
Announce bad news without lying to your team - chrismdp
https://deliverydoubled.com/announce-bad-news-without-lying-to-your-team-avoid-my-damaging-rookie-mistakes/
======
siruncledrew
There's this tendency, particularly in U.S. management, to put off bad news as
long as possible and then try to avoid acknowledging the bad news during a
generic-sounding announcement like a third-party wrote it.

I think it's better to announce the bad news on the horizon before it arrives
- if possible. People are more likely to find solutions to problems when the
problem are laid out. If the CEO comes out and says, "Our Q1 numbers really
plummeted in 2020, and we need to innovate if we want to make it past Q3
intact", then sure it will get reactions of "I should update my CV", but it
also gets people in the problem-solving mindset and willing to put in effort
if they have a stake in the outcome.

As opposed to delivering the bad news when nothing left can be done, at which
point it seems like all the recent work was in vain, and people are 'slapped
in the face' with the news. Saying "This ship's sailing great! ... as long as
we throw half the crew overboard" isn't the most motivating speech.

\- On an aside: This also relates to the "announcer's" personal skills as a
leader/manager. Some people hate giving bad news because they think it means
they will be negatively received, and some leaders/managers are just very bad
at taking criticism. It's a tough job, but it comes with the territory, and
denying bad news is a reality is just "blissful ignorance".

~~~
WrtCdEvrydy
This is because management only cares about how things look.

If I had a dollar for every time I got flak for telling people exactly what
issues are, I'd have a decent sized home in the midwest.

~~~
thatfrenchguy
Americans systematically avoid hard discussions, to preserve that "everyone is
happy" feeling.

~~~
stronglikedan
> Americans systematically avoid

I'd be surprised if you could quantify that as being an American thing, any
more so than anywhere else.

~~~
nickff
Perhaps not uniquely American, but definitely different from the stereotypical
dour Russian.

------
rotten
Having been through well over 30 layoffs in my career, both as someone being
retained and as someone being cut, I can say that they almost always start
with a senior manager who doesn't usually give speeches, giving a speech to
the team about how things are going really well despite rumors to the
contrary. (Even if no one had heard any rumors.) Once you get one of these
speeches, just start shopping your resume immediately - layoffs are coming
within days or weeks.

~~~
aliceryhl
That's quite a lot of layoffs. What industry is that?

~~~
asdfman123
The oil industry is certainly like that.

~~~
unfunco
Are there many roughnecks on Hacker News?

~~~
asdfman123
It's one of the largest industries in the world. They have offices, and use
software too!

~~~
swiley
IMO there are some really interesting CSB investigations into oil
refinery/industrial accidents caused by bad software design (overwhelming
operators with alarms is a big one.) Lots of people on here could gain by
watching them. I used to put them on to fall asleep at night.

~~~
asdfman123
Oil is so much bigger than just refineries and oil wells. There's the upstream
industry, the downstream industry, services and exploration, research,
financial sectors, etc. etc. etc. There's a whole fleet of office workers to
support them, and a lot of data to manage.

------
indymike
Why do leaders think lying, or obfuscating works so well? My personal
experience has been when you let people know the facts and act on them, it is
amazing what happens. Every time that bad news is delivered to my team
directly, be it the loss of a major account, a financial crisis, or even a
legal problem, the collective intelligence of the team often finds the
solution. I've had interns rescue accounts (oh, my uncle is the CEO there),
engineers solve legal problems (what if we just asked if we could move service
X over to them and finish the contract with that instead of unneeded canceled
service), and incredible suggestions on cost-cutting instead of layoffs. None
of these things happen when the team doesn't know because some executive was
afraid of telling the truth.

~~~
kemiller2002
I think it largely comes down to fear. Fear that if people find out they'll
leave, or retaliate or some such. Also, a lot of people aren't (or will ever
be) prepared to be in management positions. Some wanted to try it and are
stuck and others got pushed into it.

Delivering bad news is hard, and it's to try easy and avoid it. It's like
firing people. A number of managers would rather wait until its someone else
problem rather than doing what needs to be done. It causes everyone problems
in avoiding it, but doing what needs to be done appears to be a far worse
course of action to many.

