Dr. Heidi Grant

How to Soften the Blow of Bad News for Your Employees

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One of the toughest parts of being a leader is having to tell your people what they don’t want to hear.

No, you won’t be getting a promotion at this time.

There aren’t going to be any bonuses this year.

Your request for a new hire has been denied.

I know you already feel overworked, but here are 3 new projects you’ll need to complete this quarter.

 

There’s no way to disguise the fact that bad news is bad news, so you can never hope to entirely remove its sting.  But you can learn to deliver bad news is a way that softens the blow, by increasing the chances that it will be perceived as fair. To do that, you’ll need to tailor your message to the motivational style of your employee.

Some people tend to see their goals as opportunities for gain or advancement.  In other words, they are focused on all the great things that will happen for them when they succeed – the benefits and rewards.  Psychologists call this a promotion focus, and research shows that promotion-minded people are more motivated by optimism and praise, and more likely to embrace risk and excel at creativity and innovation.

Others tend to see their goals as opportunities to avoid loss, to fulfill their responsibilities, and to stay safe.   They don’t want to lose what they have worked so hard to achieve, and worry about all the bad things that will happen if they make a mistake.  Psychologists call this a prevention focus, and the prevention-minded are more motivated by criticism and the looming possibility of failure than they are by applause and a sunny outlook.   Prevention-focused people are more risk-averse, but their work is also more thorough, more accurate, and more carefully-planned.

The key to enhancing the perceived fairness of bad news is to match the framing of your delivery to the motivational style of the listener.  For instance, imagine you are informing your team of an upcoming company-wide reorganization – news that is generally met with groans and dismay.   You could justify the reorganization using positive framing (e.g., the reorganization will “make the company more profitable,”) which highlights potential gains, or you could use a negative framing (e.g., the reorganization will “prevent further financial losses,”) which emphasizes avoiding unwanted outcomes.

New research shows that promotion-minded employees judge bad news to be significantly more fair when it is delivered using positive framing, while prevention-minded employees are more amenable to negative framing.

For example, in one study, promotion-minded university students judged a proposed tuition increase to be significantly more clear, candid, truthful, and reasonable when it was justified as allowing the university to “provide better education, strengthen courses, and retain faculty.”

Prevention-minded students, on the other hand, preferred the tuition hike to be described as a way of  “avoiding deterioration of quality, cuts to courses, and loss of faculty.”

In another study, participants read an article about (real) layoffs at Daimler Chrysler.  Promotion-minded readers rated the layoffs as significantly more fair and reasonable when they were described as an opportunity to “promote market share,”  while prevention-minded readers were more favorably impressed when the layoffs were justified as  “preventing loss of market share.”

So next time you find yourself having to take a project out of the hands of one team member who’s clearly floundering, and transferring it to another, you’ll know whether to describe it as an “opportunity to devote your energy to other assignments” or as a way to “avoid being dangerously overloaded with work.”

Whenever you deliver bad news to an employee, always start by diagnosing his motivational style – is he a risk –taker, or risk-averse?   Are his strengths speed and creativity, or accuracy and thoroughness?   Know who you are talking to, and you’ll know what you need to say to put bad news in the best possible light.

 

3 Keys to Finding Love and Hanging On to It

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If you want to be happy in your relationship, what are the most important ingredients?  Everybody has a theory about what it takes to live happily ever after, and no two people seem to agree.  So let’s look instead at what science tells us will lead to relationship bliss, and how best to tackle three of the major challenges we face when trying to find, and keep, that Special Someone.

#1. What to Look For In a Mate: Someone Agreeable, Conscientious, and Emotionally Stable

According to the researchers, people with spouses who are agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable report being significantly happier in their marriages.  So if your romantic partner is a sourpuss, selfish and irresponsible, and has a tendency to fly off the handle, your chances of finding marital bliss together are not good.

Look for someone generally pleasant, responsible, and even-tempered, and in fairness to them, be willing to return the favor.

