How (not) to deliver bad news

Some rules are made to be broken – even ones that I laid down just a few weeks ago.

You know how I said recently that it’s usually best to put your main points first? Well, there are some times when that’s not such a good idea.

Obviously it’s still true that few of us have time to wade through endless paragraphs while we wait for the big reveal.

And I’m certainly not the only one to advise starting messages or documents with the most important facts. This has been standard advice for some time.
 

Hostile fire

The US military even coined an acronym to hammer home the point: BLUF, or bottom line up front.

It’s easy to see how a soldier on the battlefield might have little time for lengthy preamble. But the same holds true even if you usually face nothing more threatening than the odd angry email.

We’re all far less patient than we once were, so just getting to the point can be an invaluable asset.

Yet when it comes to delivering bad news, following this advice can really backfire.

The trouble is that some statements and topics are so powerful and distracting that they make whatever follows largely irrelevant, at least in the mind of the reader:

We’re going to have to make 2,000 people redundant.

Everyone needs to take a 20% pay cut.

I’m sorry, but you can’t work from home.

Sentences like these ring so loudly in the brain that they deafen us to everything else. They’ve probably even distracted you a little in this post (even though you know I made them up and that they’re not aimed at you).

There might be very good reasons to justify such bad news. But if we’re punched in the face with it right away, we tend to stop listening.
 

Flawed process

Most reading is not reading at all. It’s anticipation.

One of the main ways our brain processes text so quickly is by guessing which words are coming up based on what it’s just read.

In an ideal world, it then corrects any predictions that are wrong. But that checking process is often flawed, or sometimes even absent altogether.

Unfortunately, this is only made worse when bad news triggers our emotions, especially as our brain has evolved to zero in on the negatives.

Certain words can even prime our reactions and colour how we interpret the rest of a sentence or paragraph. I’ll come back to that in a future issue.

But for now, let’s talk about how to deliver bad news.
 

How to deliver bad news

There’s a right way and a wrong way to communicate negative or emotive news. And jumping straight in with the main point is usually the wrong way.

Here are a couple of things you can do to soften the blow, and hopefully get a better reaction too.
 

The best way

First of all, remember that reading and writing are not natural processes. We evolved to speak and listen. So a text, email or document may not be best suited for handling a delicate situation.

A real conversation should always be your go-to method. It creates much more room for dialogue and nuance, and lets you respond to concerns in real time. In today’s digital world, the human touch can still work wonders.
 

The scrappy way

Sometimes, though, writing is unavoidable. You may need to communicate to many people at once, perhaps across different timezones. Or you may be writing an official response to a proposal or request.

Here’s where the SCRAP structure can help. It stands for: situation, complication, resolution, action, politeness.

Rather than diving straight in with a negative, you lead with something the reader will agree with. Then you state the problem that needs solving. And only then do you write the ‘bad news’ part, which is how you’re going to solve it.

This primes the reader and helps minimise the emotive response.
 

Helping hand

Now, nothing can ever guarantee a positive reaction. A decision can be both right and unpopular at the same time. But these are the best ways I know to minimise the fallout.

And if you still feel unsure, we’re always happy to give you a helping hand. Just get in touch.

Image credit: Anton Vierietin / Shutterstock

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Author: Rob Ashton

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Rob Ashton is the founder of Emphasis and posts mainly about writing and the brain – a topic he's been researching for seven years. You can read more of his work in Writing Matters – our weekly bulletin of career-building writing advice backed by science.