Tony, my father was a master at giving cnstructive feedback that I could “hear”.  He watched for things I did, and then commented that “I noticed you did X, Y and Z to solve that problem and they worked really well“    Or, he would say “I realize you are worrying about  X situation ,and I was thinking that if you tried  A, maybe it would work.“  In other words, he confirmed who I was when he commented specifically on good things, and he did not put suggestions in terms of something that I should do to correct one of my problems, but took the suggestion onto himself (“I was thinking about”  instead of “you should do this”).  So when he said something, and it was in a couple of sentences, not a half hour lecture, I could hear him and with dignity, try it out!