The Bad News Formula Will Change The Way You Give Bad News
Giving bad news can be one of those moments that people remember for a lifetime.
Both, the giver and the receiver.
They are often highly emotionally-charged moments and they are not easy either to listen to… or to say.
Most people don’t have a strategy for how to give bad news properly. So, they go to the 2 extremes:
- They bluntly just say what they have to say (and break rapport… and trust)
Or
2. They try to sweeten things up, maybe apologize, and basically try to make the other person feel better (without much success).
You have probably had to give bad news to someone, at some time, likely very recently. Some people have to do this every day!
Maybe they were your client,
your supplier,
your friend,
your teammate,
your child,
or your mother.
It is not only about the moment when you actually give the bad news itself, because you also probably spent a lot of time in advance worrying about what to say and how to say it.
How are they going to react? What if they reject you? Or hate you?! Worries and questions keep coming at you faster than heavy clouds before a big storm.
That’s why most people postpone giving bad news for days or weeks. Unfortunately, postponing doesn’t help. It adds to the pressure of the moment, when you finally have to say something, and even then when you wait, the issues may have ballooned into big problems.
So finally, you say something.
And it comes out totally differently from the way you wanted to say it. Different than the way you “practiced” it in your mind. Even the reaction of the other person is different.
So you spend more hours, if not days, thinking about what you should have said.
You beat yourself up for not having the right words at the right time.
This doesn’t help your self-esteem and only makes you feel more miserable. And it keeps you up at night, playing it over and over.
The bad news itself usually doesn’t take more than 2 minutes to say. Or fewer than a couple of lines in an email.
But the impact of these 2 minutes or 2 lines is huge.
The supplier who gets bad news from you may stop working with you.
The client who gets bad news from you may be gone forever (or worse, could give you bad reviews and talk about your lousy service to their friends — which is extremely likely to happen these days).
A friend who gets bad news from you may start to act weirdly afterward and the relationship could deteriorate.
Your teammate who gets bad news from you may stop speaking to you.
Your child who gets bad news from you may not know how to deal with it and might end up turning it into a big deal.
That’s why I spent some time finding the best way to give bad news to people and I came up with “The Bad News Formula”.
Since then it has been successfully used by many people, from teenagers to Customer Service departments in large corporations.
So, how do you tell someone bad news? How do you tell somebody something they don’t want to hear, without having them freak out?
Of course, the “Bad News Formula” cannot make people happy to hear what you have to tell them, but it is so much easier on you and them, when you know how to do it.
This is something that you can use the next instant.
The “Bad News Formula” is based on Primacy and Recency — two concepts that show how people think.
People remember the first thing that they heard (Primacy) and they also remember the last thing they heard (Recency).
You probably know about the “Feedback Sandwich”, where first you say something nice, then you give them the bad news (or points for “improvement”) and then you say something nice again.
Unfortunately, this formula has taught people not to hear the nice things you have to say to them, because as soon as you say anything positive, everybody is waiting for the other shoe to drop and something negative to happen.
With the “Bad News Formula” you start the other way around.
Here it is:
First of all, you tell the person the bad news.
And then you use this very powerful word “BUT”. If you tell someone bad news and then you say “but”, it lets them know that it’s not all bad.
Then you continue with 3 pieces of good news.
I know what you are thinking! “But what if you have no good news?” Find some!
It’s easier to do if you write it out beforehand, at least for the first few times.
The Bad News Formula works on the basis of 3 :1. 3 pieces of good news after only 1 piece of bad news. This helps balance out the bad news.
I’m often asked: but aren’t you drowning the bad news with 3 pieces of good news? You can try it out and decide for yourself. :-)
Here’s what happened to me:
I was hired by a young and growing fleet management software company to help their executives develop their Customer Philosophy and then I trained all their team members in California, Atlanta, Toronto and even New Zealand in customer service strategies.
They found me because I was in a documentary called “Customer Dis-Service,” that was shown around Canada and around the world on MSNBC. The reason they needed my help was that they were acquiring companies so quickly, that integrating them had an impact on their ability to service their current customers.
Among other strategies, I taught them the “Bad News Formula” to help manage customer expectations.
Three months after I completed the assignment, I still hadn’t received my payment. I wrote a short email to Philip in Accounts Payable (who I knew from the training sessions) and received this in return:
Dear Shelle,
I know you haven’t received your check yet, but I’m seeing the VP of
finance this week and I’ll put your invoice in front of him and I’ll let
you know as soon as I can that your bill will be paid.
I read his email and thought “That’s fine.” A few seconds later it hit me!
Wait a minute! I wrote him back: “I taught you how to do that!”
And he replied with a smiley face. Even when you know the Bad News Formula, it still works.
Here’s another example for families:
We can’t go to the swimming pool today, but we can stop on the way home and go to your favorite park, and you can play on your favorite swing and let’s see how high you can get today.
The “Bad News Formula” gives you the chance to be upfront with the bad news but at the same time lowers the emotional upset, and this helps you maintain a good relationship.
IIt is actually less distressing to hear the bad news right up front and to have it balanced by something that is not so bad; something that may be positive news for the other person.
The Bad News Formula is one of the influencing strategies from the recently launched NEW third edition of the international bestseller “Words That Change Minds”.
Find out here about how to master Influencing Language and get what you want, without manipulating.
