CHAPTER 3
GOOD NEWS, BAD NEWS
USING THE POWER OF ASSOCIATION

In life, 10 percent is about what happens, and 90 percent is about how we react to it.

—UNKNOWN

The Power of Association

Yes, yes, no, no, yes, no, yes, yes, no, no.

Without counting the number of words on the previous line, take a guess of whether “yes” or “no” appears more times. Keep your answer in mind, as I’ll return to this question later (and don’t cheat by counting them!).

Do you remember the McKinsey and AT&T story from chapter 1? Though the consulting firm made a gigantic mistake, their reputation was hardly damaged. They were still able to radiate competence despite such a gigantic public failure. It’s important to ask, How can any company or individual appear competent in spite of such an obvious bomb? This ability is even more surprising when considering the asymmetry that exists between the effects of good and bad impressions: negative events will normally make a deeper impression than positive ones because they run counter to social expectations.¹ That is why it is particularly important to properly manage bad impressions. However, we should also look at how to convert a success story into the best possible impression of perceived expertise.

When you check out the newest cars at the Detroit Motor Show, you will see plenty of pretty hostesses either stand around the cars or sit right on top of them. It is almost a cliché, but there are still advertisements where a model poses on the hood of a vehicle. Are these 18-year-old models automobile experts whose endorsements should be taken seriously? Probably not. Then why has car advertising been done this way for so many decades?

The answer is, of course, that the attractiveness of the models influences the perception of the cars. With a beautiful girl, the car seems more attractive, faster, and better in every way—that is the power of association. In psychology, this idea is known as the “halo effect,”² because like a halo that shines on the saint, one characteristic of an object rubs off on another object—positive as well as negative.

It is also the halo effect that makes celebrity endorsements so powerful: actors wearing watches, singers being the face of a makeup brand. But when the star power of that celebrity begins to fade and is shattered by a scandal, the positive association will disappear, because the golden halo fades or even turns pale. It may therefore be cruel, but it is hardly surprising that companies are so quick to end their sponsorship agreements with dwindling stars.

Another example from the automobile industry is found in car manufacturers that are fond of producing so-called halo cars, spectacular studies in design.³ They create these works of art in the hope that the attention-grabbing design and the outrageous performance stats of the futuristic prototype will influence the entire brand, even though not a single one will ever be made available for purchase.

Why do major fashion labels like Ralph Lauren or Giorgio Armani sink millions in magnificent and oversize flagship stores on the most expensive shopping streets in the world, such as Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills or Via Condotti in Rome? For the same reason that they put on shows presenting their haute couture at the New York Fashion Week, where hardly anything is sold. These efforts are made to connect their brands with the glamour of the Magnificent Mile and the dazzling fashion shows so that hordes of customers will make daily purchases of their trademark perfumes or comparably inexpensive T-shirts with the company’s logo, partaking in the glamour of the brand for only a few dollars.

The power of association is enormous—whole bookshelves could be filled with tomes listing examples of its applications.⁴ However, for the purposes of this book, I am only interested in how the power of association will help you improve the perception of your competence. More specifically: How can you use your success to the utmost advantage in regard to perceived competence while suffering the least damage to your reputation from your failures?

Delivering Good News

Messengers will always be associated with the message, regardless of whether they contributed to its content or had nothing to do with it at all. In the case of good news, you should make your personal connection to that message as clear as possible. To continue with the car theme, think of yourself as the automobile and the good news as the pretty model. The closer you are to the model, the stronger the positive association. You should strongly align yourself with good news so that the positive information you’re relaying reflects on you as much as possible. The key is to demonstrate presence: Deliver good news in person, not by telephone, and certainly not by email. When you are presenting good news in a meeting, stand up, position yourself in the center of the room, and make a short speech. Try to stay visible in that position for as long as possible—every single moment strengthens your ties to the positive information you’re providing. Devote as much time as you can to your message by stretching it out, dividing it up into as many parts as possible, and spreading those parts out over your entire presentation.⁵ You want the message to come across loud and clear, and you also want people to associate you as much as possible with such excellent news.

If your team is going to highlight its accomplishments and successful work in the next department meeting, volunteer to present the report yourself—you want to make sure that you’re the one up front and center. Even though you are praising your team in the highest possible terms, above all, you and your expertise will appear in the strongest light and will be remembered by all those in attendance.

Say your friends and you have saved up for a gift that you’re giving to another friend for her birthday. Whichever one of you physically hands her the gift will always be most strongly associated with it. Someone who shows up after the formal presentation of the gift will hardly be connected with it at all; perhaps even less than someone who was not part of the group whatsoever but who was just a lucky onlooker.

