Managers Should Replace Feedback Sandwiches With Clear Behavioral Coaching

Renee Jacques describes a managerial failure that looks familiar because the intentions were not hostile. A manager believed she had given developmental feedback, while the employee heard enough praise to expect a promotion. The manager had used the feedback sandwich — praise, criticism, praise — and the critical message was buried inside reassurance deeply enough to create false expectations.

The damage was not limited to one disappointed employee. St Jacques says the manager burned out from overcompensating, the employee experienced a breakdown in trust, and the organization missed its goals. For her, this is one example from coaching hundreds of leaders where low emotional intelligence leads to low results.

Her claim is not that managers lack effort or good intentions. It is that many managers rely on feedback habits that protect them from discomfort while leaving employees unclear about where they stand. A person can be praised, corrected, and praised again and still not understand the consequence, the standard, or the path forward.

The managerial shift she describes is blunt: excelling as an individual contributor does not translate cleanly into leading through other people. A manager’s impact is measured by what the team achieves, and that requires more than pushing for output. It requires increasing intrinsic motivation and accountability, particularly when there is resistance or a breakdown in trust.

St Jacques’s framework is built around three skills: connect, correct, and cultivate. The on-screen slide names it the “Leadership Activated” emotional-intelligence leadership framework.

The first skill, connect, is not presented as social polish. Connection creates psychological safety: an environment where people feel free to communicate without fear. St Jacques also cites research showing that the leading factor in job satisfaction is not pay, but feeling valued and appreciated.

Her example is a seasoned employee whose performance was declining. The executive wanted St Jacques to use coaching time to work on the employee’s external skills. It was quickly clear, she says, that the issue was not skill coaching alone; the work was to uncover internal factors influencing performance.

That is the purpose of connection in the framework. Managers often push for performance without first establishing enough trust to understand what is happening. The result can be that behavior worsens because the employee experiences correction as rejection.

Connection, as St Jacques defines it, separates work from worth. It signals that people are valued not only for what they do but for who they are. Practically, she recommends a tone of curiosity and language that gives employees permission to speak candidly: “I want you to know it’s safe to share,” “Can you help me understand?” and “I see you. I hear you. That’s hard.” The manager’s job in that moment is to paraphrase, listen, and make the employee feel heard.

The goal is not to fix, lecture, diagnose, or collect personal information to use later. The goal is to discover the root issue: imposter syndrome, a personal situation, a motivation gap, a lack of feeling valued, or something in the manager’s own behavior. St Jacques specifically warns leaders not to defend their intentions when they learn they have contributed to resistance. The better response is to own impact: “It looks like I need to work on that.”

This first step is not a “nice to have.” Even if it takes more than one meeting, the immediate objective is that the employee feels seen. But connection alone is not enough. Avoiding developmental guidance is not compassion; it is coddling.

The second skill is correct. St Jacques’s example is a capable COO who kept redoing his team’s work rather than correcting them. His private story was that feedback hurt people. Her diagnosis is sharper: his overfunctioning enabled their underfunctioning.

The purpose of management, as she defines it, is to steward the organization’s goals through people. Once trust has separated a person’s worth from their work, correction can focus compassionately on behavior. The leader is not correcting the person; the leader is correcting the behavior.

That distinction matters because managers often avoid directness and resort to hinting. Hinting does not work. “Deadlines are important” is not correction; it is an indirect statement that leaves room for ambiguity. A clearer version names the standard, the gap, and the consequence: “The deadline was X. This was submitted on Y. We need all deadlines met from now on because of Z impact.”

St Jacques draws on Heen and Stone to explain why feedback is psychologically difficult. It sits between two human needs: the desire to learn and grow, and the desire to be accepted as worthy without needing to change. That tension is why shame fails and vagueness fails.

Her formulation is simple: vague feedback produces vague commitment, which produces no realistic chance of change. Effective correction balances clarity and kindness. She recommends replacing “but” with “and,” and “you” with “we,” as in: “Your client dedication is impressive, and can we collaborate to improve communication?”

The contrast with the feedback sandwich is central. The sandwich mixes praise and criticism in a way that can obscure the message. St Jacques’s sequence is different: connect first to establish enough trust, then correct with guidance that is direct, behavioral, and kind.

The third skill is cultivate. St Jacques compares leadership potential to a garden: it needs ongoing care. Her criticism is aimed at managers who withhold feedback until a year-end review, then deliver it vaguely. In her view, that delay erodes trust.

She argues instead for real-time, informal, frequent feedback, which she says research shows is more effective. Cultivation is the ongoing coaching work that follows connection and correction. It is not a single difficult conversation, and it is not a performance-management ritual reserved for formal review cycles.

The practical behavior she emphasizes is asking open-ended coaching questions that invite ownership. “What do you think we should do?” is her example. The point is to move the team from dependence on the manager toward shared problem-solving. Done well, she says, this unlocks leadership potential in the team and in the manager, because the culture shifts from managerial burnout to ownership.

St Jacques frames the three skills as a tripod. A leader may be naturally strong in one: warm but unclear, direct but disconnected, or developmental in intention but inconsistent in practice. But if connect, correct, and cultivate are not all present, she argues, the ability to activate leadership falls apart.

Renee Jacques anticipates the objection that emotional intelligence is “fluff,” or that focusing on people distracts from the bottom line. Her answer is that people are not a detour from results.

Her high-performance claim is specific: teams become more intrinsically motivated and accountable when people first feel seen, heard, and valued. The argument is not that kindness replaces standards. It is that standards land better when people trust the relationship, understand the behavior that must change, and receive frequent coaching rather than delayed judgment.

St Jacques links low emotional intelligence to cycles of mistrust, disconnection, and pain, and argues that workplaces can be “as kind as they are effective.” For managers, the practical consequence is that the “how” of leadership cannot be treated as separate from the “what.” Bottom-line goals are pursued through people, and her framework makes connection the condition for correction that can actually change behavior.