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I'd like to ask you to think about one of your kids or imagine that you have a child if you don't have one. Let's say that your child loves chocolate, especially the Snickers candy bar.
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Now imagine that every time you come back home and give your child his/her favorite Snickers candy bar, you slap him/her right after that. You do it every single day for a full week.... guess what will happen? The next time you come home, and your child sees the Snickers candy bar he/she will panic, get scared and and will run away from you. When he/she grows up, that Snickers candy bar will be a haunting nightmare for him/her. Not only will he/she hate it, but he/she will have bad feelings every time he/she sees or hears about it. Do you know why? Because you've negatively conditioned your child to this reaction. You've negatively programmed them by continuous conditioning and thus a negative trigger has been created for them and associated with that Snickers candy bar. The Snickers candy bar is now associated with pain and humiliation for your kid. He/she will feel the pain and humiliation every time he/she sees it even if the slapping stops.
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Now, think of managers who use the so-called "Sandwich technique" when giving feedback to their employees. "The Sandwich" technique, for those of your who are not familiar with it, has the following formula: Positive / Negative / Positive. You say start by saying something positive first, then you mention the negative aspect of their work, then you end up by saying something positive about them again.
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I personally say that this is one of the most devastating techniques ever used in management and it doesn't have any positive effects. On the contrary it takes away trust and credibility. It kills the meaning of appreciation and it makes it hard to motivate your employees. When you want to reprimand or give negative feedback to one of your employees, if every time you do that you start by saying something positive first or appreciate them in one way or another, then you're using the killer "Sandwich" technique. Not good at all. If you've been guilty of using this method, I say leave it right now and never go back to it. You're giving a chocolate to your employee and then slapping them right after that...Remember the negative effects of doing so with the example of the Snickers candy bar? Eventually, your words of appreciation and encouragement will lose their meaning and effect. Over time, when you want to say something nice to them, they will take it negatively and in a defensive way and will be waiting for the negative message to come, even if there was no negative message to follow.
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How would you give feedback then? Just be simple, honest and straight to the point. Don't make the employee's identity or personality the subject of criticism, but focus on the negative action or task in a supportive, coaching and empowering way.
For example, instead of saying: "Hey Peter, the quality of your work is very bad which shows how lousy you are"!, say something like: "Hey Peter, the report you sent me yesterday had few errors in the data analysis section, I would like to show you how to fix those errors so that your future reports will be perfectly done. I trust you can do it".
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If you look at this last example, you'll see no Sandwich technique used...You don't start by positive and then go into negative, you start with the point you want to fix right away and offer help and support in an empowering non-threatening way. You offer coaching which is very much needed and appreciated. No one can be offended if you do it this way. Of course, I don't need to comment on the first example I used with Peter, obviously his manager was having a bad day and just vented on him. People get defensive when you criticize their identity and character, it's their core and nobody can tolerate their core being threatened. So, cut to the chase, don't sugar code your negative feedback, make it straight to the point, yet descent with no threatening of the core or identity of your employees. This will make them enjoy the candy bar when you give it to them and be more appreciative and accepting to the negative feedback you give.
