{"id":9684,"date":"2012-07-30T11:51:44","date_gmt":"2012-07-30T10:51:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=9684"},"modified":"2023-01-25T00:24:20","modified_gmt":"2023-01-25T00:24:20","slug":"good-newsbad-news-sandwich","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=9684","title":{"rendered":"Good News\/Bad News Sandwich"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Rat Sandwich\" width=\"180\" height=\"123\" align=\"left\" style=\"--smush-placeholder-width: 180px; --smush-placeholder-aspect-ratio: 180\/123;margin: 5px 10px 5px 0px; display: inline; float: left;\" data-src=\"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/07\/rat_sandwich.jpg\" alt=\"Rat Sandwich\" src=\"data:image\/svg+xml;base64,PHN2ZyB3aWR0aD0iMSIgaGVpZ2h0PSIxIiB4bWxucz0iaHR0cDovL3d3dy53My5vcmcvMjAwMC9zdmciPjwvc3ZnPg==\" class=\"lazyload\"><strong>This is an old post. Some of the examples are out of date, but the message is still the same.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>When I was in the rat race, the \u201cgood news\/bad news sandwich\u201d (GNBN) was much touted. One of the things I learnt about it was that it is only something you were expected to give to other people. No one ever seems to give it to you\u2026 or do they?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The GNBN technique is how you\u2019re supposed to impart bad or negative news to someone by starting off with some good stuff, then cover the bad news, then round it off with more good stuff. It\u2019s a pathetic and childish attempt to disguise the bad news, that\u2019s all. And it\u2019s made worse by the ineptness of those trying to do it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>There are a number of problems with the technique. The main one is that most people can see right through it. I said that no one seems to use it on you, but that\u2019s only because it doesn\u2019t work if you have a mind of your own. If you\u2019re being chewed out, you\u2019re being chewed out, and no amount of waffle about inconsequential \u201cgood things\u201d can hide that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You see, the bad news portion is usually hugely significant in terms of the collection of events that make someone\u2019s life go round, whereas the good news parts are ridiculously insignificant when measured on the same scale. A good example would be the results of an interview for a new job within your company. GNBN might deal with it using the following elements:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><span style=\"color: #393e37;\">you gave a really good interview and we were impressed <\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span style=\"color: #393e37;\">you didn\u2019t get the job <\/span><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><span style=\"color: #393e37;\">you have a future with us and shouldn\u2019t be discouraged <\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>If you\u2019re na\u00efve enough to be mollified, even for a short time, the simple fact is you didn\u2019t get the job that you had your heart set on. Your career (and your bank balance) really needed it, but now you\u2019re consigned to at least another year in the same position, with the extra humiliation of knowing you\u2019re not good enough. This will probably be even worse when you find out who <strong>did<\/strong> get it (and how bad they are), and you start to realise the extreme social awkwardness that this will create &#8211; the new job holder will most likely be gloating or patronising now that they\u2019re senior to you, even without trying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Do you really feel better about all that because you gave a \u201cgood interview\u201d? Have you considered the multiple meanings \u201ca future with us\u201d carries (i.e. you can stay where you are, but you&#8217;re likely to get the same result in future because someone senior doesn&#8217;t like you)?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>GNBN will really have helped you, won\u2019t it?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>GNBN is one of those things that is sound as a general principle, but which has been grabbed by successive crops of wishy-washy coachinistas (new word) as being <strong>The Answer To Everything<\/strong>. A huge problem with it is that it doesn\u2019t work when the relative magnitude of the bad news is huge compared with the good news parts, or if the bad news and good news are poles apart in terms of relevance and importance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I remember a while back having a school teacher as a pupil. On one occasion our discussion went like this after we\u2019d pulled over to deal with a mistake she\u2019d made:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cAren\u2019t you supposed to wrap the bad news with good news?\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cOK. I like what you\u2019ve done with your hair, and those are nice shoes you\u2019re wearing. But I\u2019m more concerned about how you just drove over the edge of that roundabout, swung out to take the wrong exit without looking because you accelerated, and forced all those other cars to slam on their brakes. You ought to be, too.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cAll right, I take your point. I was only joking though&#8221;.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>And this illustrates the point about magnitudes, relevance, and importance. Even if I\u2019d sandwiched her mistake with how well she\u2019d riven down a quiet road earlier, and how competently she\u2019d dealt with the traffic lights and crossings in the shopping precinct (which I\u2019d have already commented on separately, anyway), these two things were hugely insignificant and irrelevant in terms of what had just gone wrong. The possible consequences both now and if she did it in future when out on her own (not to mention what would happen if she did it on test) were massively more significant.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Bill Gates, in his book <em><strong>Business At The Speed Of Thought<\/strong><\/em>, makes it clear how he feels about bad news\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>An essential quality of a good manager is a determination to deal with any kind of bad news head on, to seek it out rather than deny it. An effective manager wants to hear about what\u2019s going wrong before he or she hears about what\u2019s going right\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You focus on bad news in order to get cracking on the solution.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n<p>He says a lot more, but you get the point. And he\u2019s absolutely right. Many ADIs &#8211; who already believe we should be teaching yoga, Buddhism, aromatherapy, and all kinds of other crap &#8211; would do well to get a grip and start dealing with things properly. Learners will learn a lot more if we teach them to accept they made a mistake, live with it, and to fix it for next time than they will from all the politically correct New Age claptrap some think we should be peddling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Think about that: why should trying to teach people to acknowledge their faults and strive to eliminate them be less desirable than pandering to their insecurities and trying to make them look good when they just tried to kill you and themselves in a 1 tonne lump of machinery?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the years, of the 99.9% of pupils I\u2019ve taken to test who have been 100% ready (yes, I admit that I have taken a small few who weren\u2019t), on the occasions when they have failed I have often said something like \u201cwell, you only got three faults, so you\u2019ve got to look at it positively\u201d. I forget the number of times they have replied:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>\u201cBut I still failed, didn\u2019t I?\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>They\u2019re not as stupid as the current crop of New Age driving instructors think they are.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>GNBN has a place&#8230; <strong>sometimes<\/strong>. If someone has negotiated six crossings perfectly, misses a pedestrian about to walk on to the seventh, and then does the next few properly until you can pull them over, a GNBN sandwich is easily applied &#8211; and quite rightly so. But if they pulled away from their house perfectly, tried to drive across a busy junction without checking (and with cars coming both ways) because they didn\u2019t even see it, and then dealt with an empty crossing satisfactorily, trying to contrive a GNBN routine out of it is a waste of their time and money.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <script data-jetpack-boost=\"ignore\" async src=\"https:\/\/pagead2.googlesyndication.com\/pagead\/js\/adsbygoogle.js?client=ca-pub-4532794719633406\"\r\n     crossorigin=\"anonymous\"><\/script>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is an old post. Some of the examples are out of date, but the message is still the same. When I was in the rat race, the \u201cgood news\/bad news sandwich\u201d (GNBN) was much touted. One of the things I learnt about it was that it is only something you were expected to give [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,88,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-education-related","category-training"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}