Dheeraj Raina

Dheeraj Raina

  • Joined: July 28, 2025
  • Articles: 50
  • Comments: 1

Care Personally, Challenge Directly: A Feedback Framework

build an honest feedback culture

Even with the right structure in place for feedback, what we say is often shaped by our gut sense of what good feedback sounds like. Most of us often get it wrong. This post — the second in the Building an Honest Feedback Culture — draws from Kim Scott's Radical Candor framework. We will see the two ideas at its core that lead to the four quadrants every leader should know. We will spot the trap most well-meaning leaders fall into. The framework makes us rethink what "caring" really means as a leader. A quick self-test at the end helps you spot the quadrant you live in most often.

Why Not Everyone Gets Honest Feedback

building a feedback culture

Most organizations don't have a feedback culture. They have an annual review process and call it one. The two are not the same. This post, the first in a three-part series, looks at why honest feedback is so rare in physician-led teams. It explores three quiet factors that decide who gets the truth and who gets a polite smile: hierarchy, responsibility, and setting. Drawing on my experience in Toastmasters, where structured feedback is part of every meeting, the post argues that feedback culture is a structure you build, not a process you visit occasionally. It offers healthcare leaders a place to start.

What Silence Really Means — Humble Inquiry, Part 2

Quality questions lead to quality relationships

In Part 1, I shared the story of a night call schedule that failed because my team didn’t warn me…because I didn’t really ask them. This follow-up explores what that silence actually means: not agreement, but resignation. Drawing again on Ed and Peter Schein's Humble Inquiry, we see why physician leaders find humble inquiry especially difficult because it feels slow, vulnerable, and out of their control and how we can start practicing it today.

Why Didn’t Anyone Tell Me? — Humble Inquiry, Part 1

Humble Inquiry leads to open communication

Once, when a Chief Medical Officer, I rolled out a night call schedule that failed three weeks in. The team had seen what was coming; they just didn't tell me. The reason wasn't a communication failure — it was an asking failure. Drawing on Ed and Peter Schein's Humble Inquiry, this post explores why physicians, trained to be the person in the room with the answer, struggle to ask real questions when they move into leadership. It introduces the Scheins' four types of inquiry — humble, diagnostic, confrontive, and process-oriented — and shows how most physician leaders unknowingly default to confrontive questions that teach their teams to confirm a hypothesis rather than share what they actually see.

Why Psychological Safety Is Not About Being Nice

which kind of open door do you have

A nurse once told me the truth only when the doctor in charge was away. That is what a lack of psychological safety looks like in healthcare: not loud fear, but quiet calculation. When people cannot say what needs to be said in the room, truth starts traveling through hallways and whispers. And when that happens, leaders are not hearing reality. They are hearing what feels safe.

How Professionalism Becomes Armor That Hurts Leadership

All leaders wear armor that keeps them distant from their teams

Every leader wears armor. Most don't realize they're wearing it. Over-reliance on data. Excessive use of jargon and buzzwords. Cynicism disguised as realism. These forms of armor often punish the very behaviors that build trust. Your armor may have served you at some point. The question is whether it's still serving you now — or whether it's keeping your team from trusting you enough to follow where you're trying to lead.

Why Vulnerability Feels So Dangerous to Physician Leaders

excercising authority vs being open is one of the key tensions every leader must manage

Medical training teaches many things directly, but it also teaches a lot without ever saying it out loud. One of the unspoken lessons is: never look uncertain. So doctors develop habits that help them succeed in clinical work. They project confidence before they fully feel it. They hide uncertainty while they think. They sound clear, even when the situation is not. But when doctors move into leadership roles, these same habits can quietly undermine trust. Patients want reassurance, but teams want honesty. Patients look for confidence, while teams need openness. They need a different kind of trust.

The Business Case for Servant Leadership in Healthcare

The effects of servant leadership ripple through the organization

If you're a physician leader who believes in servant leadership, at some point someone in a boardroom will say, "That's nice, but what are the results?" This post gives you the answer. And if you're an executive thinking about physician leadership development, this is why servant leadership isn't a personality trait. It's an operating system you can support or undermine. Which choice you make will determine your organization's culture.