Authentic 4 step process for coaching through bad news

“I have some good news and some bad news.” It’s a serious task often downplayed in television and movies, yet many managers and leaders spend their day communicating and dealing with news.  As constant change makes the organizational environment more unpredictable, how we deliver bad news and understand the emotional impacts affects trust, fear and focus, which could impair our organizations. Communicating bad news and coaching to move on effectively involves being authentic, candid, courageous and emotionally intelligent.

Communicating bad news is a dreaded but necessary task we often encounter, but getting through delivering the message is only part of the picture, as coaching through bad news helps us get to the positive and build that which is good. It’s a bigger picture approach that involves creating and maintaining a healthy environment for sharing news by building trust, understanding the common types of bad news and anticipating the emotional reaction, and executing a process to manage and coach through the bad news. A bigger picture approach is especially important as more organizations become increasingly virtual and e-coaching becomes more prevalent.

I have found out the hard way early on my career about ineffective approaches for dealing with bad news, and both those approaches backfired. One approach involved not communicating bad news- rather attempting to deal with it myself- which erodes trust and is selfish to the extent it put my needs ahead of others. Another approach involved spinning or sugarcoating the message, which diluted its impact as well as made me appear all over the place instead of focused on improvement.

Here is an effective process that engages employees, builds trust and helps us move from the bad news:

1)     Prepare and communicate one clear, consistent message. Getting to the point, without diluting or sandwiching the message between other items. Don’t say “I have bad news” or “I have some good news and some bad news”, rather, thank the audience for listening and be authentic. Don’t extend the process by dribbling out bad news, deliver it all so open communication can happen. Clarify and confirm the news and facts, anticipate questions for serious news.

2)     Be quiet and listen after you deliver the message. It’s about your audience, not you, so this gives them a chance to let the message sink in and acknowledge their feelings about it.

3)     Lead authentically. Be respectful of feelings, keep in mind this is a business problem where expressing concern but not blame is important. You want to empathize besides being assertive.

4)     Move on and follow-up. After delivering the message, listening and empathizing, focus on the positive and move on. This is an opportunity to monitor the issue and engage employees, moving forward with a mutual understanding and plan of action, building their confidence rather than micro-managing them.

As shown above, bad news requires skillful communication whether or not it is performance-related. Performance-related bad news is often related to missed expectations either at the group or individual level, and follows some sort of human resource protocol within the organization. The other type of bad news, situational bad news, involves changes or errors often beyond the direct control of the organization. In either type of bad news, the process above helps guide moving on effectively. Furthermore, understanding emotions and motivators helps anticipate the type of emotional reactions to bad news, so you can more fully empathize with employees. The slides below provide some guidance on anticipating emotional reactions.

Trust is a critical piece to dealing with and moving on from bad news. Communicating a clear message without trust is like walking through a minefield, according to Covey, Whitman and England (2009). They explained how important it to “move with the speed of trust”, as bickering in low-trust situations not only escalates problems but drags down performance. They provided three guidelines that help build a trusting organizational environment:

1)      Create transparency. Spin, clichés and politics erode trust; verifiable truths grow trust.

2)      Keep your commitments. Doing what you promised to do rebuilds trust, whereas poor follow-though impairs it.

3)      Extend trust to your team. Treating your team as trustworthy increases trust in you.

Successfully communicating and moving on from bad news involves a coaching process coupled with authentic, candid, emotionally intelligent behavior. It’s a recipe that affects trust and confidence crucial to your organization surviving especially given the constantly changing environment.

What are your thoughts?

Reference:

Covey, S, Whitman, B, and England, B. (2009).  Predictable results in unpredictable times: how to win in any environment. Salt Lake City, Utah: Franklin Covey.