#2. How to Know If He (or She) Loves You Back:  It’s The Little Things

“If you really loved me, you would….”

Everyone who’s ever been in a relationship has had thoughts like this one.  If he loved me he would bring me flowers, or compliment me more often, or remember my birthday, or remember to take out the damn garbage.  When it comes to love, actions speak louder than words, right?

Well, not necessarily.  According to new research, romantic feelings like love, intimacy, and commitment reliably lead to some loving behaviors – the smaller, spontaneous acts of kindness that occur without much forethought, like offering a backrub, making a nice dinner, or letting you have the last brownie in the pan.  These “little things” are a much better indicator of the depth of his love than whether or not he remembers your birthday or to take out the trash.

#3  How to Fight Well:  Treat Little Problems and Big Problems Differently

The best way to deal with conflict in a relationship depends on how serious or severe the problem is.  Did your boyfriend drink too much at the party last night, or is he drinking too much every night?  Did your wife splurge a little too much on clothes last month, or are her spending habits edging you closer and closer to bankruptcy?  Did he invite his mother to dinner without discussing it with you first, or did he invite his mother to live with you without discussing it first?  Little problems and big problems require very different approaches if you want to have a lasting, happy relationship.

When it comes to relatively minor problems, direct fighting strategies – like placing blame on your partner for their actions or expressing your anger – predict a loss of relationship satisfaction over time.   Flying off the handle when he forgets to take out the garbage yet again, or when she spends a little too much money on a pricey pair of shoes, is going to take its toll on your happiness in the long run.  You really are better off letting the small stuff go.

On the other hand, in response to major problems, couples who battle it out do a better job of tackling, and eventually resolving those issues, than those who sweep big problems under the carpet.

So when you are deciding whether or not something is worth fighting over with your partner, ask yourself if, in the scheme of things, the problem is a 10 or a 2.  If it’s a 2, try letting it go.  But if it’s a 10, let the battle begin.  You’ll both be happier that way.

How to Walk Away When It’s Not Working

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Sometimes, you don’t know when to throw in the towel.   As time passes, it becomes clear that things aren’t working out as you planned.  You realize that pursuing whatever it is that you’re pursuing, whether it’s being successful in your current career, mending a troubled relationship, or renovating your house from top to bottom, will cost you too much financially or emotionally, or take too long.  But instead of moving on to new opportunities, all too often you simply stay the course and sacrifice your own wellbeing in the process.

You aren’t alone.  Most of us know what it’s like to stay in a job or a relationship long after it has ceased being satisfying, or to take on a project that’s just too big for us and be reluctant to admit it.  CEOs have been known to allocate manpower and money to projects long after it’s become clear that they are obviously failing, digging a deeper hole rather than trying to climb their way out of it (Remember how long it took to get rid of New Coke?)

The costs to the person who can’t see reason, in terms of time, effort, and lost opportunities for happiness, can be enormous. We recognize this kind of foolishness immediately in others, but that doesn’t stop us from making the same mistake ourselves.  Why?

There are several powerful and largely unconscious psychological forces at work here.   We may throw good money after bad, or waste time in a dead-end relationship, because we haven’t come up with an alternative, or because we don’t want to admit to our friends and family, or to ourselves, that we were wrong.   But the most likely culprit is our overwhelming aversion to sunk costs.

Sunk costs are the resources that you’ve put into an endeavor that you can’t get back out.   They are the years you spent training for a profession you hate or waiting for your commitment-phobic boyfriend to propose.  They are the money you spent on redecorating your living room in the hot new style, only to find that you hate it living in it.

Once you’ve realized that you probably won’t succeed or that you are unhappy with the results, it shouldn’t matter how much time and effort you’ve already put into something.  If your job or your boyfriend have taken up some of the best years of your life, it doesn’t make sense to let them use up the years you’ve got left. And an ugly living room is an ugly living room, no matter how much money you spent making it so.

