How To Receive Bad News as an Executive - Part 2

Many executives are not good at receiving bad news. We overreact, we interrupt, we shoot the messenger, we make quick decisions without all the information. And then we’re surprised when no one will talk to us. But there’s a simple right way to receive bad news.

Receiving bad news is part of being a manager and an executive. But too many of us do it poorly. The moment we hear of the problem, we start thinking about the risks, the exposure, the potential shame and embarrassment and political damage of being responsible for something going wrong. This activates our fight or flight mechanisms, and since we probably can’t “flight,” we fight. We interrupt with questions in a tone that accurately portrays our worries and fears, and probably our anger at someone else’s failure, in some cases made worse by our belief that we would have never let this happen. We find fault, we point out errors we would not have made, we ask why it took so long, we ask for scapegoats, we go on witch hunts, we play, “Who shot John?”

And then our directs ‘learn’ not to come to us with problems. Which only makes things worse. And it makes it worse not just for communications about problems but also for general communications as well.

All because we didn’t know some simple basics.