Taking the opportunity to throw a suggestion or criticism when offering praise sounds like an efficient and effective way to kill two birds with one stone. Praise reinforces the behavior or action you desire to have repeated, while the suggestion shows the team member how to further improve their performance. This is known as the “Yes, but” way of giving positive feedback.
Our negativity bias is hard wired, which is why the slightest disapproval always overwhelms the loudest praise. When I was a college instructor, I noticed that students would ignore compliments I gave them on their papers and zero in on some small bit of criticism. The reverse was true when it came to those end-of-semester student evaluations of my teaching. One negative review could stick in my craw for months while I would utterly forget the dozens of positive reviews.
There is a role for praise and a role for criticism. Try not to mix them; otherwise only the negative will break through.
When is the good time to point out the criticism? How long do you wait after the praise especially if the criticism is something that needs to be corrected sooner than later? Thank you.
A balanced approach is important. You don’t want your students raising their defenses every time you open your mouth. You also don’t want them surprised you offered criticism because you only offer praise.
I love this. What I want to know is when do you deliver the criticism? I know it said later on in another conversation, but how soon afterwards and won’t that dilute the praise anyway? Just delaying it until then?
This is why the often-referred “compliment sandwich” is ineffective. It is usually offered with token compliments and a very detailed critique. Everyone receives that sort of sandwich as merely a technique for you to say what you really mean.
You can make both the compliment and critique in the same conversation if you must. Just eliminate the “but” in whatever way you can... especially if it is an entrenched technique.
Delivery of feedback effectively has a number of behaviors that surround it that we’ve unearthed in admired leaders. Those are all discussed extensively in the feedback module in our platform at admiredleadership.com
I absolutely support this. Great article!! The one thing I remember from the NLP course I did years and years ago is that 'but' is a deletive and everything that goes before is wiped out by using it. Let buts and more ands please!!
In education, the sandwich goes by another less savory name. I used it countless times with students. It softens the blow a tad, but it is far from effective. While it is impossible to separate criticism from praise in comments at the end of a student essay, it is possible many times to praise today and criticize tomorrow (or vice versa) when dealing with employees so that the praise will land. If it’s not possible, though, I agree. Take the sandwich approach as being better than nothing.
Our negativity bias is hard wired, which is why the slightest disapproval always overwhelms the loudest praise. When I was a college instructor, I noticed that students would ignore compliments I gave them on their papers and zero in on some small bit of criticism. The reverse was true when it came to those end-of-semester student evaluations of my teaching. One negative review could stick in my craw for months while I would utterly forget the dozens of positive reviews.
There is a role for praise and a role for criticism. Try not to mix them; otherwise only the negative will break through.
When is the good time to point out the criticism? How long do you wait after the praise especially if the criticism is something that needs to be corrected sooner than later? Thank you.
A balanced approach is important. You don’t want your students raising their defenses every time you open your mouth. You also don’t want them surprised you offered criticism because you only offer praise.
I love this. What I want to know is when do you deliver the criticism? I know it said later on in another conversation, but how soon afterwards and won’t that dilute the praise anyway? Just delaying it until then?
Hi Kris.
This is why the often-referred “compliment sandwich” is ineffective. It is usually offered with token compliments and a very detailed critique. Everyone receives that sort of sandwich as merely a technique for you to say what you really mean.
You can make both the compliment and critique in the same conversation if you must. Just eliminate the “but” in whatever way you can... especially if it is an entrenched technique.
Delivery of feedback effectively has a number of behaviors that surround it that we’ve unearthed in admired leaders. Those are all discussed extensively in the feedback module in our platform at admiredleadership.com
I absolutely support this. Great article!! The one thing I remember from the NLP course I did years and years ago is that 'but' is a deletive and everything that goes before is wiped out by using it. Let buts and more ands please!!
In education, the sandwich goes by another less savory name. I used it countless times with students. It softens the blow a tad, but it is far from effective. While it is impossible to separate criticism from praise in comments at the end of a student essay, it is possible many times to praise today and criticize tomorrow (or vice versa) when dealing with employees so that the praise will land. If it’s not possible, though, I agree. Take the sandwich approach as being better than nothing.