Wednesday, June 8, 2011

Compliment Sandwich



Discipline is a common activity for any good Boss.  The bigger your company, the more this responsibility is shared between multiple Bosses and the biggest of Bosses has the power to fire someone on the spot.  The rest of us have to go through HR and all that disciplinary process bullshit.

I believe it's thanks to the wonderful people in HR that we have the delicious Compliment Sandwich at our immediate disposal for any disciplinary/critical/baffling situation.  For those who don't know, the Compliment Sandwich works quite simply.  One will "sandwich" a negative observation between two positive observations.  Example: "Mark, you are doing great work here and we're glad to have you, but yesterday you took a shit in the board room during our budget meeting and for that reason, we have to write you up (because we can't fire him, it's his first offense), but keep in mind that you have a big, bright future here with XYZ Corp and your quality of work is incredible!"

I wish that was a real-world example.

The biggest problem with the Compliment Sandwich is how indirect it really becomes.  The negative connotation provides less of an impression on the employee than how wonderful they are doing thanks to the very structure of the sentence.  We use the Compliment Sandwich because we don't want our employees to hate their boss or to hate the company they work for, but we've learned from my previous blogs (and Tweets) that our employees already hate us and sandwiching their reprehensible action (in this case, shitting on a board room table) won't make them hate the boss any less.  It's ridiculous to think that an employee (a smart one anyway) will even remotely feel better about themselves when we turn their negative action into a positively spun piece of crap, worthy of political lobbyist praise.

The other problem with the Compliment Sandwich is the sheer number of employees who are aware of its existence.  Just because we use a sneaky, time-tested HR maneuver to discipline our over-informed staff doesn't mean it will have any effect.  They will laugh it off and laugh at YOU, the BOSS, and never take you seriously if you're constantly holding up this HR shield against the potential backlash of an angry employee.

If we simply spoke our minds a little more often, unafraid of potential confrontation, the work place would carry more respect for the Boss and his/her tactics/disciplines/strategies.  It's very important to understand that good bosses try to abandon immediate, emotional, knee-jerk reactions to most situations and we will frequently second-guess how we phrase something just to make sure it has the most impact, so I'm not suggesting every boss begin crying when their employees share pictures of their newborn.  I'm only suggesting that all you Bosses out there gain an awareness of how knowledgeable your staff may be to your techniques and it might be time to adopt some new strategies.

If you're a whiny employee and would like to complain, you can reach Boss Blog HR at bossbloghr@gmail.com.

Happy Hump Day.

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