People Can Handle The Truth

What do you do when you have difficult news to share with someone? Are you direct and to the
point? Do you dance around the message in hopes of softening the information? Either way,
delivering difficult news often presents challenges.

As a crisis response strategist, I have learned and taught various techniques for delivering
difficult news. Having a strategy, however, seldom removes the emotion, anticipation, or
apprehension of delivering the news but may mitigate it. With that said, here is what I have
learned after 30 years of working and responding to crises regarding providing challenging
information:

People can handle the truth. It is how we tell them the truth that is important.

In a crisis, those impacted often get clear, real fast, about what is important to them. In return,
information should be delivered with clarity and transparency. While we cannot change the
challenging news, we can determine how to present the news with empathy and compassion.

The more I think about it, the more I understand this applies to our personal and professional
lives, not just crisis events. Often we get caught up in the fear of how someone will respond to
difficult news we need to share. This fear is normal!

Knowing this fear, however, means you can prepare for it, at least to some degree. A difficult
message delivered with clarity and empathy is more likely to be heard and understood than a
message void of transparency, empathy, feeling, or emotion.

People can handle the truth. How we tell them the truth is equally important.