~~~
indymike
That is exactly my experience. The answer to "Why didn't you just tell the
truth?" usually starts with "I was afraid that ..."

Most of the time the fear was unfounded or at best, a better outcome that what
happens when employees lose trust in leadership.

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kemiller2002
What I have found is that one's ability to deliver bad news is directly
related to how the team perceives the person delivering. It's never easy, but
if you have a team that trusts you in what you say the rest of the time, it
becomes a lot easier.

I've found that directness is the best approach. Leave no ambiguity and waste
no time. If there are going to be layoffs, then say so. I'd rather have people
freak out based on what I say than from what they hear from other people.
Sunshine is the best disinfectant. Expose the issues and talk about them as
quickly as possible and move on to planning how to handle it.

~~~
ipnon
You can frame bad news announcements as a negotiation with your audience to
perceive the new reality as a positive.

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drewcoo
If you have sudden, shocking, bad news to deliver that's almost always a sign
that there wasn't much openness previously. That's already a management
failure that's unacknowledged in this piece.

Flip the scenario. What would it mean if suddenly an employee had absolutely
terrible status that they were _finally_ forced to share. As a manager,
wouldn't you wonder why it wasn't disclosed earlier? Why the employee was
probably lying to your face for some time?

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GiorgioG
> Most people prefer directness, candor and very little buffer.

Sadly most leaders today (and it gets worse the larger the organization) are
neither direct or completely candid when announcing bad news.

Most employees can smell the bullshit from a mile away and at least for me, I
lose any and all respect for the leader(s) delivering the message.

------
lvspiff
One of the biggest problems in management is you don't rise to the top unless
you do things like lying to your team. The perception of success helps the
Peter Principal continue to thrive. Articles like this shouldn't need to be
written, but they do because so many of us in leadership have been raised on
to have a positive outlook on any situation no matter how screwed you are
getting.

Oh we wont be getting bonuses this year? Well be glad you have a job!

Oh you wont be getting that raise you promised? Well we're adding a drink
dispenser to the break room

As you get higher up it only gets worse - the yes men reporting to the
executive are all reporting the good points and underselling the bad points.
Have a project that's failing? Well better report that there are some aspects
going well! Have a team that's not cutting it? Well report on the ones that
are!

Until promotions are determined by actual objective measures and not by
subjective anecdotal feelings this will continue to be the case.

~~~
hliyan
Contrary to what some young, smart and mostly well-meaning engineers will have
you believe, not all managers/leaders are Dilbertesque caricatures. There many
who fit that profile perfectly in certain types of organizations. But there
are organizations where such types are less common too. If you're constantly
surrounded by these types of individuals, it's probably a sign that you need
to change companies.

~~~
ipnon
Even the most sadistic managers I've had, who not only held me back in my
career but actively regressed it, took pictures of their cats and called their
mom on the weekends. My point is that we should judge managers on how they
affect our productivity.

------
ping_pong
During the beginning of the dotcom Bust, we had an all-hands meeting. Someone
asked the VP of Engineering if there was going to be layoffs. He said no,
there was no need for layoffs.

When the all-hands meeting was done, and we returned to our desk, and there
was an email waiting for us saying that we were going to have layoffs. He
subsequently defended himself, saying that he wasn't allowed to say anything
about the layoffs. There were so many ways he could have answered the
question, like "We are exploring all avenues at this point" without lying
straight to our faces and looking like an idiot, but he chose the exact worst
way to answer it.

Obviously, his trust was completely lost by everyone in the org, and his
reputation was completely ruined by this. No one trusted or believed him after
that. He was an asshole anyway and was fired a year or so afterwards because
of how ineffective he had become as a leader.

~~~
underwater
Waffle doesn't help, any non-commital answer he gave is either an affirmation
or will be exposed as an obvious lie in hindsight.

