Never shoot the messenger
People Management, Practical, Basic ·Getting bad news is always hard, especially when they are unexpected. We may feel frustrated, angry, or plainly sad.
It’s OK to feel this way. What’s not positive is to react in a way that will hinder our action and our awareness of future bad news.
The situation is bad, the news is good
The first thing we must understand is that there is no such thing as bad news. What’s bad is the situation. The news itself is positive: known something means we can take action.
In business, there are usually many courses of action you can take to improve a bad situation. The sooner you get the news that a situation is bad, the better plans you can create to make things better.
So getting news about a bad situation is actually very positive. The situation would have been bad whether you got the news or not. What the news brings is a possibility to improve.
In tech for example, discovering a bug in production may be deemed as bad news. Given the fact that the bug is already there, discovering it is great: it allows us to fix it!
Shaping your future
Having a bad reaction to receiving bad news won’t help you or your team. People will make mistakes. A strict no mistakes policy will not keep mistakes from happening, it will only keep you from knowing about them.
How you react to bad news will shape how people act about the news in the future. If you react by thanking the bearer of bad news for this information and acting towards the future (eg. defining a course of action to revert the situation), you’ll bring calm and hope to the team. The situation will be dealt with and you will all move forward to face new challenges.
This will help your team feel safe about having bad news. Making them go to you and tell you whenever an error is made, allowing you to help fix it.
A team that feels safe making mistakes and talking about them is a team that can make amends faster.