Some time ago in a radio broadcast, I heard the Danish term "pædagogsandwich" (in English, it would be something like a "teacher sandwich") in connection to the topic of feedback - on how to deliver a message, which in this context was described as negative, between two positive things; in the same manner as in a sandwich, the meaty part which is to give energy comes between the two pieces of soft, sweet bread. As the slight sneering term suggests, it's not necessarily something that should be covered with positive connotations - because it so easily becomes a mechanical construction, where the person giving the feedback frantically searches for parts to obey this sandwich construction.
Not much later than I had heard about the teacher sandwich, one of my sons returned from scouting to tell about "Grandma's Law" - on how to make evaluations with a set of three good things and then a proposal for improvement. It seems better to me - also because there can easily be found room for further development, so the 3 + 1 thing can be followed more or less strictly.
But the bottom line must be that the feedback works best when both parties, the giving and the receiving one, acknowledge that there are two types of feedback; affirmative (what should be maintained) and developmental (what can be improved) feedback - there is no such thing as positive and negative criticism; and in fact the developmental feedback is the one with the greatest potential to be positive, because it is the feedback one can learn the most from. If I am told in the right way, I get so much more from knowing in which areas I can improve myself, than to knowing where I am "good enough".
(Translated from Noget om tomme kalorier, originally published August 10, 2014)