The Art Of Delivering Bad News

Let’s face it – not every speech that you’ll give will be one that your audience will want to hear. There are times that we are asked to give a speech that will contain bad news for our audience. When this happens, we will need a special set of speaker skills in order to effectively communicate our message in a way that shows sensitivity to our audience. It’s not only how you organize your message, but also how you go about delivering it.

Your Goal When Delivering Bad News

The one thing that you definitely don’t want to do when you have been asked to deliver bad news to an audience is to wrap it in a “good news / bad news” wrapper. This is an old technique that is too often associated with comedy routines and since what you are talking about will not make anyone laugh, it is inappropriate to use it here.

The reason that you have been asked to deliver bad news can be varied. Possible reasons can include announcing layoffs, reorganizations, announcing acquisitions, changes in benefit programs, budget overruns, schedule delays, and poor financial results. The group that you will be talking to can vary in size from large groups, to small groups, and sometimes even in one-to-one conversations. The challenge is that there is no easy way to deliver news like this. However, there are speaking techniques that can make your delivery of the information more effective and as a result, makes it easier for you to do it.

The first thing that you’ll need to do when you are asked to deliver bad news is to take the time to study your audience. What you are going to want to do is identify the information that this audience is going to both accept and understand. It is critical that you stay away from humor at this point in time – your audience won’t appreciate because the outcome of your speech is going to be very serious.

How To Start The Delivery Of Bad News

One of the biggest challenges that any speaker faces is in deciding how best to start a speech that is going to be filled with bad news. As you take the stage to begin your speech, the audience will be filled with dread as they eagerly await what you will be telling them. What you are going to want to do is to start your speech with a simple statement that contains relevant information for this audience. You’ll want to make a statement that everyone can agree with. Starting things off this way will allow you to draw in your audience and will set the stage for exploring the set of circumstance that lead to the current situation.

What you want your audience to do is to listen to you. The neutrality of your opening statement will allow this to happen. If instead you started your speech with a statement that members of your audience did not agree with, then you would have already lost them as they stopped listening and started to form arguments in their head. If you start your speech off with bad news then this will come across as being too abrupt. You won’t have given your audience enough time to both anticipate and prepare for the message that you are delivering to them.

You want to communicate to your audience that you’ve taken the time to carefully consider what you will be sharing with them. These ideas have not been casually created. In order to get this across to them you are going to want to include in the start of your speech a statement of a significant but evident fact. This will send a signal to your audience that the message that you will be delivering to them is a serious message and that you have spent time carefully considering it. This will set a serious tone for the rest of your speech.

What All Of This Means For You

Different speeches have different purposes. Some speeches are created in order to deliver bad news to an audience. This is not an easy task to perform and there are probably more wrong ways than right ways to go about doing this delicate task. However, the ability to deliver bad news is a valuable skill that every speaker needs to have.

The one thing that we need to realize is that a serious bad new speech is no place for humor. We may be tempted to try to break the heavy tone that often comes with bad news by using humor; however, we need to avoid doing this. Humor is inappropriate for this type of speech and so we need to stay away from it. You’ll have to take the time to study your audience – who will you be talking to? How you start a speech like this is critical. You’ll want to start out in a neutral tone and you’ll need to make a statement of significant fact early on so that your audience understands that you have spent the required time studying the issues that they are now facing.

Bad news is never something that any of us wants to hear. When we are placed in a situation where we are being asked to deliver a speech that contains bad news, we need to understand that how we deliver the news is almost as important as what the news is. Take the time to carefully prepare your speech so that the message that you will be communicating will come through loud and clear for your audience.

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Will a Tribunal Scrutinise an Employer’s Decision As to the Composition of a Redundancy Pool?