The problem is that it doesn’t feel that way.  Putting in a lot only to end up with nothing to show for it is just too awful for most of us to seriously consider.  We worry far too much about what we’ll lose if we just move on, and not nearly enough about the costs of not moving on  – more wasted time and effort, more unhappiness, and more missed opportunities.  So how can we make it easier to know when to cut our losses?

Thanks to recent research by Northwestern University psychologists Daniel Molden and Chin Ming Hui, there is a simple and effective way to be sure you are making the best decisions when a things go awry:  focus on what you have to gain, rather than what you have to lose.

As I’ve written about before, psychologists call this adopting a promotion focus. When we think about our goals in terms of potential gains, we automatically (often without realizing it) become more comfortable with making mistakes and accepting the losses we may have to incur along the way.

When we adopt a prevention focus, on the other hand, and think about our goals in terms of what we could lose if we don’t succeed, we become much more sensitive to sunk costs.

For example, in one of their studies, Molden and Hui put participants into either a promotion or prevention mindset by having them spend five minutes writing about their “personal hopes and aspirations” (promotion) or “duties and obligations” (prevention).  They also included a control group with no manipulation of mindset.

Next, each participant was told to imagine that he or she was president of an aviation company that had committed $10 million to developing a plane that can’t be detected by radar.  With the project near completion and $9 million already spent, a rival company announces the availability of their own radar-blank plane, which is both superior in performance and lower in cost.  The question put to participants was simple – do you invest the remaining $1 million and finish your company’s (inferior and more expensive) plane, or cut your losses and move on?

Molden and Hui found that participants who had been put in a prevention mindset  (focused on avoiding loss) stayed the course and invested the remaining $1 million roughly 80% of the time.  The control group, included to provide a sense of how people would respond without any changes to their mindset, was virtually identical to the prevention group.  This suggests that when things go wrong and sunk costs are high, most of us naturally become prevention-minded, and more likely to try to keep waging a losing battle.

The odds of making that mistake were significantly reduced by adopting a promotion mindset (focused on potential gain) – those participants invested the remaining $1 million less than 60% of the time.*

When we see our goals in terms of what we can gain, rather than what we might lose, we are more likely to see a doomed endeavor for what it is, and try to make the most of a bad situation.

It’s not difficult to achieve greater clarity if you make a deliberate effort to refocus yourself when making your decision.  Stop and reflect on what you have to gain by cutting your losses now – the opportunities for happiness and growth.  If you do, you’ll find it much easier to make the right choice.

*Why not a bigger drop? Good question.  Remember that promotion focus was manipulated very indirectly through a totally unrelated writing task.  If you adopt a promotion focus directly with respect to the decision itself, considering what you could gain by moving on from your failure, the effects should be even stronger.

A Simple Fix for Miscommunication Part 2: Putting It Into Practice

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(From my Fast Company Blog)

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post on miscommunication in the workplace, and how so much of it is caused by the fact that people routinely fail to realize how little they are actually communicating. We think we’ve said a lot more than we actually have.  As a result, our colleagues are left guessing as to what we meant, or what we want from them.  All too often, they guess wrong.

Judging by the popularity of the post, Fast Company readers can relate.  You know how frustrating it is to be on the receiving end of communication that is confusing or vague.  But most of us have no idea that we are guilty of the same crime.  It’s easy to see why – after all, we know what we mean.  Unless we are confronted directly about how poorly we are communicating (something people are generally loathe to do, for a number of reasons), how are we to know if we’ve said enough?

I received a number of emails asking how to put the insight gained from the last post into practice on a daily basis.  Here are three strategies you can use to make sure that you are saying everything that needs to be said.

1)    Take a few moments before communicating to identify the key points you need to get across. Write them down if you think you might forget something when you are actually conversing (this is very common).  If you think any of your key points “go without saying,” you are probably wrong.

2)    Create a process for assessing understanding.  Everyone on your team needs to participate – don’t single anyone out.  When you communicate something to a team member, end the encounter by asking them to summarize in their own words what they heard.

