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No one likes surprises. Taking your boss by surprise is career limiting. Taking your stakeholders by surprise will get you low scores for collaboration and teamwork. It also provides cannon fodder to your critics.

If events move at a rapid pace, you have to break the news at some point. A sharp reaction to breaking news is a bad habit. If you point out the bad habit, you will lose points on “friendliness” and “trust.” If you don’t point out the bad habit, your nerves will be raw with all the reactions you get when you share news.

Your main recourse is to not display that bad behavior and hope others will copy that. Meaning, don’t react to news. Find out when the news was available to the messenger and mentally calculate how long it took to get to you. Point that out and praise those who delivery (bad) news quickly. It takes time to transmit a message thru the organization. Those at the lower end of the food chain will get the news later, they just have to get used to the fact.

When you publish (bad) news, let your audience know when the information became available to you. Include the curation and editing and research you did to improve productivity. Put some points on the board so you will get the benefit of the doubt.