If your job consisted of handing out $100 bills to people, would it be easier to talk to customers? Perhaps. But it probably doesn’t. So today, let’s look at some ways you can deliver bad news to people, in a way that will keep things polite and civil on both sides.
First, however, this is not one of these “five bullet point” articles with nice but obvious tips. This is a very powerful technique that works extremely well, based on techniques from crisis intervention. (Incidentally, I am a former crisis counselor.) But be aware that it takes practice. Whenever I teach this approach to people in live training, as I have to about 6,000 people and counting, almost everyone nods their head in agreement – and then when we do live role-playing, they freeze like deer in the headlights and revert to what they have been saying for the last 20 years. That’s OK, and completely normal.
But when people do learn it, the effect is very powerful – and when a whole team starts responding this way, a process that often takes weeks of coaching, the results are truly magical to watch. Deconstruct how the very best service leaders handle difficult situations with you, and you will probably find an approach similar to this. So here goes …
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