Deliver Bad News Better

Tell your audience what they need to know, but also tell them what they need to hear.

It’s been a banner year for bad news—and for delivering bad news. Behind every pandemic layoff, business closing, school closing, production delay, and event cancellation, there is someone writing the announcement, the email, or the press release. And while we may instinctively try to soften the blow when we share bad news with friends and family, it can be harder to figure out how to deliver bad news effectively at work.   

Consider this email, sent to a group of middle-school parents back in October:

Dear Parents,

I am writing to let you know that [teacher] will be taking a leave of absence immediately. [Teacher] will not be returning to school this year. We are in the process of hiring a replacement.

Please let me know if you have any questions.

This is the kind of news no parent wants to hear, especially during a pandemic.  The kids were already suffering, and it seemed unlikely that a replacement could be found quickly when so many teachers didn’t want to be in the classroom. Not surprisingly, the email didn’t land well. Some parents found it brusque and dismissive. Others were annoyed that no timeline or interim plan had been included. One parent said that based on the email, it seemed like the school really didn’t care about the kids.

I was one of the parents who received the email, and I know that, in fact, the school does care about the kids. But I also agree that you wouldn’t know this from the tone of the email.

The problem here is that while the email tells readers what they need to know, it doesn’t consider what they need to hear. When I asked a few parents what they wished the email had said, they were all on the same page: They just wanted to know that the school understood that this was a big problem for their kids so that they could trust that the school was going to solve the problem.   

In this case, it wouldn’t have taken much for the school to tell the parents what they needed to hear.  If I were editing that email, I’d have suggested something like this:

I’m writing to let you know that [teacher] will be taking a leave of absence immediately and will not be returning to school this academic year. I understand that this news will be upsetting for you and your children, and I want to assure you that we’re going to be working hard to find a replacement as quickly as possible. In the meantime, [name] will be taking over the class.

The core message of my version is the same as the message in the original email: The kids will not have their teacher, and we don’t know when they’ll get a new one. But there’s an additional message in this version:  Trust us. We’re on the case. 

Most of us are not delivering news to anxious parents (which is an extremely difficult job, and I’m grateful to everyone who has worked in schools this year!). But the principle here applies to all of us: If you understand what your audience needs to hear, you can deliver bad news better.   

When I say that we should try to tell people what they need to hear, I don’t mean that we should tell what they want to hear. We need to deliver the news that we need to deliver, even when it’s not what people want to hear. But we can—and should—think about what will help them absorb the news.

Next time you have unwelcome news to deliver, try answering these questions first:

• Who is my audience?

• What does my audience need to know?

• What does my audience need to hear?

UP NEXT: How to figure out what your audience doesn’t need to hear.