't happen is that people don't want to upset anyone. That is an understandable instinct. But there's an important difference between being nice and being kind.
Nice keeps things comfortable – avoiding the conversation, or giving praise so vague it doesn't actually help anyone
Kind is different. It means caring enough about someone's growth, reputation, and future to have the conversation even when it is uncomfortable – being honest about a pattern they can't see themselves, or saying something they need to hear, whether they want to or not
Kim Scott's Radical Candor captures this well. Real kindness in a leadership context means caring personally and challenging directly – not one without the other.
The Radical Candour framework: care personally, challenge directly
The framework sits on two axes.
Caring personally means genuinely investing in the people you work with, making sure they know you have their back.
Challenging directly means having the courage to say what needs to be said to help someone improve, even when it is hard.
Radical Candour is what happens when you do both. The feedback is honest and specific, and delivered with genuine care - the person receiving it knows you're not being critical for criticism's sake. You want them to succeed.
The other three quadrants are worth knowing, because most of us end up there at some point.
Ruinous Empathy is where many healthcare professionals sit. You care – genuinely – but you avoid the direct conversation because you don't want to upset anyone. The result is feedback so vague or so softened that it doesn't actually help. Telling someone they "did a great job" without any specifics feels supportive, but it doesn't tell them what to repeat or build on.
Manipulative Insincerity is the most corrosive of the four – neither caring nor honest. It might look polite on the surface, but it erodes trust over time and leaves people no better off.
Obnoxious Aggression is direct but cold – technically honest, delivered without care. It might produce a result in the short term, but it tends to make people defensive rather than open.
The goal is to operate in the Radical Candour zone as consistently as possible: honest, specific, and grounded in genuine care for the other person.
Start by asking for feedback yourself
Kim Scott makes a point that often surprises people: before you start giving feedback, ask for it yourself.
It matters for two reasons. First, it signals that feedback flows in both directions – you're not above it. Second, it builds the kind of trust that makes people more willing to accept feedback from you.
The catch is that vague questions get vague answers. "Do you have any feedback for me?" usually produces vague or unhelpful responses. The more specific the question, the more honest the response.
Here are a few examples of specific questions that tend to work well in healthcare contexts:
"What could I do or stop doing to make it easier to work with me?"
"What is one thing I could do differently to be a better manager?"
"What could I do to get better at [chairing meetings / presenting / communicating under pressure]?"
Choose a question that feels natural and use it consistently. The higher you move up in an organisation, the less likely people are to tell you what they really think – unless you've made it genuinely safe to do so.
This is also where 360-degree feedback can be valuable. It gathers perspectives from colleagues, direct reports, and managers – giving a fuller picture of how others experience your leadership, including the blind spots that are hardest to see from the inside.
Receiving feedback well: listen, get curious, don't defend
Receiving feedback well is arguably harder than giving it. The instinct to defend, explain, or deflect kicks in fast – often before we've actually heard what is being said.
The goal is to stay open long enough to actually process it – not necessarily to agree with all of it.
A few things that can help:
Listen to understand, not to respond:
Resist the urge to start formulating your reply while the other person is still talking. Let them finish. Then pause before you respond.
Get curious:
If the feedback is vague, ask for a specific example. Approach the conversation with curiosity rather than defensiveness. "Can you give me an example of when you noticed that?" is a reasonable question that usually surfaces something more useful than the original comment.
Don't feel compelled to respond immediately:
It is entirely reasonable to say "Thank you – I'd like to take some time to think about that" and come back to the conversation later.
Say thank you:
Even if the feedback is difficult to hear, the person giving it took a risk. Thanking them for their feedback makes it more likely they'll be honest with you again.
The feedback learning loop:
Receiving feedback is one moment in a longer process. What you do with it afterwards is where the real value lies.
The feedback learning loop: Evaluate, Reflect, Decide, Grow.
Evaluate: Is this feedback valid? Does it come from someone with a reasonable vantage point? Is there a pattern – have you heard something similar before? You don't have to act on every piece of feedback you receive, but it's worth taking the time to assess it honestly rather than dismissing it or accepting it uncritically.
Reflect: What does the feedback mean for you, and what would change if you took it seriously? This is where the real thinking happens – not in the moment of receiving feedback, but afterwards.
Decide: What, if anything, are you going to do about it? Sometimes the answer is nothing – and that is a legitimate choice. Sometimes it is a small adjustment, and at other times it may require more sustained effort.
Grow: Act on what you've decided, and notice what changes. Sustainable growth usually happens through small, consistent steps over time.
Giving feedback that actually helps
Good feedback is specific, timely, and focused on behaviour rather than character. It describes what you observed, the impact it had, and – where relevant – what you'd like to see instead.
Specificity matters more than most people realise. "You did a great job in that meeting" tells someone very little. "The way you summarised the key decision points at the end made it much easier for the team to leave with clarity" tells them exactly what to repeat.
The same applies to constructive feedback – "You were dismissive in that conversation" is harder to hear and harder to act on than "When you interrupted twice while the registrar was speaking, it shut the conversation down."
Timing matters too. Feedback that comes weeks after the event is hard to contextualise and easy to dismiss. Where possible, have the conversation as close to when it happened as possible.
It is also worth checking your intent before you say anything. Are you doing this to help the other person, or to relieve your own frustration? If the answer is the latter, it is worth pausing.
The feedback sandwich – positive, negative, positive – is well intentioned, but often backfires. People learn to brace for the criticism whenever they receive a compliment. Specific positive feedback and specific constructive feedback are both valuable, but they don't need to be packaged together to be effective.
One technique worth building into your feedback practice is asking before you tell. Before launching into feedback, ask the person how they thought it went. Often, they're already aware of what didn't work – and starting there makes the conversation feel collaborative rather than corrective.
Feedback shapes culture – one conversation at a time
Feedback done well is one of the most powerful tools a leader has. It builds trust, accelerates growth, and creates the kind of culture where people feel safe enough to be honest – with each other and with themselves.
Think of a piece of feedback you've been holding back – something you've been meaning to say but haven't. What has stopped you? And what would it take to have that conversation this week?