It would be nice if all of your employees did exactly what you want every time. Unfortunately, your food truck staff occasionally fall short and you are faced with correcting their behavior. But delivering negative feedback is easier said than done.

Be Direct When Delivering Negative Feedback

When you are delivering negative feedback to one of your food truck employees, it’s best to be direct rather than diplomatic. Avoid the common practice of mixing positive messages with negative ones. This practice is confusing to the employee. Stay away from the classic feedback sandwich. In other words don’t provide good news, followed by bad news, and end with good news.

Eating a sandwich with good bread, but bad meat inside isn’t a great experience. And while giving someone negative feedback you need to be very clear on the poor performance part or your message might get lost. It is often the most important aspect of a feedback session, so don’t make it muddled.

Ratios and timing are important with feedback. Specifically, food truck owners and managers should always adhere to a 1:1 positive-to-negative feedback ratio and position the negative comment before the positive one.

We All Make Mistakes

Your employees are only human, and we all make mistakes. This is okay. What’s not okay is making the same mistake over and over again. To ensure that employees both learn from negative feedback and don’t take it wrong, make sure to separate the behavior from the person. Make it clear that it’s the person’s action you have issue with, not the person.

Delivering negative feedback can be tough, but that doesn’t mean vendors should shy away from telling their employees the truth. If an employee is doing something wrong and their performance is affected, they have a right to know.

RELATED: Avoid These 4 Food Truck Human Resources Mistakes

The Bottom Line

Being assertive and direct does not need to mean being cold and hard. The tone you use and the words you choose matter a lot. But you will likely get more respect from being direct than by overthinking when delivering negative feedback.

Delivering negative feedback can strengthen the bond between vendor and employee. Not to mention that honest and open comments will pave the way to performance improvement. This should always be your ultimate goal when providing negative feedback.

What is your process for delivering negative feedback to your food truck staff? Share you thoughts in the comment section or social media. Facebook | Twitter