8.2 The Seven Goals of Bad News Messages

Your ability to manage, clarify, and guide understanding is key to addressing challenging situations while maintaining trust and integrity with customers, coworkers, managers, the public, and other stakeholders. Keep in mind these seven goals when delivering bad news in person or in writing:

1. Be clear and concise to avoid being asked for additional clarification.
2. Help the receiver understand and accept the news.
3. Reduce the anxiety associated with the bad news as much as possible by expressing sympathy or empathy.
4. Maintain trust and respect between you and your audience to ensure the possibility of good future relations.
5. Deliver the bad news in a timely fashion in the appropriate channel(s).
6. Avoid the legal liability that comes with admitting negligence or guilt.
7. Achieve the designated business outcome.

Let’s look at how we can achieve these goals in examples of the tricky situations in which we might find ourselves in the workplace.

Let’s say you are a supervisor and your manager has tasked you with getting Chris, an employee who is usually late for work and has been arriving even later recently, to start arriving on time. Chris’s tardiness is impairing not only his performance but also that of the entire team that depends on his work. You figure there are four ways you can handle this:

1. Stop by Chris’s cubicle and simply say, “Get to work on time or you’re out.”
2. Invite Chris out to a nice lunch and let him have it
3. Write Chris a stern email.
4. Ask Chris to come to your office and discuss the behaviour with him in private.

Let’s see how each of these alternatives meets our seven goals in delivering bad news.

First, if you approach Chris with a blunt ultimatum at his desk, you can get right to the point there but risk straining the supervisor-employee relationship by putting him in his place in front of everyone. The aggressive approach might prompt Chris to demand clarification, make defensive excuses, or throw hostile counter-offensives right back—none of which are desired outcomes. For that matter, the disrespectful approach doesn’t formally confirm that the tardiness will end. The lack of tact in the approach may reflect poorly on you as the supervisor, not only with Chris but with your manager as well. When you need to speak to an employee about a personnel concern, it is always best to do so in private. Give thought and concern to the conversation before it occurs and make a list of points to cover with specific information, including grievances. Like any other speech, you may need to rehearse, particularly if this type of meeting is new to you. When it comes time to have the discussion, issue the warning, back it up in writing with documentation, and don’t give the impression that you might change your decision. Whether the issue at hand is a simple caution about tardiness or a more serious conversation, you need to be fair and respectful, even if the other person has been less than professional. Let’s examine the next alternative.

Let’s say you invite Chris to lunch at a nice restaurant. He sees the fine linen on the table, silverware for more than the main course, and water glasses with stems. The luxurious environment says “good job,” but your serious talk will contradict this nonverbal signage, which will probably be an obstacle to Chris’s ability to listen. If Chris doesn’t understand and accept the message, requiring him to seek clarification, your approach has failed. Furthermore, the ambush fails to build trust, so you don’t know whether Chris is going to make the extra effort to arrive early or just put in his time there doing the bare minimum while looking for another job.

Let’s say instead that you’ve written Chris a stern email. You’ve included a list of all the recent dates when he was late and made several statements about the quality of his work. You clearly say he needs to improve and stop being late, or else. But was your email harassment? Could it be considered beyond the scope of supervision and interpreted as mean or cruel? And do you even know if Chris has received it? If there was no reply, do you know whether it achieved its desired business outcome? A written message may certainly be part of the desired approach, but how it is presented and delivered is as important as what it says. Let’s examine our fourth approach to this scenario.

You ask Chris to join you in a private conversation. You start by expressing concern and asking an open-ended question: “Chris, I’ve been concerned about your work lately. Is everything all right?” As Chris answers, you may demonstrate that you are listening by nodding your head and possibly taking notes. You may learn that Chris has been having problems sleeping or that his living situation has changed. Or Chris may decline to share any issues, deny that anything is wrong, and ask why you are concerned. You may then state that you’ve observed the chronic tardiness and name one or more specific mistakes you have found in Chris’s work, ending by repeating your concern. Because showing your concern makes Chris feel valued, he opens up about his situation so that you understand where he’s coming from. It may turn out that he has to drop his kids off for school at 8 am and then contend with traffic for the next hour to get to the office, consistently making him a half-hour late. You can then both agree that he’ll stay a little later or put in the missing hours at home, then write up that agreement in an email with your manager Cc’d.

Regardless of how well or poorly the conversation goes, if Chris tells other employees about it, they will take note of how you handled the situation, and it will contribute to their perception of you. It guides their expectations of how you operate and how to communicate with you as this interaction is not only about you and Chris. You represent the company and its reputation, and your professional display of concern as you try to learn more sends a positive message. While the private, respectful meeting may not be the perfect solution, it is preferable to the other approaches considered above.

One additional point to consider as you document this interaction is the need to present the warning in writing. You may elect to prepare a memo that outlines the information concerning Chris’s performance and tardiness and have it ready should you want to present it. If the session goes well, and you have the discretion to make a judgment call, you may elect to give him another week to resolve the issue. Even if it goes well, you may want to present the memo, as it documents the interaction and serves as evidence of due process should Chris’s behaviour fail to change, eventually resulting in the need for termination. This combined approach of a verbal and written message is increasingly the norm in business communication.