How to Deliver Unpleasant News at Work

You've known about an important project -- and its Monday morning deadline -- all week. But figuring it would be easy to complete, you didn't start on the assignment until Friday. Then, you realize the information you need will take a couple of days to track down, and there's no way everything will be done in time. Now, you have to explain what happened to your boss.

While it is tempting to use evasive tactics when conveying bad news, there are a number of downsides to only presenting the upside. These include potentially harming your professional reputation, losing your manager's trust or missing out on support that might have helped you resolve the situation. It goes without saying that honesty is always the best policy.

Following are suggestions on when and how to deliver unsavory news to your boss.

Early is best. Receiving bad news is, well, bad enough for a manager. But learning that your staff member has known about a problem and not told you about it for weeks can be infuriating. So don't delay telling your manager that you can't find the necessary figures for a report due tomorrow, for instance. It's best to let him or her know as soon as possible -- postponing the discussion is likely to make things worse, not better.

Bad news should come from you. If you don't immediately deliver the unpleasant news to your manager, you can trust that someone else will. If the bearer of bad news, for example, is an important customer who was less than pleased with how you handled a request, your boss will be extremely unhappy about being surprised and unprepared for the customer's call. In addition, your manager is much less likely to be sympathetic to your explanation if he or she had to hear the news from a third party.

Deliver the news in person, if possible. Don't send your manager an e-mail telling him or her that you mistakenly deleted a voice mail from a client detailing extensive last-minute changes to a contract. E-mail doesn't allow your boss to ask questions or you to fully explain how and why the incident occurred. It is much better to ask for an in-person meeting and stress that you need to speak to him or her right away.

Be direct (and don't make excuses). Once you're in your manager's office, avoid over-dramatizing the event; your boss doesn't want a list of reasons you believe the error was not your fault. Likewise, don't downplay a big mistake -- such as attaching the wrong file to an e-mail that was sent to a large distribution list. Acknowledge the problem, apologize to the affected parties and work with your manager on not only a solution but also a strategy for ensuring a similar incident does not occur again.

While all of these tactics are useful if you have bad news to deliver, it's best to avoid the need for this type of conversation in the first place. One way to do so is to ask questions -- of your manager, coworkers, and clients -- from the beginning of a project. When in doubt, it's better to request clarity than to have to come to your manager later about a problem.

Obviously, you cannot avoid all mistakes or mishaps at work. However, by delivering unpleasant news immediately and in person, you'll spend less time on the firing line and more on the production line.