the complaint sandwich

Psychologist Guy Winch recommends a formula called “the complaint sandwich”—a series of three statements calibrated to make people more receptive to changing their ways. The first “slice of bread” in the sandwich is a positive statement that will hopefully make the listener less defensive when the complaint itself arrives.

“The meat of the sandwich is the complaint itself,” Winch said. “And here’s the trick: The meat has to be lean. In other words, all you need is the one incident to make your point.” Don’t present a compendium of every offense; just stick to the specifics of the present situation.

The final component of the sandwich is another positive statement, this time one that might motivate the other party to do things differently.


Joe Pinsker
"How to Complain". The Atlantic. June 29, 2019.

email interruptions

Researchers from Michigan State University say that keeping up with email throughout the day places high — and sometimes downright impossible — demands on managers that prevent them from achieving their personal goals and from being good leaders for their teams.

According to the study, office workers of all seniority levels spend more than 90 minutes a day just recovering from email interruptions and returning to their normal workload. For managers, these distractions caused by email have wider-reaching consequences.

“Like most tools, email is useful but it can become disruptive and even damaging if used excessively or inappropriately,” explains MSU management professor Russell Johnson, lead researcher for the study, in a release. “When managers are the ones trying to recover from email interruptions, they fail to meet their goals, they neglect manager-responsibilities and their subordinates don’t have the leadership behavior they need to thrive.”

Johnson and his team found that managers recover from these frequent disruptions by limiting their leadership duties, such as long-term growth and development of the team, and turning instead to more day-to-day tactical decisions and tasks. This recovery decision is both a strategic one and a way for them to feel more productive.

Ben Renner

"Study: Checking Email Less Often Leads To More Productive Workday, Especially For Managers". Study Finds. April 25, 2019. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Psychology.

go to work and help

If a man were poor or hungry, [some] would say, let us pray for him. I would suggest a little different regiment for a person in this condition: rather take him a bag of flour and a little beef or pork, and a little sugar and butter. A few such comforts will do him more good than your prayers. And I would be ashamed to ask the Lord to do something that I would not do myself. Then go to work and help the poor among yourselves first, and do all you can for them, and then call upon God to do the balance.

John Taylor

Journal of Discourses, vol. 19, p. 340 as found in Prophetic Statements on Food Storage for Latter-day Saints by Neil H. Leash. Cedar Fort. 1999. p.127

decency and respect

We may please ourselves with the prospect of free and popular governments. But there is great danger that those governments will not make us happy. God grant they may. But I fear that in every assembly, members will obtain an influence by noise, not sense. By meanness, not greatness. By ignorance, not learning. By contracted hearts, not large souls….

There is one thing, my dear sir, that must be attempted and most sacredly observed or we are all undone. There must be decency and respect, and veneration introduced for persons of authority of every rank, or we are undone. In a popular government, this is our only way.

John Adams writing to James Warren (1776) 

As quoted in John Adams by David McCullough. Simon and Schuster, 2001. p.106

trial & beauty

From trial comes refined beauty.

H. Burke Peterson

“Adversity and Prayer,” General Conference. October 1973