Most people say they want feedback, and most people still feel a jolt when it arrives. Leaders who build a feedback culture help their teams see feedback as normal, useful, and kind. A short quote can help set that tone. This collection gathers feedback quotes for leaders, managers, and teams, organized by theme, with ideas for using them in one-on-ones, team meetings, and leadership training.
How to Use Feedback Quotes at Work
- Open a feedback training. Ask participants which quote matches their own experience of receiving feedback.
- Start a retrospective. Use a quote about candor to set expectations for an honest conversation.
- Prepare for performance conversations. Share a quote with managers before review season as a reminder of what good feedback looks like.
- Build team norms. Let the team pick one quote as a shared principle for how they give each other feedback.
Quotes About Why Feedback Matters
- “Feedback is the breakfast of champions.” (Ken Blanchard)
- “We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.” (Bill Gates)
- “True intuitive expertise is learned from prolonged experience with good feedback on mistakes.” (Daniel Kahneman)
- “Average players want to be left alone. Good players want to be coached. Great players want to be told the truth.” (Doc Rivers)
Try it: Share Doc Rivers’s quote and ask, “What would it take for this team to feel like great players, where telling the truth is expected and welcome?”
Quotes About Giving Feedback Well
- “Clear is kind. Unclear is unkind.” (Brené Brown)
- “Criticism, like rain, should be gentle enough to nourish a man’s growth without destroying his roots.” (Frank A. Clark)
- “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.” (Stephen R. Covey)
- “We judge ourselves by our intentions and others by their behavior.” (Stephen M. R. Covey)
- “The great enemy of communication, we find, is the illusion of it.” (William H. Whyte)
Try it: Brené Brown’s four words make a strong team norm. Ask the group to think of a time when unclear feedback caused confusion, and what clear feedback would have sounded like instead.
A note on the last quote: Whyte wrote it in a 1950 Fortune article. A popular reworded version (“The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place”) is often credited to George Bernard Shaw, but there is no record of Shaw saying it.
Quotes About Receiving Feedback
- “Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” (Winston Churchill)
- “Examine what is said, not who speaks.” (African proverb)
- “To avoid criticism, say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.” (Elbert Hubbard)
- “Every master was once a disaster.” (T. Harv Eker)
Try it: Before a feedback exercise, use the African proverb to remind people to focus on the substance of what they hear rather than reacting to who said it.
A Feedback Quote Activity for Leadership Training
Give pairs three quotes from this page. Each pair discusses which quote describes how feedback usually works in their organization today and which describes how they want it to work. Then they draft one sentence they could use to open their next feedback conversation, inspired by the quote they want to live by. Practicing the opening line is often the most useful part, because starting the conversation is the hardest step for many managers. Coaching structures like the GROW model help with what comes next.
More Quote Collections and Resources
Browse our reflection quotes, teamwork and collaboration quotes, and growth mindset examples at work, which include phrases for responding to feedback with a learning mindset.
Build a Feedback Culture on Your Team
InnovationTraining.org helps leaders and managers practice the conversations that build trust and performance. Explore our coaching for managers training and softest of the soft skills workshops, or contact us to design a session for your leaders. Which quote would you want your team to remember the next time feedback feels hard?