I am currently hunched over on my back porch, sweating through a linen shirt, wrestling with a cluster of 47 individual strands of Christmas lights. It is July. The humidity is sitting at a thick 77 percent, and the neighbors are almost certainly whispering about the man fighting a plastic neon hydra in the summer. But there is something about a knot-a physical, stubborn, plastic-coated knot-that demands resolution. It feels like a metaphor for every conversation I’ve ever had where the truth was obscured by layers of polite filler. I’m untangling because I can’t stand the hidden mess. Most corporate communication, however, is designed to keep the mess hidden, wrapped in the soft, soggy bread of the ‘feedback sandwich.’

Think about the last time you were on the receiving end. You sit down in a chair that’s probably 7 years too old. Your manager smiles-that specific, tight-lipped smile that suggests they’ve just finished a mandatory HR module on ‘Difficult Conversations.’ They start with the bread. ‘I really love your energy in meetings,’ they say. You perk up. You like your energy too. Then the ‘but’ drops like a lead weight. ‘However, your strategic analysis on the last 7 projects was fundamentally flawed and lacked any real data depth.’ Your heart sinks. But before you can even process the criticism, before you can ask a question or defend your logic, they’re piling on more bread: ‘But hey, you have a really positive attitude and the team really likes your choice of office snacks!’

The Erosion of Trust

You walk out of that room not feeling encouraged, but feeling like you’ve been subjected to a cheap magic trick. It’s patronizing. It assumes that you, as a functioning adult with a mortgage and a life, are too fragile to hear a direct truth without being coddled first. It treats criticism like a bitter pill that must be hidden in a spoonful of processed sugar. The result isn’t better performance; it’s a profound erosion of trust. From that moment on, every time that manager pays you a genuine compliment, you’ll be bracing for the ‘but.’ You’ve been trained to view praise as a threat-the warning siren for an incoming strike.

I’ve made this mistake myself. About 17 months ago, I had to tell a freelancer that their work was consistently missing the mark. Instead of being direct, I ‘sandwiched’ it. I spent 7 minutes talking about how much I liked their font choices and their punctuality before spending 47 seconds mentioning that the actual content was unusable. They left the meeting thinking everything was fine, only to be blindsided when I didn’t renew their contract. It was a failure of my own courage. I didn’t want to be the ‘bad guy,’ so I ended up being a dishonest one. I untangled those lights today because I realized that leaving things messy is a choice, and usually, it’s a selfish one.

High Stakes Require High Honesty

This method is taught as a way to ‘soften the blow,’ but for anyone with a modicum of emotional intelligence, it feels like an insult. It suggests that we cannot handle the reality of our own shortcomings. But growth doesn’t happen in the soft spaces. It happens in the friction. When we sugarcoat reality, we rob people of the opportunity to actually improve. We trade long-term growth for short-term comfort. In a world that values ‘radical candor,’ the feedback sandwich remains a stubborn, 70-year-old relic of a management style that viewed employees as children to be manipulated rather than partners to be respected.

If you look at fields where the stakes are actually high-medicine, aviation, or high-end craftsmanship-you won’t find many sandwiches. When you are dealing with something that requires absolute precision, there is no room for the ‘sandwich.’ If a structural beam is failing, you don’t compliment the paint job before addressing the collapse. This level of honesty is what separates the mediocre from the exceptional. For instance, the meticulous standards found at

LOTOS EYEWEAR are not maintained through vague, cushioned dialogue. To create a masterpiece… requires a level of directness that our current corporate culture is terrified of. If a hinge is loose on a frame made of 18k gold, the master goldsmith doesn’t start by praising the box it comes in. They fix the hinge. They respect the work enough to tell the truth about it.

Dismissing Professional Value

Let’s talk about the ‘Positive Attitude’ closer. This is the most insulting part of the sandwich. It’s the ‘participation trophy’ of corporate life. When someone tells you that you have a ‘great attitude’ right after telling you that you’ve failed at your core responsibilities, they are essentially saying, ‘You’re incompetent, but you’re nice to have around the office.’ It’s a dismissal of your professional value in favor of your social utility. It’s what you say to a child who struck out in T-ball. It has no place in a professional environment where people are trying to build something of lasting value.

We need to stop treating each other like we’re made of glass. We are adults. We have survived breakups, losses, and global pandemics. We can handle a critique of our 7-slide PowerPoint presentation.

The Alternative: Simply The Truth

So, what’s the alternative? It’s simpler, but harder. It’s called ‘The Truth.’ It involves sitting down and saying, ‘I want to talk about your recent reports. I’ve noticed a 47 percent increase in errors, and it’s impacting our ability to meet the client’s needs. Let’s look at why that’s happening and how we can fix it.’ No bread. No fake compliments. Just a problem and a shared commitment to solving it. This approach respects the employee’s intelligence and gives them the data they need to actually change. It turns a ‘correction’ into a ‘collaboration.’

As I finally untangle the last knot in these Christmas lights-a particularly nasty snarl that took me nearly 17 minutes to work through-I realize that the lights look much better now. They aren’t hidden behind a bunch of other wires. They are just what they are: simple, direct, and ready to be used when the time is right. We should treat our words with the same respect. We should untangle the knots of our communication, stop hiding the truth in a sandwich, and trust that the people we work with are strong enough to handle the reality of the situation.

Untangling Our Words

If we want to build cultures of excellence, we have to start by being honest. We have to realize that a compliment given only to soften a blow is not a compliment at all-it’s a tactical maneuver. And people deserve better than to be ‘maneuvered.’ They deserve the truth, even if it’s a bit unpolished. Especially if it’s unpolished. Because at the end of the day, a ‘positive attitude’ won’t fix a broken strategy, but a clear, honest conversation just might.

I wonder if we could ever do the same with our performance reviews. Probably not by next July, but maybe in 7 years, we’ll finally learn how to speak to each other like adults.