That's a hard position to be in when you've been specifically told not to
share news.

------
codingdave
The underlying principles here of preparing, being clear in communications,
and thinking about how your audience will hear the message... these are also
appropriate for good news. Or neutral news.

Announcements typically mean change. And people, in general, dislike change.
No matter what you announce, it will evoke an emotional response of some kind.
And that response will drive morale for that person/team/company for the
short-term future.

Always prepare announcements with care.

~~~
ftio
I’d take that one step further. “Preparing, being clear in communications, and
thinking about how your audience will hear the message” are critical for _all_
presentations.

I present to all kinds of audiences all the time. Yesterday it was SVPs,
tomorrow it’s the engineers on my team.

I know firsthand how easy it can be to get wrapped up in the formalism of
presentation — does the internal logic of my argument make sense, is this a
nice theoretical framework, is the framing pithy and memorable enough? But it
can all go to shit if you don’t design your presentation _for your audience._
You need to be thinking from One about the kinds of language your audience is
accustomed to, about potential baggage associated with particular concepts or
even specific words, about the kinds of information they’re used to consuming
(and the mechanisms by which they consume it), and first and foremost: what is
my audience motivated or incentivized by? How can I make sure that the message
I present is aligned with their goals and their values? Alternatively, if I’m
delivering a message that I know to be counter to their existing worldview,
how do I empathetically demonstrate that I actually understand their
worldview, that I’ve considered it deeply, and that new data or a larger shift
have necessitated a change in thinking?

I’ve seen so many presentations (as recently as yesterday) in the other
direction (to high-level executives) that fall into essentially the same trap:
they have a really important message to deliver, but the message falls on its
face because the presenter frames the conversation from their perspective,
ignoring that their audience comes to the table with potentially very
different wants/needs and a substantially different contextual lens.

------
spsrich2
"The bad news is we are merging with Swindon and some of you are going to be
laid off.... The good news is, I've got a promotion!..... You're all still
thinking about the bad news aren't you?"

~~~
chrismdp
I should have put this quote at the top of the article! :)

------
kerkeslager
I'll give the author of this article the benefit of the doubt that they didn't
intend to lie, but I think a lot of executives have no compunction whatsoever
about lying.

It's really easy to tell the truth if you've established a culture in which
everyone is on the same side: us versus problem, instead of a company where
everyone is working for themselves.

The problem is, in most companies, everyone _is_ working for themselves. Most
companies don't care about their workers beyond those workers' ability to make
them money. Workers know that if something happens and they can't hold up
their end of the bargain, you'll drop them, so why, if you might not be able
to hold up your end of the bargain, should your workers not just drop you?

There isn't a way to tell your workers that the company isn't doing well AND
get them to help you, if you haven't established a culture where your workers
can come to you and tell you they aren't doing well, and receive help.

------
docflabby
I think in most circumstances you can't. A lot of the time bad news is known
in advance and the timing for release is a carefully controlled process so
while you know things are bad you have to lie by omission by not sharing until
the designated time the actual decision makers have decided...

I once signed a 12 month contract extension and 7 days later (5 days before
christmas) there was a big meeting and I and 50+ other people were escorted
off the office by security as the whole project cancelled.

I'm pretty sure the manager know the project was going to be cancelled but he
had to issue new contracts anyway he know would be torn up as they were not
ready to officially announce yet...

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alain94040
Easier said than done. Here's a specific scenario. You tell me what management
should share and when.

Revenue is seriously down. If this trend continues for another quarter or so,
we'll have to start layoffs of ~10% of the engineers.

Do you share the full news now, with no idea of whether there will be layoffs?
Do you "lie by omission" by sharing that revenue is down, but not mention the
potential consequences?

