In this solo presentation, Mark Murphy, founder of Leadership IQ, argues that the popular "compliment sandwich" feedback technique is fundamentally flawed. He begins by defining the method—praise, criticism, praise—and illustrates it with a concrete scenario involving a programmer named Pat who fails to submit error logs. Murphy explains why the critical middle message is often missed, drawing on two psychological mechanisms: the serial position effect (primacy and recency) which causes listeners to retain the first and last statements but forget the middle, and a Pavlovian conditioning response where repeated pairings of compliments with criticism make employees anticipate negative feedback whenever they receive praise, leading to anxiety and reduced receptivity. He concludes by positioning Leadership IQ’s training programs as a solution, inviting viewers to schedule a call for customized leadership development.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Mark Murphy, founder of Leadership IQ, and one of my personal goals in life is to get leaders to stop using compliment sandwiches. First, what is a compliment sandwich? It's essentially you give somebody a compliment, then you sneak in a little bit of criticism, and then you close it off with another compliment. Okay, let's look at a real-life example here. Okay, I've got a programmer on my team, let's say, named Pat, and Pat's not submitting their error logs every day, so I might go and say to Pat, Pat, listen, you're the best programmer on the team and I really love your talent. Now you're not submitting your error logs promptly and that's a problem, but I really want the whole team to appreciate all of your great abilities. Okay, that's a compliment sandwich. Now what's the problem? Well, if I'm Pat, number one problem, if I'm Pat and I'm listening to this, what I heard was I'm the best programmer on the team and my boss loves my talent. Womp womp womp womp womp womp womp womp. I'm— the whole team should appreciate all of my great abilities. I heard a compliment, Charlie Brown's teacher, and then another compliment. Now, why does that happen? Well, let me give you some hard science. Number 1 is what's known as the serial position effect. What does that mean? Basically, it means neurologically, when we hear multiple pieces of information, we remember what comes first. Why do you remember? Let's say you heard a list of information, 3 items in a list. You're going to remember the first item on the list. Why? What's known as the primacy effect. That is, the first thing you hear gets easy, most easily encoded into long-term memory. Then you're going to remember the last thing you heard. Why? The recency effect, meaning you remember the thing that was most recent in your mind. Now, what's the one thing you forget? The thing in the middle. Unfortunately, in the compliment sandwich, What's the stuff in the middle? The stuff in the middle is the one bit of information we actually needed to give this person. It was the fact that their error logs are not being submitted properly or at all. That's the one piece of information we really need this person to hear, and that's the one piece of information they are not going to hear. There's another issue, and that is what we would call a Pavlovian response. So imagine if I'm Snow White, for example, This person walking past me in the street, this stranger, walks up and hands me an apple, and I say, "Wow, my goodness, that's a lovely apple. How fantastic." And then I bite into the apple and I instantly go into a coma. Now I wake up because Prince comes along, but then it happens again the next week, and somebody comes along, hands me an apple, but again it's a poisoned apple. I take a bite, "Wow, it's lovely," and then instantly fall into a coma. The third time this happens, Somebody hands me an apple, I am going to break into a cold sweat. Why? Because I have begun smartly to associate apples with dropping into comas. Now, same basic thing happens. Imagine your boss walks into your office with a compliment. Oh wow, that's lovely. And then as soon as they give you that compliment, they boom, pop you in the head with some kind of criticism. The next day they walk into your office, they give you another compliment, and then boom, immediately bop you with some criticism. What starts to happen? What starts to happen is that anytime you hear a compliment, you're going to get a little bit of hairs on the back of your neck, cold sweat going, that, uh-oh, what else is coming? The criticism is about to come. Why are so many high performers so bad at taking compliments? This right here, too many years of the compliment sandwich, because we have in a Pavlovian way started to associate compliments with boom, immediate constructive criticism coming along. One last note: companies generally hire us to add a little spark to their leadership training and frankly give their managers skills that nobody else is teaching them, whether it's hiring for attitude or managing narcissists or giving tough feedback without making people angry or things like goal setting for greatness, not mediocrity, and all the rest. If you would like to add a little oomph to your organization's leadership training, Schedule a call with us. We can give you a quick overview of our training options, whether it's live and in person or online and on demand. No obligation, just a quick chat, and we'll give you some options to consider. I look forward to chatting.