For this to work well without anyone feeling patronized, you need to make it clear that this is not a test – your concern is that you didn’t communicate effectively, not that they weren’t paying attention.  Also, it has to work both ways.  When your team member brings something to your attention, you should summarize what you heard as well.

Without direct feedback, there is no way to figure out if the message was fully received.  But people are reluctant to provide this feedback if there is no explicit process in place.  They worry about looking foolish, or irritating the communicator (particularly when the communicator is the boss.)

3)    Invite questions should they arise.  Sometimes, you don’t realize that you didn’t understand what a colleague asked you to do until you actually try to do it.  At this point, it can be embarrassing to go back and admit “I don’t get it.”  Take the embarrassment out of it by reminding your team members that you are always happy to answer any questions that may come up later.  When you are asked for clarification, provide it with enthusiasm.

I know that all of this seems like a lot of work, and it is.  But the extra time and effort you put in to improving your team’s ability to communicate will be well worth it.  You’ll spend far less time fixing mistakes and putting out fires.  Your team will be more motivated and productive.  And you’ll have confidence that everyone is finally, and permanently, on the same page.

Too Much Miscommunication At Work? A Simple Fix

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From my Fast Company Blog:

“I’m sure he understood what I meant.”

“I’m sure it was obvious.”

“It goes without saying…”

The most common source of miscommunication in any workplace is a very simple one:  people routinely fail to realize how little they are actually communicating.  In other words, we think we’ve said a lot more than we actually have.

Psychologists call this the signal amplification bias (because we can’t resist slapping esoteric names on things – calling it the “I’m Sure It Was Obvious” Effect would be much more to the point.)

Studies show that the vast majority of us tend to believe that our behavior is much more expressive than it actually is, and this occurs across a wide variety of situations.

For instance, we often think people know when we’re lying – that our discomfort with deception is obvious – when they rarely have any idea.  We also assume that others understand our goals and what we’re trying to accomplish, when in fact they don’t have the first clue.  Most of what we say and do every day is open to multiple interpretations, and when other people try to figure out what we really mean, they are apt to guess wrong.

We are particularly likely to be “sure it was obvious” with people we know well or who we’ve worked with for a long time – we assume our thoughts and behaviors are transparent, when they are far from it.  So, ironically, the risk of miscommunication is greater with a close colleague than a brand-new coworker.

When we assume that other people know what we’re thinking, and what we are expecting of them, we do them a real disservice.    Assuming that we’ve been clear about what we wanted, we blame them when things don’t go as planned.

The next time you catch yourself thinking “I didn’t expressly say that to Bob, but it should be obvious…” STOP.  Nothing is ever obvious unless you made it obvious by spelling it out.

Remove the phrase “It goes without saying” from your mental lexicon, because it is total rubbish.  If something is important, then it goes WITH saying.  Make a point of saying exactly what you mean, and asking for exactly what you want, and you will be pleasantly surprised by often you get it.

How To Recognize Motivational Strengths (Yours, and Everyone Else’s)

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From my Fast Company blog:

Why do colleagues working toward a common goal so often fail to see eye-to-eye when it comes to achieving it?  At times, you feel like you aren’t on the same page, or even the same planet, as your coworkers, even when everyone involved is clearly capable and has a proven track-record of success.  Why the disconnect?

The answer is a remarkably simple one:  There is more than one way to look at the same goal.  Take for example a goal that many of us share:  I want to do my job exceptionally well.   For some of us, doing our jobs well is about achievement and accomplishment – we have what psychologists call a promotion focus.  In the language of economics, promotion focus is about maximizing gains and avoiding missed opportunities.

For others, doing our jobs well is about security, about not losing the positions you’ve worked so hard for.  This prevention focus places the emphasis on avoiding danger, fulfilling responsibilities, and doing what feel you ought to do.  In economic terms, it’s about minimizing losses, trying to hang on to what you’ve got.

Promotion and prevention-focused people work differently to reach the same goal.  They use different strategies, have different strengths, and are prone to different kinds of mistakes.  One group will be motivated by applause, the other by criticism.  One group may give up too soon – the other may not know when to quit.

