Why the feedback sandwich doesn't work

Two reasons.

First: everyone over the age of twelve has eaten one. Once a person notices the pattern — praise, criticism, praise — the opening compliment stops reading as a compliment and starts reading as a warning shot. You've trained the room to brace whenever you say something nice.

Second: it blurs the actual message. The praise softens the critique, the critique undercuts the praise, and your colleague leaves the conversation unsure what you were really saying. That's not kindness. That's noise.

(Harvard Business Review called this out in 2013. The diagnosis still holds.)

What works instead → How to give difficult feedback that actually works