Episode 56: When You are the Bearer of Bad News
To kind of quote Jane Austen, “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a person who works with other people will one day have to be the bearer of bad news.”
It is a reality of organizational (and adult) life that we will have to say the hard things. And yes, if we want to lead, we must say the hard things.
Whether it’s delivering tough feedback, acknowledging mistakes and missteps, or resigning from a job, we’ll have to share information that has the potential to hurt something or someone.
Maybe our reputation will be impacted, maybe a boss or employee will be hurt, maybe we’ll be the ones to suffer.
Avoiding tough conversations can be a form of self-protection. We explore the inside job being the bearers of bad news requires of us. It makes us face stirred up pain, worry, unpleasant memories of other bad news we’ve been a part of in the past.
Being the bearer of bad news can also lead us down the risky road of assumptions, where we think we know what the other party is thinking or will feel, and we act.
We offer some best practices and models to keep conversations specific and spacious at the same time so we can be truly present, share what needs to be said, and solve problems that move us all forward.
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Resources we mention:
Cy Wakeman’s work on reality-based leadership: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HRnKYVnR7kM
We come back to the Triad Group’s work on feedback and conversations again and again.
Radical Candor by Kim Scott (not the guitarist Kim Gordon, who is also awesome)
Episodes from our archives that are relevant:
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