Bad news!

Uh oh! Things have fallen apart!

Why is this the first time you’ve heard about it?

The answer is pretty simple. People don’t like to be the bearer of bad news, especially if they think there’s going to be an impact on them personally. Even casting blame on the group as a whole is uncomfortable. So people don’t hide the information … exactly … but they hope that they will find a solution given just a little more time.

So when the news gets to you, it can be a total surprise, and take extraordinary effort to recover. Your first response might be an angry “we could have done something about it last week!”

Let’s dig into what’s really going on here. You do want your people to be optimistic and creative and seek solutions on their own, so that’s not usually the problem. The core that you’ve created a culture where people get negative feedback based on conveying bad news. It’s easy to say,

• “Come to me with solutions, not just problems.”
• “Please work on this a bit more.”
• “You made a commitment, I’m going to hold you to that.”

Notice that none of these provide a clear next step, and don’t convey that you’re helping in any way. So the person is just stuck with more pressure and nothing to do about it. It’s easier in the future to just say nothing and hope that problems will magically fix themselves. Until they don’t.

The fix is to work on the general group culture, and your relationship with each individual. You want them to be able to predict that surfacing problems is useful for you, and will result in conversations which yield helpful results. Collaborative and supportive conversations.

Then comes the hard part: You have to actually behave that way. You have to be supportive, collaborative, and helpful. You can delay taking ownership of problems, yes, while still being helpful. Develop a plan of action and support the person while they try doing some uncomfortable things.

This will actually help them to take accountability for delivering results, because they know you have their backs. Win win.