Effective leaders can build honest and open communications that create trust with their people, regardless of whether they are communicating good or bad news, says Neil Jurd
People don’t like giving bad news. A classic experiment at the University of Georgia in 1970 by Sidney Rosen and Abraham Tesser set up a situation where people were asked to tell a friend that there was an urgent call for them and that the call concerned either good or bad news. The messengers passing on good news were much more likely to tell the recipient that the call concerned good news. Those who believed the call involve bad news were much less likely to mention the fact.
Though people prefer not to give bad news, as leaders we often must. Effective leaders can build honest and open communications that create trust with their people, regardless of whether you are communicating good or bad news. Here are some points on how not to deliver bad news to your team:
Don’t do it by text or email
Connection is made face to face, and if we care for the people we lead we should care enough to face them with bad news. At Sandhurst I remember how the importance of moral courage was stressed to us – the importance of facing up to responsibility even when that confrontation is scary.
Don’t be a fair-weather leader, be a leader for all seasons
Lead in all seasons. Many leaders love to lead in good times, the times where people don’t really need leading. Things are rolling along nicely, and conditions are so good that the actions of a mediocre leader are cancelled out by very favourable conditions. This is when weak leaders loudly self-congratulate, win awards and take every opportunity to be photographed and collect awards. But these same leaders quickly become invisible when there is work to be done.
No surprises – don’t keep people in the dark
The staff shouldn’t be surprised by bad news; good organisations work by people at all levels being bought into the same clear and compelling purpose. In the worst teams knowledge is power, in the best teams it is shared, understood and leaders at all levels are free to act on it. If bad news comes as a surprise, although the underlying situation that has led to it may have been there for months, then that suggests that people have been kept in the dark, and that information has not been shared. It is much better to trust people with the truth and engage them in helping to confront the issue. Where leaders won’t trust their staff with the truth, they are treating them as dependents rather than the useful participants that they could be. Ideas in teams can come from any level, and the more trusted and freer to contribute people are, the more you will get out of them.
Don’t leave it too late – decide often and well
Good organisations are constantly working to understand the environment and making appropriate decisions – ideally lots of micro decisions, as opposed to major corrections required to put right lengthy drift. I remember once leaving the Falkland Islands on a Royal Navy Frigate, bound for Uruguay. A junior navigating officer was directing the helmsman, but under the pressure of some distinguished guests (not me, I was a junior army officer, there were MPs on board), he confused Port for Starboard, and ended up piling one bad order on top of another ‘port 5, port 10, port 15’ – orders which slowly turned the ship dangerously close to land. Just in time the captain realised what was going wrong and stepped in with a decisive ‘I have the con, Starboard 30’ – which is Navy speak for I’m in control, turn sharply the other way.
In any organisation effective micro decisions prevent the need for disruptive major corrections. In the early stages of the covid pandemic the UK Government seemed unable or unwilling to make obvious and key decisions to delay the spread of the disease – so major events went on and borders were left open, even though it was perfectly obvious that these things were speeding the spreads of the disease.
Don’t be cunning, be straightforward and trustworthy
You might get away with it once, but trust doesn’t bounce back. Trust and goodwill flow throughout high-performing teams, but when they are gone it takes a huge amount of effort to rebuild them. Going through the motions of false staff engagement and consultations betrays trust. Some organisations plan restructures in detail right down to the last staff move, before engaging staff in detail and pretending to be interested in their opinions.
Don’t camouflage the truth with fancy words
Sometimes people try to soften or distort bad news by smothering it in meaningless business speak.
Don’t grade misfortune
Misfortune must be shared across the board, right up to the board. If you are announcing pay cuts or redundancies to staff, it isn’t right for senior staff to be increasing their own salaries, shares or bonuses. The best teams are all focussed on and believe in the same purpose. Take UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and the party gate scandal. Boris told us we couldn’t meet and socialise. That was bad news, but I accepted his authority and followed his rules. That summer I stood outside the church at a friend’s funeral because we weren’t allowed in – only five people could go into the service. Later the various scandals around senior government figures and advisors breaking those rules made me so angry. Contrast with the Queen who led by example.
Don’t go against your own values
Values should inform every decision and in good teams they are your best decision-making tool. When I was at British Sugar as Head of Logistics I shared with my team a decision making criteria I always applied, which was never to make a decision I wouldn’t be happy to tell my Grandmother about. Think of the recent P&O mass-firing scandal and the disparity between their actions and their stated values to ‘build the best possible business for our customers, our people, and our communities’. You need to be guided by your values. Your thinking, decisions and actions should reflect those values, otherwise the values are meaningless.
One place that lacks clear values is politics. I’ve found it extremely difficult to locate a meaningful list of the core values of most major political parties. Their websites have verbose paragraphs, but clear and unambiguous words are surprisingly hard to find – to the extent I find myself wondering if it is deliberate and might contribute to a lack of integrity in UK politics.
Give bad news, but ideally, have a plan
US General Hal Moore, who led the Battle of Ia Drang during the Vietnam War in 1966, was a really effective leader and once said: ‘There’s always one more thing you do to influence and situation in your favour. And after that, there’s one more thing’. People put a great deal of trust in their leaders, and they expect their leaders to look after them and work hard at leading well. Bad news indicates an unfavourable situation, but this shouldn’t unbalance competent leaders, this is where leaders earn their pay.
Don’t be a parent or a child – be an adult
In transactional analysis there are three ego states, parent, adult and child. The parent state can blame and punish, and the child can avoid responsibility and behave as a victim. In the adult we are reasonable and balanced, and we invite the same behaviour from others. Poor leaders will often behave in the parent state, blaming their team for failures, and this will generate a kick back from the team who will feel offended and hurt by the actions of their leaders.
Neil Jurd OBE is the author of The Leadership Book and founder of skills platform LeaderConnect. Find out more: www.leader-connect.co.uk
