Your Gen-Z employee isn’t fooled by your compliment sandwich

livemint.com:

My friend Alex is a tall, handsome surgeon. A former quarterback in high school and college, he’s always been the kind of person others listen to. As an ear, nose and throat specialist, he works wonders restoring people’s hearing with cochlear implants.

But as the chief resident at a teaching hospital, he had a problem, and he wanted my advice. Alex supervised medical students and residents who were in their early 20s. They were talented, but they also made mistakes, about which he offered clear and direct feedback.

He noticed, however, that these residents kept making the same errors, as though he had never said anything to them. Alex couldn’t figure out why. “It’s frustrating and ironic," he told me.

He spends his days helping patients hear but couldn’t make his trainees listen. Alex was trapped by what’s known as the mentor’s dilemma: the fact that constructive criticism, which we hope will push young people to do better, can crush their confidence and sap their motivation. Leaders end up feeling like they are stuck between two bad choices: put up with poor performance (but be nice) or demand better (and be cruel).

Both mentors and mentees often leave these interactions frustrated or offended. Geoffrey Cohen, a social psychologist at Stanford University, first observed the mentor’s dilemma in 1999. At the time he was studying college professors who gave rigorous, critical feedback to undergraduates on their writing assignments or presentations.

He observed a puzzling trend: Although students took home first-draft essays covered in comments, they handed in second drafts with barely any changes. This left the professors baffled and demoralized. Many wondered why they took the time to give thoughtful feedback at all.