Nobody likes having to deliver bad news . For example, you want to end a relationship but just thinking about telling the other person makes you nervous because you don’t want to hurt them .
You have arranged to have dinner with that objective, but you spend the first quarter of an hour being friendly , being flattering and talking about trifles before you dare to enter the matter.
The other way to do it, the correct one, according to an American study: you arrive, you sit down and before the person who is about to be abandoned can not even consult the menu, you say:
“We need to talk”. So without further ado. And, as the authors of the aforementioned research have discovered, the linguistics professors Alan Manning, from Brigham Young University, in Utah, and Nicole Amare, from the University of South Alabama, when receiving bad news As the end of a relationship, human beings prefer the direct and to-the-point style, without half measures, detours or palliatives that seek to sweeten reality.
The experiment consisted of bombarding the participants with a series of unpleasant information presented in various visual, textual and verbal ways.
When transmitting a negative message regarding a social relationship (for example, “I want to stop dating you” or ” You are fired “), Manning and Amare found that people appreciated being told this frankly and directly, without trying to sweeten it with educated formulas.
It is not necessary to start with “I’m going to break up with you”, it would be too harsh, but with a simple “we have to talk” you give the recipient of the message a few seconds to start processing that they are going to give them bad news .
Denying the facts is of no use
Also if this is about health problems, even something as strong as ” you have cancer, you have two months to live “, most individuals prefer to be told bluntly and as closely as possible to the truth. According to Manning, “denying the facts is useless. If your house is burning, you want to know so you can get out. And if you have cancer, the same. You want to know the truth and not listen to the doctor making circumlocations .”
During the study, the 145 volunteers who participated received a panoply of bad news and negative situations, told in several possible ways . They then had to assess each message they received based on their perception of it: whether it was clear, considerate, direct, effective, sincere, specific, and reasoned . They also scored which of these characteristics they valued the most.
Most of them preferred clarity and straightforward style over the other features. According to Manning, previous research on the subject and the advice given when giving bad news were not so conclusive, in part because they were framed in terms of the person giving the bad news, to make it easier for them.
But that creates uncertainty for the recipient of the information.
“From the point of view of someone who has to have something bad to someone else, it certainly is psychologically more comfortable sweeten and detours, which explains previously advised to do it this way. But our research starts from the premise call the place of who receives the bad news and what form to receive it seems less unpleasant to you. And the reality is that the recipients prefer the direct form, “says Manning.
That does not mean that sometimes you have to brown the pill a little to the depositary of negative information. When the purpose is to be persuasive for someone to change their mind, it is necessary to prepare a strategy of going little by little, because the messages that affect a person’s belief system or ideas and their identity and ego are more delicate to present.
