Life After PowerPoint!

Business leaders have to communicate bad news all the time — these days more than ever. They have to tell people that their projects have been cancelled or their budgets slashed. That they didn’t get the promotion or bonus they were expecting. That their services aren’t needed any more or that their positions have been eliminated.  

Speaking to people face to face, one on one or in groups, about bad news can be so messy. Wouldn’t it just be easier to send an email?

Of course it would.

That’s exactly what a study published in a journal of the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences found. Communicating bad news through email has two advantages:

1. It ensures that the bad news is communicated accurately.
   People tend to soften the bad news or to fudge when they’re forced to speak to another human being.
2. It is less painful for the person delivering the bad news.
   There’s no need to see the look on the other person’s face or to respond to the person’s questions, recriminations, or unpredictable expression of emotions.

And, to quote Hamlet, there’s the rub. Communicating bad news by email is less painful for the messenger. The study, it seems, did not look at how the person receiving the message was affected.

Frankly, I don’t see how you can consider yourself a leader if your main concern is shielding yourself from pain regardless of how your actions affect other people. But, hey, that’s just me.

Photo courtesy of Bobbie at Flickr.

Mark Sanborn, author and noted authority on leadership, offers a great little reflection on leaders and their obligation to provide hope. It’s especially pertinent in these days of economic gloom and doom:

John W. Gardner was Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare under Lyndon Johnson. He was a great American, advocate for education and wise thinker. Gardner said, “The first task of a leader is to keep hope alive.” His words couldn’t be timelier…

Our leaders today have the opportunity to tell us what they believe is happening and at the same time uncover reasons to be hopeful. Focusing only on what’s broke requires no insight or skill; presenting possible solutions is both an art and science.

I never advocate happy talk, denial or rationalization. I am, however, completely fed up with rampant negativity masquerading as factual reporting.

We need leaders, as John Garndner advocated, that will help keep hope alive.

2008 December | Sanborn and Associates

I believe that leaders speak — or should speak — primarily to influence and to inspire their audiences. To influence = to shape the way audiences think and feel. To inspire = to give them hope, confidence that their actions can change things for the better.

In an earlier post, I reflected on how Abraham Lincoln — in speaking to the alarmist bankers who thought he wasn’t taking the country’s economic crisis seriously enough – did exactly what Sanborn is talking about.

Be real. Acknowledge people’s fear and pain. Show then a different way of viewing the situation. (Telling stories and using images are the best ways to show people what you want them to see.) And give them reason to hope.