How to Avoid the Blues When Breaking Bad News

Have you ever noticed that we expend a great deal of time and energy preparing positive speeches full of joyful tidings, but we plan the breaking of bad news with all of the care of car crash?

A good friend of mine was recently the victim of what I’ve come to call an emale.

Believing her budding relationship was as secure as an anti-virus subscription, she awoke one morning to find that her partner had deleted her out of his life.

As she put it, she had been archived over email.

Worse still, he had sent her a follow-up email telling her that he had added her to the Block Sender list, so there was no point in responding.

Responding? As in indulging in a bit of mature discussion to resolve our differences or to come to some acceptance of the bad news?

Not with this archiving emale.

Making Bad News Bearable

Maybe bad news really isn’t like wine, getting better with age, but that doesn’t mean we need to treat it like a bottle of bubbles against the side of a ship.

The reality is that good news can be broken in any old fashion, but its negative opposite needs a few boundaries.

Despite the method you select to deliver your bad tidings, there are five key elements required to make bad news bearable are:

1. Accuracy - bad news that intimately affects another person should not be a game of Chinese Whispers. Get your facts straight before you share. Half-truths and rumours only prolong the pain.
2. Timing - delivering bad news in a time of stress should be avoided at all costs. Chose somewhere private and calming. If something simply can’t wait for the right surroundings, keep the urgency out of your voice and body language.
3. Phrasing - ‘think before you speak’ is great advice. Take as much time as possible to prepare the delivery of your message, using simple, precise language and follow another old adage: be firm, but fair.
4. Consistency - the recipient of bad tidings is likely to try and refute your bad news. If you chop and change your story with each re-telling, it will be much harder for them to accept the truth.
5. Reliability - if you are not seen as a trusted source of information by the recipient, it is better than someone else breaks the news.

Think you’ve got it all wrapped up?

A firm but fair, accurate and confidential email or text message that will drop the bad news in your recipient’s lap and let you walk away unscathed?

The bad news is that negative tidings are one of the most complex forms of communication.

As a result, there is a lot of misinformation floating around, like the examples below.

The good news is that by avoiding some of these traps, you are less likely to cast the blues over the target of your bad news:

I’m Telling You this for Your Own Good

Remember that bad news rarely has a flip side.

Even if you really believe there is one - he’s a jerk after all, you were never appreciated in that job, you have a great fire insurance policy - it can be hard to focus on it when your life is lying in tatters at your feet.

Give them time to absorb the bad news and to come to grips with it, before telling them to look for the silver lining.

We’re Over. Send.

Breaking up via text message or exposing a cheating husband by email breaks every rule of communication that has ever been - well, communicated.

Unless your entire relationship has been via text, or you have recently relocated to an Antarctic research station when you have access to no other form of communication, avoid this approach at all costs.

We all need support to assimilate change and the best form of assistance you can offer is by delivering bad news face-to-face.

I Know Exactly How You Feel. One Time When I…

Focus on the recipient, rather than yourself.

This means saying less and empathising more. If you’re unsure how to do this, put yourself in their shoes, rather than wrestling their shoes off and wearing them yourself.

Keep your comparison stories for when the heart has healed and they will be much more appreciated.

Oh My God, I Just Heard The Worst News!

Information brings attention. Got a scandal to share? Nothing beats a crowded room fixing on you like the last plate of hors d’oeuvres when you have bad news to break.

It is true that the urgency to share bad news can be overpowering, but do your best to avoid the drama.

The reality is that bad news is bad enough without a megaphone and a sky-writing plane.

You Bring These Things Upon Yourself

The key to really effectively breaking bad news is to minimise the impact on the other person’s sense of self.

Keep the news and the individual as separate as possible.

This means helping them see that just because the news is bad doesn’t mean that they are bad - or stupid, or worthless or unlovable.

The bad news is that bad news is unavoidable. We are all going to receive it as we live full and adventurous lives.

But the good news is that the next time we have to deliver it, we can avoid serving it up with a case of the blues by adopting a few of these simple strategies.

Tags: bad news, breaking up, friendship, grief, identity, Relationships
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