So, do you spend your life pursuing accomplishments and accolades, reaching for the stars? Or are you busy fulfilling your duties and responsibilities – being the person everyone can count on? Start by identifying your focus, and then use the information below to better understand and embrace your strengths, your potential weaknesses, and the strategies that will work best for you.

What Motivates You – Criticism or Praise?

When you are promotion-focused, your motivation feels like eagerness – an enthusiastic desire to really go for it.  Eagerness is enhanced by positive feedback –the more you are succeeding, the more motivated you become. Confidence heightens your energy and intensity. Doubting yourself takes the wind right out of your sails.

When you are prevention-focused, your motivation feels like vigilance – you are on the lookout for danger.    Vigilance actually increases in response to negative feedback or self-doubt.  There’s nothing like the looming possibility of failure to get your prevention juices flowing.  Over-confidence or effusive praise, however, may lead you to let down your guard, and undermine your motivation.

Do You Embrace Risk, or Avoid It?

“Nothing ventured, nothing gained” pretty much captures the promotion-focused philosophy. The promotion-minded have a habit of saying “yes” to every opportunity, having what psychologists call a risky bias.  Prevention-minded people, on the other hand, are cautious. They tend to say “no” more, or having a more conservative bias.

These biases manifest themselves in all sorts of ways.  For example, people with prevention goals are reluctant to disengage from one activity to try another, preferring the devil they know to the one they don’t. But their conservative nature also makes them less likely than their risk-loving colleagues to procrastinate, for fear that they won’t have time to get the job done.

Is Your Thinking Abstract or Concrete?

When people have promotion goals, they feel free to be more exploratory and abstract in their thinking.  They brainstorm.  They generate lots of options and possibilities to reach their ideals, and are more creative.  They are also particularly good at picking up on connecting themes or synthesizing information.

In pursuit of prevention goals, abstraction and creativity seems reckless and time-consuming. Prevention-focused thinking is concrete and specific – you pick a plan and stick to it. The prevention-minded are great with details, and have better memory for what they’ve seen and what’s still needs to be done.

Speed or Accuracy?

Executing any modestly complicated task involves what psychologists call a speed-accuracy tradeoff.  The faster you go, the more mistakes you make.  But going slow has costs too – particularly if time is valuable and you are in a hurry to get the job done.  It won’t surprise you to learn that promotion and prevention-minded people end up on opposite sides of this particular trade off, with promotion favoring speed and prevention preferring the slow-but-flawless route.

Are You Better at Getting There or Staying There?

Promotion-focused thinking leads to energetic and enthusiastic motivation in the shorter term, but can be less effective when it comes to long-term maintenance.  Prevention-focused thinking, on the other hand, is ideal for making sure your hard-earned gains don’t slip away.

Do You Get What You Want?

When it comes to negotiating, having a promotion focus will give you the clear upper-hand. Studies show that promotion-minded negotiators stay focused on their (ideal) price or pay targets, while the prevention-minded worry too much about a negotiation failure or impasse, leaving them more susceptible to less advantageous agreements.  When it comes to getting what you want, it pays to focus on what you have to gain, rather than what you might lose.

Armed with an understanding of promotion and prevention, so much of what we do (and what our coworkers do) makes a lot more sense.   Perhaps now you see why you’ve always been a risk-taker, or why you’ve always avoided risks like the plague.  It’s clear why you are uncomfortable with being too optimistic, or why you are known for your sunny outlook.   You get why some things have always been hard for you, while others came easily.

There’s no need to fight it – embrace your promotion- or prevention-mindedness!  After all, both kinds of motivation can bring you success, and each brings something of value (e.g., innovation, attention to detail) to your organization. Just remember to take with a grain of salt the well-meaning advice and input from others when it doesn’t feel right for you, focus on the strategies that play to your own strengths, and see the value in what your differently-motivated colleagues are bringing to the table.