Picture this: you’re in middle school and your crush just complimented you. You die inside because you’re so happy. Then comes the but, “But I like Sara more, and she has a big pool.” Crushed. Your emotions change for the worse and you’re standing there dumbfounded. Yeah, we’ve all been there.
In middle school, the compliment sandwich is not prevalent, it’s not really prevalent in high school, and frankly, not even college. A lot of people don’t know how to tell someone that they need to improve on something without totally crushing them as they did in middle school. Well people, that’s about to change. We need to add a compliment sandwich to our everlasting menu. Here’s how you’re going to do it:
Step 1: Compliment them on something first.
Example: Phil, you’re doing such a great job on the project, I can tell you’re putting a lot of effort into it.
Step 2: Tell them the constructive criticism they need in order to improve or to complete a task correctly.
Example: I did notice that page two was suppose to look like page one, so can we change the format to it?
Step 3: Compliment them on the change
Example: Page one looked so great, I know you can make page two look just as good!
This, ladies and gentleman, is the compliment sandwich. Take this sandwich with you where ever you go. It will help you in tough situations when someone asks your opinion, and it will help you to be more friendly when delivering some news that isn’t the greatest. This can be translated over to work in a great way as well, such as in the example. People like to be told their doing a good job, so if you can disguise the change, or hiccup within the fluffy outside, the change will go down a lot easier.
For more information and great marketing tips on things such as the compliment sandwich, see our Twitter, Pinterest, Google+ and Instagram pages.
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