It’s not the kind of sandwich that will hopefully quieten your rumbling stomach during your midday break, but it does have something in common with the contents of your lunch box: it’s meant to be appetizing, figuratively speaking, and easy to digest.

Like it or not (and usually not!) there’s something almost everybody in the workplace has to brace themselves to receive now and again: those penetrating critiques – occasional or regular, spontaneous or preplanned, on overall performance or relating to a specific assignment – commonly known by that very overworked and misused term: “feedback.”

And nowadays, apparently, many managers and supervisors are already familiar with a new species of this animal, designed to take the sting out of the critical comments and thus make the whole process more pleasant for both giver and receiver. The “feedback sandwich” consists of criticism “sandwiched” between two positive comments, as follows:

• Make specific positive comment (what the person evaluating liked).
• Critique and/or suggestion for improvement. (what the evaluating person didn’t like).
• Overall positive, encouraging comment.

Sounds good. However, there’s a problem.

As communication consultant Shelle Rose Charvet remind us, employees, or other feedback recipients, aren’t stupid. Just one word of praise from the boss and they already already know what’s coming. The “sandwich” style has become so so familiar that as soon as someone gives them a compliment they brace themselves to hear the criticism that inevitably comes next and are therefore in no frame of mind to take in the compliment.

“What, I did a good job? Great! OK, so don’t beat about the bush, get over with it now…..what’s the big but?”

In other words, the moment you hear praise, you know you’ve done something wrong somewhere along the line.

Charvet points out that management theory has recognized for quite some time that creating and maintaining a positive emotional state is key to performance. Habitual criticism, whether of the sandwich variety or not, will induce emotional states that are anything but positive.

The eventual outcome is that the recipient develops Incompetency Attacks – a term invented by Charvet’s friend, Gillian Keefe. These are extremely negative emotional state wherein one believes one is utterly incompetent. But it’s all in the mind. These states have no bearing on one’s real level of competence.

After some experimentation in her own training programs, Charvet found this reconstituted version of sandwich feedback to work very well:

• Make a suggestion.
• Give 2 reasons why we think it is a good idea: one reason would state what the suggestion would accomplish
• and one reason would state what problem the suggestion would prevent or solve.
• Make an overall positive comment about the person, his/her abilities, etc.

The big difference in this formula is that there’s no criticism at all, whether direct or implied. Yet it proved highly effective in inducing the subject to change whatever the initiator of the comments wanted to be changed.

Of course, like all good things, it takes practice. But surely, it deserves the close attention of all involved in working with people.