Fall 2026 - Vol. 21, No. 3 Recently, as I closed a clinical conversation with a patient and stepped to the door, she said, “Doctor, can I just ask you again whether or not I should begin taking a cholesterol medicine?” It was the word “again” that stopped me, having been over so many things with this patient; it became clear to me at that moment that I had not heard her real concerns. I took my hand off the doorknob and sat back down.

Feedback can come to us in many ways. Sometimes we ask for it. At other times, it’s glaringly obvious, but we’re not really prepared. And at yet other times, we know it’s coming, and we don’t feel prepared to receive it. You may know the feeling of working with a colleague you find clashes with your style or puts you on edge. Does your sense of dissonance suggest that colleague is actually a soothsayer?

On the advice of a physician friend, I recently picked up a copy of Thanks for the Feedback: The Science and Art of Receiving Feedback Well. This 2014 handbook — written by a pair of coaches and lecturers at the Harvard Law School, Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen — is full of amazing insights and real-life anecdotes highlighting what is often an innate distrust of feedback.
 

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In truth, we tend to block out feedback for a variety of reasons. Notably, relationships may challenge our ability to hear what we need to, and of course, many of us have an aversion to perspectives that are different from our own. Each of the broad categories of feedback, including appreciation, coaching, and evaluation, can present their own challenges, especially if we are not prepared.

Most notably, these authors introduce the concept of — and discuss ways to develop — our growth mindset. The growth mindset is contrasted against the fixed mindset, which holds that we are at some point fully developed and unlikely to change. Social media stars have certainly embraced this idea and model for us that we’re all on the road to something better. And while I have to admit that I would relish the opportunity to be comfortable, as a family physician, in a world of quickly developing science, I am aware that there is always more I need to learn.

Just as burnout may represent a mismatch between expectations and reality, our capacity to grow may be limited by the mismatch between what we expect and what we are given in terms of feedback. Yet having a growth mindset, or trying to, can prepare us for the opportunities that will present themselves.

Laudably, Stone and Heen offer a well-researched and well-referenced understanding of psychology. Notably, while we tend to judge ourselves by our intent, those around us tend to judge our impact. Further, while we tend to subtract the impact our own emotions have on how others interpret our actions, those around us double the impact our own emotional behavior may have.

Emotional math is algebraic: while we tend to attribute our actions to any given situation, others tend to attribute our actions to our character. That is, as much as we know we’d like to have a growth mindset, the default assumption is that everyone around us is fixed.
 
Many lessons in this book will ring familiar — that wellness serves as ballast for life’s storms, that we should plan for the worst and hope for the best, that things are rarely as bad as they seem. Yet it is worth the reminder that we should keep our family, friend, community, and spiritual connections strong as they will help us at our worst. Devoting ourselves to something larger than ourselves can be buoying.

What sets these authors apart is their ability to condense the complicated relationships in our work and in our lives, to distill and find little nuggets of wisdom — we will make mistakes, we all have complex intentions, we all have some responsibility and culpability in every problem in our lives. More importantly, they return to the central theme of having a growth mindset, of role modeling a growth mindset for those around us and viewing every situation as an opportunity to improve. How we handle feedback — our so-called “second score” — likely will turn out to be more important than any singular piece of feedback we receive.

Aside from these takeaways, I was most impressed with the insight regarding so-called “super communicators.” These are folks who can be within a conversation and outside the conversation at the same time, monitoring how their message is being received, monitoring how others within the conversation may need a moment or need further explanation. They understand that there’s also a time and a place to say no, that our ability to refuse feedback at times can help ensure we will appropriately listen when the time comes. We all know these individuals, and we all could afford to learn from them.

For anyone just starting out in their position, and for that matter, who serves as a leader, manager, or executive, this brief read is to be recommended. As the authors note, the most common reason that individuals leave an organization is not because of concerns regarding pay or because of lack of visionary alignment. The most common reason individuals sever relationships is a lack of high-quality feedback.