I recently had an interesting experience with this exact issue while dealing with my fitness company. We organize retreats in different parts of the country and have a chef who lives in San Diego but was born and raised in Iran. He has a very different cultural perspective on feedback.

We needed the chef to change his menu because clients were getting bored with the food he was cooking. I used methods from a book to address this issue. I knew that direct feedback might offend Ahmed, our chef, so I decided to give the feedback gradually, as suggested on page $83.$

First, I sent a message stating that I wanted to discuss the upcoming retreat to Mexico. Following the advice on page $84,$ I focused only on the positive aspects and left out the negative. I praised how great the tacos were at the last retreat and explained how much we love authentic food. Ahmed became excited about the menu and asked, $$What if I make an entirely new menu centered around authentic Mexican food?$$

I was thrilled with his response and couldn$$t believe how quickly the book$$s advice worked. We leave for Mexico with $12$ people this Friday, and the menu is completely different. The chef couldn$$t be more excited.