Delivering Bad News

In a perfect world, every company would have sustained growth, generous salaries, wonderful benefits, and huge annual bonuses. No one would ever get laid off, and all the news you distribute to employees would be good and positive.

But we don’t live in that perfect world. If you’re a manager, you will have to deliver bad news to your team at times. Here are a few things to remember when you must communicate negative developments.

• Plan ahead. Sometimes bad news sneaks up on you due to unforeseen circumstances or disasters. In those cases, you need to go into crisis communication mode, which I’ll address in another post. However, most of the time, you’ll see bad news coming weeks or even months in advance. Make sure creating a communication plan for that news is part of your process. This plan should address who is going to be told what, when they are going to be told, and what method(s) you will use to disseminate information.
• Communicate early. The sooner you can provide information, the better. Bad news is powerful and tends to find ways of wriggling past your attempts to control it. By communicating as early as possible, you’ll manage the message and avoid having bad news spread through the rumor mill before you’re ready to talk about it.
• Be as transparent as possible. When delivering bad news, it’s important to share as much information as you can, but do that strategically. Don’t inundate people with details they don’t need to know or wouldn’t care about; give them what they need to process the news without getting wound up by background information that is not vital to the message.
• Use different communication channels and methods. For really bad news, like layoffs, I prefer communicating first to the team, in person, and then following up with an email. However, that is usually difficult logistically, so you’ll probably need to reverse the order. However you do it, the key is to provide the right information in various formats to make sure everyone receives the same message at the same time.
• Be ready for questions—and negative reactions. When sharing bad news with your team, it’s important to give people a chance to respond and ask questions. The latter can be challenging, as you’re likely to have some anger thrown your way. As a manager, that’s why you get paid the big bucks. You must respond to questions calmly and patiently, remembering that your team members are processing something now that you’ve been thinking about and working through for weeks or months. 
• Follow up. People process information at different speeds and in different ways. Some may be ready to move on a day after bad news is announced. Others may ruminate on things for days, weeks, or even months before they’re ready to talk about it. Provide opportunities for ongoing discussion.
• Guide your team past the news. Ongoing discussion is good, to a point. But you can’t allow your team to wallow in bad news forever. Your job in these situations is to provide as much information as possible in a timely fashion, help people react to and process the news, and then help them move on with their work lives. Do what you can to help them refocus on the tasks at hand. Make a clear plan for the next steps you are going to take after the bad news is announced and manage your team toward that future. You must help them look ahead instead of constantly glancing behind.

Sharing bad news is never easy. However, if you plan with care, default to transparency, and guide your team members into the future, you will minimize disruption and keep people focused on, and engaged in, the positive parts of their jobs.

What have you done to help your teams understand and process bad news? Let’s talk about it in the comments.