The trick is to avoid giving both types of feedback at once. When managers try the common sandwich technique, stuffing negative feedback between two layers of positive feedback, employees just get confused. In our experience, the people who needed the developmental feedback most tended to only hear the positive things their manager said, and the people who performed well left remembering more of the negative comments. So be sure to clearly separate out the positive feedback from the developmental feedback.

Instead of using sandwich, a better way is use your own failure story to start the conversation on improvement feedback. Bottom line is, you can only effectively deliver the improvement feedback after you gained the full trust.