Treating Bad News as a Negotiation
Disclosure: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. If you buy through one, I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you.
Don't do it!
I almost had to learn this the hard way. Whether you're breaking up with someone, quitting a job, or letting someone down easy, make sure you go in prepared, or you might end up putting yourself in a terrible position. My saving grace was the book Difficult Conversations. This is another one of the books from my class, ES250: Negotiation in college, which I referred to in my previous post (Getting to Yes: Analytical Table of Contents).
This advice is for when you don't want to turn a difficult conversation into a negotiation. They're completely different talks, so you should approach them from different angles. It's also only advice. Make your own conclusions in your personal context.
Now that you've made up your mind as to what you want to do in whatever situation you've gotten yourself into, it's time to let the other person down easy. However, you can't go in all soft and mushy; you need to sound confident. As soon as the other person catches a hint of hesitation, (s)he is going to latch onto that like a bulldog. If you hesitate, you're communicating to the other person that there is still hope; that somehow (s)he can change your mind.
Managing Feelings
Your goal is to get the other person to see the way you see the situation, so you need to lay the groundwork. As an aside though, you need to check your emotions at the door. Feel free to talk about how you feel, but don't let your emotions overcome you. The other person won't be able to take you seriously, and/or the discussion could erupt and quickly spiral into chaos. A well-handled difficult conversation is all about self-control.
Anyway, back to laying the groundwork. So, you've probably covered how you are feeling at this point in the conversation, which is great because someone else can't argue with how you do feel. Sure, they could argue how you should feel, but even that's a bit presumptuous of him/her. Keep focusing on describing how you sense the situation, and throw a lot of "well, I feel like I've noticed this or thats" in there. See, the key here is that perspective is everything. It's very likely that the other person has observed the same things that you have (we usually call these facts), but it's highly unlikely that the other person has interpreted those facts the same way that you have.
We have a funny way of taking the things that we observe, internalizing them, then spitting them back out onto the world as modified projections of their previous selves. It's great because it's what allows us to innovate, challenge assumptions, and define ourselves as unique individuals. However, that all backfires when you're trying to describe something that is bent up around emotions. We often take those emotions and turn them into facts, and project them onto other people.
For example, rather than saying, "when you (forget to wash your hands), it makes me feel (angry)," we tend to lean toward "(not washing your hands) is (stupid)." Do you see the difference? The latter scenario is an example of the "blame game," which means you're attacking the other person AND calling out his action as a blemish on his merit. No one likes to feel attacked, but more importantly, now that person isn't listening to what you're actually saying. You're really saying that the act of not washing one's hands angers you; not that that the actual person angers you. If you focus on changing the act, rather than the nature of the person, he is much more likely to change his actions.
Breaking the Bad News
Now that you understand how important communicating and structuring feelings is, you want to conclude with the actual bad news. At this point, it may seem like you're beating around the bush or letting them down easy, and that's precisely what you're doing. In other words, it shouldn't come as a surprise where your decision has come from because you've not only described your feelings, but also where they've come from, so it's difficult to argue with your conclusion. You've essentially offered the other person the logic and reasoning that you've mulled over in your own head, but now they can see it from your perspective, too.