The CEO typically is hoping for one more deal to close, to turnaround the
company and not have to go through the layoffs. Why scare people if it's not
needed?

~~~
a_c_s
Because employees talk. If word gets out that the company is in a tight place
before management addresses it to employees then that erodes trust in
leadership.

If people distrust leadership then when they do finally acknowledge something
negative (eg. we're having 10% layoffs) then employees rationally assume
things are actually far worse than that (eg. we're having multiple rounds of
layoffs) and will behave accordingly (eg. leave even if not laid off).

On the other hand if leaders build trust by acknowledging reality then when
they announce that things are bad people are more likely to behave
proportionately and trust that things are only as bad as announced rather than
'reading between the lines' and assuming they are 10x worse.

------
castillar76
Something I haven't seen in the comments here and I think is a significant
factor is share price/company valuation (at least, for public/VC-owned
companies). Executive management knows that any information shared with
employees will absolutely be in the trades before the meeting is over. With
that in mind, they can't just come out and say, "Well, our numbers aren't
looking healthy right now and I'm concerned about the next quarter" because it
results in 'FooCorp CEO "concerned about next quarter"' hitting the news. That
both produces a short-term problem (it tanks the stock) but it also creates a
potential self-fulfilling prophecy: you're concerned about next quarter's
numbers, investors become concerned about next quarter's numbers, customers
become concerned about next quarter's numbers, and now next quarter's numbers
look even worse!

As a result, there's a strong incentive to keep your mouth shut about anything
remotely negative until it's too late for it to affect anything significant,
and then to release it in as positive-spin a manner as possible to minimize
the effects. Hence, layoffs are spun as "restructuring to make the company
leaner and focus our efforts". It's not that I think you can't be honest in
presenting information like this to employees, but I do think we need to
temper our expectations about the messaging from C-level execs, because Wall
Street definitely does not reward radical honesty. (Maybe it should, but
that's a whole different kettle of fish.)

------
stunt
It's very important to be direct and honest.

It's also very important to let the message go through the right/intended
channel. That in my experience happens more often.

Decision making and communication is often slow, and less experienced leads
and managers start proactively to leak and share some part of the story, or
even wrong information, without passing enough context or using the right
language. And they just don't understand the consequences.

------
kevsim
The leaders I've had who have been the best at delivering bad news are the
ones that have been decisive and clear about the direction we're heading all
along. If a "leader" who is rarely visible and who doesn't actually _lead_ by
setting a clear direction and taking decisive action for the company gets up
to give bad news, it's going to be a train wreck. If a leader who has been
transparent, decisive and clear all along gets up to deliver bad news, the
result is often very different.

Part of the reason is the trust that has already been built and part of the
reason is that they can give a clear path forward and actually get people
onboard (or at least make the justification believable).

------
29athrowaway
To lie about something people will figure out anyways in 1 week or less is a
bad idea. Just be honest about the situation and be open for questions.

People talk to each other and terminating someone does not prevent that from
happening.

------
strictnein
Related: Radical Candor

[https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250235375/](https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250235375/)

You are doing an employee a great disservice if you aren't honest and upfront
about their under performance. Because when they are let go they will be
completely blindsided by it and will never have been given a chance to remedy
any of the underlying issues.

------
rootedbox
"Would you rather get a bullet to the head, or five to the chest and bleed to
death?"

Deliver bad news. Straight and emotionless. We are professionals. After 5
years we've seen most things after 10 years.. you've seen just about anything.
Folks need bad news in order to properly prepare for their future.

------
citiguy
I have found it always helps to prep. Especially before a big loaded topic
like layoffs or finances. Taking the time to put together a presentation can
help you frame your thoughts properly and make sure you don't miss any
important highlights.

~~~
chrismdp
So, so true. I wish I'd learnt that earlier.

------
holidayacct
If you have to lie to announce bad news either you're too hypersensitive or
your team members are too hypersensitive. People need to grow up and accept
that working for any company isn't all sunshine and roses.

------
chrismdp
This one is particularly embarrassing for me :) -- anyone got similar tales of
woe?

------
martincmartin
"Tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

Only the 3rd one is lying. You can still leave a completely misleading
impression by telling partial truths.