An employer who dismisses an employee without good reason and without following a fair procedure lays itself open to a claim for unfair dismissal. When such a claim is brought, the employer has to establish the reason for the dismissal. Redundancy is a potentially fair reason for dismissal pursuant to Section 98 of the Employment Rights Act 1996.Redundancy situations can come about if an employer intends to cease to carry on the business for the purposes of which the employee was employed by him or the requirements of the business for employers to carry out work of a particular kind have ceased or diminished. It is important to remember that a redundancy situation can occur when there is no downturn in trade. An employer is perfectly at liberty to consider reducing the number of staff if he needs fewer people to do the same work.Once redundancy has been established, a Tribunal will consider whether the dismissal was fair or unfair, depending on whether in all the circumstances (including the size and administrative resources of the employer’s undertaking), the employer acted reasonably or unreasonably in treating it as a sufficient reason for dismissing the employee (s.98(4) Employment Rights Act 1996). If an employer wants to avoid a successful unfair dismissal claim by reason of redundancy, this essentially means that he will need to ensure that a fair procedure has been adopted, including defining the pool of potentially redundant employees.The courts have recently been considering the extent of their own capacity to interfere with an employer’s decision as to the composition of a pool. In Capita Hartshead Ltd v Byard, the Employment Appeal Tribunal (“EAT”) handed down a judgment on the principles to be applied by Employment Tribunals in cases challenging the decisions of employers on selecting the pool from which employees are to be dismissed for redundancy. Mr. Byard was an actuary. The ‘pool’ was limited to just Mr. Byard, despite the fact that there were other actuaries doing similar work. The employer argued that the actuaries built up a personal relationship with their clients and that the firm would lose clients if any of the other actuaries were made redundant. The firm believed that the bulk of the work that had diminished was identifiable to Mr. Byard. The original tribunal found that the dismissal was unfair as the other actuaries should have been included in the pool. On appeal, the EAT found that the tribunal had wrongly substituted its own view of what would be a fair pool for selection for that of the employer.The EAT placed particular reliance on this quote from the 1994 case of Taymech v Ryan where the judge said that “there is no legal requirement that a pool should be limited to employees doing the same or similar work. The question of how the pool should be defined is primarily a matter for the employer to determine. It would be difficult for the employee to challenge it where the employer has genuinely applied his mind [to] the problem”. However, the EAT in Capita went on to hold that the appropriate test was to apply the statutory language, i.e. to consider whether the employer acted reasonably. In applying this test, it concluded that, because the original tribunal had found on the facts that the risk of losing clients because of a change of actuary was slight, the employer had not genuinely applied its mind to the selection of the pool. As such, the tribunal were entitled to scrutinise the employer’s decision as to the composition of the pool and were similarly entitled to find that the employer did not act reasonably in restricting the pool to one. As a consequence, the original finding of unfair dismissal was upheld and the appeal by the employer failed.This case should not, however, be seen as opening a door to tribunal scrutiny of an employer’s decision as to the composition of a pool. Whilst employers would be well advised to give logical, genuine and transparent thought as to who should be in the ‘pool’, as long as they can satisfy the test of reasonableness, a tribunal is unlikely to examine them further on this point.

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Teeter F5000 Inversion – The Latest Evolution in Health and Fitness

The Teeter f5000 inversion is the latest discovery in the world of health and fitness. The F5000 inversion table basically rotates in a spin-around system. With mere arm and hand movements, rotation is perfectly accomplished by simply shifting the weight of the arms downwards and upwards, and the table will easily rotate in a very comfortable angle.The smooth spin-around of the Teeter table permits oscillation and alternating tractions. Its adjustable roller axis allows anyone to pre-select three different levels to control or adjust the aggressive rotation.The machine’s tether strap enables anyone to control the optimum angle of the f5000 table. Its comfortable and secure ankle clamps hold both your feet securely while the table is currently rotating.
The f5000 inversion can be easily folded compactly for efficient storage and transport. The nylon mat attached to the hinges can be removed for washing.Every inversion table package comes with a very informative and instructional DVD as well as a laminated owner’s manual.Compared to other types and brands, the f5000 inversion, through numerous engineering tests, has been proven to be more precise and balanced and can provide a user the perfect full inversion required. The machine is also considered 85% pre-assembled and is invariably 1/4 less of the average number of machine parts compared to other inversion table brands.The inversion table is equipped with heat-treated steel to add more strength on its primary structural components and parts. Its bed is securely attached and fixed through auto-locking hinges. These auto-locks protect the bed or table from disconnecting from the main base. It has specialized pivot rings that assure any buyer squeak-free turns for a lifetime.The Teeter f5000 inversion’s de-rattler knob lessens the shifting for a much smoother and quieter rotation. It is also designed with injection-coated rubber grips for additional durability. Its triple-plated chrome shaft is embossed with height markers for an easy adjustment for users whose heights range from 4’8″ up to 6’6″.The f5000 table is made of high-quality finishes and incorporates a scratch-resistant powder coating and a triple-plate chrome shaft.The innovative table bed design of the Teeter f5000 inversion features a Flex Technology that enables the bed to move with the user. Its smooth surface lessens friction, thus allowing your body to perfectly slide and obtain maximum body stretch. The Teeter f5000 also comes with an adjustable head pillow to support the head and to provide greater amount of comfort.

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