A Guide To Communicating Setbacks With Your Team
Setbacks come thick and fast in startups.
They can range from minor delays in product development to major issues when key people leave or large customers move on.
At the heart of each setback is an ugly mashup of angst and uncertainty.
The larger the setback, the greater the angst and uncertainty.
In any case and no matter their size, setbacks destabilise teams and the big and unexpected ones can paralyse a young venture.
There’s only one productive way to communicate setbacks
For the most part, experience plays a large role in managing setbacks. The more you see it, the easier it is to manage.
But there are times when large and unexpected setbacks can catch even the most experienced operators off guard. Answers aren’t (usually) immediately obvious in these situations and the pressure on founders increases quickly when teams expect their leaders to have some, if not all, the answers.
Here’s the thing. Unlike wine, angst and uncertainty don’t age well with time.
And I cannot tell you the number of times I have been faced with the frustrating irony that I need more time to discover a path forward. If like me you were born impatient, this situation is particularly testing because as a leader you feel like it’s your job to have answers for your team.
You have three options at times like this:
Present an answer to your team that creates certainty based on what you hope will happen (Pro Tip: Hope isn’t a tactic and doing this places your credibility at risk), or
Say you don’t know what’s going to happen and tell the team you’ll get back to them (which might inspire them to embrace your honesty but it might equally end up costing you credibility), or
Talk with your team about the setback! ✅
I can assure you that the third option is by far the best and here are the three steps I follow to communicate setbacks with teams as soon as possible after they happen.
1. Reintroduce context
In the cut and thrust of building a business it’s easier than people realise to forget about what attracted them to work together in the first place.
And when stress-induced angst and uncertainty hits a team, they can become myopic and lose sight of the big picture and how much has been achieved.
So open the conversation by reminding them of their collective purpose and how far they’ve come. In these situations I work hard to position messages in such a way that makes team member’s smile as they reflect on the journey to date.
2. Present the news
The next step is to objectively introduce the events that have led to this conversation. It could be the reasons why a key team member has decided to depart or the change in circumstance that led to the end of a business partnership. Make this a candid and high level explanation.
Then, present the news.
3. Talk scenarios
There are usually 3–5 scenarios that can play out off the back of any setback.
It’s up to the CEO or founders to come up with, present and discuss the first draft of each scenario with the team.
This part of the conversation lays the ground-work for a path forward and invites engagement from the team to evolve existing scenarios or introduce new ones.
This is THE most important step in short-circuiting angst and uncertainty and in my experience, it’s this step that team members appreciate the most.
The bottom line is that can setback hurt. A lot.
As each setback becomes known always remind the team that they are the same collective of talented and resilient people they were the day before the setback happened. And they will be those same people tomorrow and the next day and the day after that.
The reason this approach works is because it acknowledges team members can sense and be affected by the same angst and uncertainty felt by their leaders.
Facing into setbacks using this approach has been very useful in the past. I hope it’s a big help to you too.
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