Giving & Receiving Feedback in the Dental Practice

Over the years, I’ve learned that team growth is continuous. It must be embraced as an ongoing process and is contingent upon analyzing and processing constructive negative feedback. And, when you are part of a team, there is no one else better to provide us with such feedback than our co-workers.

Feedback is neither easy nor simple for everyone to embrace. Giving and/or receiving feedback can be extremely daunting if you’re not accustomed to it. However, regular feedback must be embedded within the organizational culture for a team to grow and succeed. When established as such, the benefits of effectively giving or receiving feedback can be enormous for both team and practice growth; on the other hand, the consequences of not providing feedback can be detrimental.

Whether you admit it or not, we all have blind spots, and feedback from others is the key to seeing our flaws and faults so we can begin to learn and develop ourselves. Yet, as we desire to be known and understood by others, feedback can conflict with our self-image, and the results can feel disorienting and impede our existence.

Fixed and Growth Mindsets

Have you ever wondered why accepting some people’s criticism is easy, while others may make you angry or dismissive?

People fall into one of two categories when it comes to mindsets — the fixed mindset or the growth mindset. People with a fixed mindset typically seek approval, whereas people with a growth mindset seek development.

If you find yourself of a fixed mindset, don’t despair because it is possible to move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, and the only reason why I can categorically say this is because I’ve done it.

Inevitably, feedback ranges from complaints to compliments. Either way, we tend to judge ourselves by our intentions, while we judge others by their actions — and our judgments are seldom free from bias.

For example, a staff member who performs a task poorly is approached by another team member with manipulative insincerity, saying it was adequate. Why does this happen? It’s easier to say “it’s adequate” than to discuss what needs improvement.

This ruinous empathy avoids conflict, not out of laziness but rather out of a misplaced fear of hurting an employee’s feelings. Yet, the result of ruinous empathy is that the employee (and the team and the practice, too) will only suffer more due to a lack of improvement.

Skip the Feedback Sandwich

When a manager refuses to be critical of an employee whose performance is deteriorating out of fear of conflict, that employee will only grow more incompetent until the manager is forced to fire them.

A popular concept called the feedback sandwich is often utilized to avoid this. When giving criticism, managers should sandwich it between two pieces of positive feedback — open with some praise, then offer the criticism, and close with some more praise to leave the person feeling good. This idea is based on the idea that it’s easier for people to accept negative feedback when they also hear about what’s going well.

This approach can cause the real message to get lost by watering down the negative feedback. Often, dentists get so concerned about being tactful with staff members that their message gets diluted or missed altogether. Then, you are left feeling frustrated that your feedback didn’t work, and the employee didn’t get the chance to hear that something needed to change. If you genuinely care about an employee, honesty is always in their best interest.

When it comes to embedding feedback into your organizational culture:

• Make it a habit: Make sure feedback is a frequent part of your conversations among team members. If you debrief on what goes well and what could be approached differently, you’ll notice how feedback stops being so emotionally charged on both sides. In other words, make sure it is part of the organizational culture of people helping each other.
• Ask: Ask for feedback from teammates and ask them if they would like yours.
• Offer no judgments: Be certain there is no blame or judgment; simply offer your observations.
• Give positive feedback: Offer positive feedback as well as constructive feedback regularly.
• Be specific: Don’t be general or vague. The goal is for the person to understand and can gain from it.

When it comes to receiving feedback, Tasha Eurich, author of the best-selling book Insight, recommends:

1. Don’t rush to react.
2. Get more data.
3. Don’t be a lonely martyr.
4. Remember, change is optional.

Comfortably Uncomfortable

Teamwork epitomizes a winning organizational culture; true teamwork means teammates helping each other. Timely and honest feedback, both offered and received, is the essence of true teamwork.

It requires allowing ourselves to be vulnerable while being committed to helping one another. Real success depends on how successfully we handle our failures. Success is not how little we fall, but how fast we get up. Getting up means each problem or each failure is an invitation to learn something we did not know before.

Summarizing, personal and professional growth stem from learning to feel comfortably uncomfortable.