It is therefore crucial to put yourself in the best light—literally. If you stand in a bright light that causes you to be the shining center of the room, the audience will be more likely to associate the outcome you’re describing with your personal competence than with anything external. Your competence becomes the focal point.

Compare it to a spotlight in the theater: If an artist stands alone in the spotlight, he will be the focus of attention. There is no set design to distract from his presence, no other actors, nothing—in this moment, there is only this one person, and everyone is watching him. Similarly, actors or other performers always want to take their curtain calls in the spotlight after a very successful production. If the performance was less successful, the audience area will often be brightly lit at the end of the show so that the set, all the actors, and even the audience can be seen.

In regard to displaying competence, the following conclusions can be drawn: If you are presenting news about a success, you should always stand in a strong light. Under no circumstances do you want to humbly pull back into some dark corner. When giving a presentation, make sure that you are brightly lit—the presentation will, perhaps, not be as easy to see, but it will be easier to see you. Good lighting also has two more benefits:⁶ First, it serves as a memory aid. Audiences tend to remember a well-lit performer better, which is, naturally, what we want for a success story. Second, an individual standing in a strong light is more likely to be perceived as a leader, and perceived authority is very helpful when conveying competence.

Physical movement will also direct attention away from the surroundings and toward your abilities.⁷ If you are the bearer of good news, you should not, under any circumstances, stand stiffly in front of the audience; rather, move around and gesticulate in a lively manner, directing the audience’s focus toward you and your expertise.

Possibly the most outstanding communicator of modern times, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs masterfully utilized these techniques: In his legendary presentations, Jobs was the sole focus of attention, striding around the stage, constantly gesticulating, speaking at great length about the advantages of a new product, and always bathed in a dazzling light—very much like the image of a holy man. But he also knew how to present bad news. Unfortunately, sometimes you, too, will have to be the bearer of information that others aren’t happy to hear.

Bearing Bad News

In ancient Persia, a messenger who reported a victory in battle was celebrated like a hero. If his army lost, he could expect to be executed immediately, even though he had nothing to do with the outcome, of course. (Oddly, there are no reports of messengers lying about a victory and sneaking out after the party.)

Today, meteorologists on TV are regularly subjected to abuse from viewers because of bad weather, as if they had something to do with the forecast aside from reporting it. US psychologist Robert Cialdini mentions an incident in which a weather forecaster entered a bar and was approached by an angry farmer:⁸ “You’re the one that sent that tornado and tore my house up. . . . I’m going to take your head off.” Fortunately, this was a smart weather man, and he replied, “That’s right about the tornado, and I’ll tell you something else, I’ll send another one if you don’t back off.”

In this case, the halo effect is at work, as something positive or negative directly rubs off on the messenger.

Bad News Can Be Good News

No matter what business you are in or your position in an organization, it is often necessary to deliver bad news. But be careful: people are often far too quick to think that a seemingly negative situation is unfavorable toward them. For instance, if I order a turkey breast salad and the waitress admits to me, with sad eyes, that she is “very, very sorry,” but the only salad available is with chicken breast, then she puts herself and the restaurant in a bad light. I will probably reflexively stand up and head to another restaurant. Instead, if she tells me with shining eyes about their chef’s extraordinary salad, made with the most tender chicken breast on the planet, I will certainly be intrigued and will likely order it. So even though it’s the same problem—chicken instead of turkey—the outcome is completely different depending on how it is presented. It’s possible to take a potentially negative situation and turn it into an advantage.

The “framing” of a situation—putting the situation, figuratively speaking, into the proper framework—is crucial. By framing, it is possible to define the perception of a situation.⁹ For example, instead of saying, “Unfortunately, we only have fresh rolls for breakfast,” you could state, “We have rolls for breakfast.” And instead of, “Unfortunately, we cannot show you our new model before November,” say, “We can show you our new model in November.” The wording makes the frame—and the crucial difference.

An adventurous salesman from the Czech American Bata Shoe Company was supposed to investigate the possibilities for growth in the African market at the end of the 19th century.¹⁰ As the story goes, his colleague had been very upset by the fact that most people went barefoot in Africa, and concluded, “There’s no business for Bata here.” However, the audacious salesman reframed the situation and cabled the following back to the home office: “Great business for Bata, everyone is barefoot!”

Apply this concept to everyday obstacles: You have delivery problems? Demand is exploding! There is resistance to your decisions? Effective changes are always hard to implement! You lost a customer? A new generation of influential customers is replacing the old one! Even a mistake that hardly can be counted as a success can still be framed so that something positive comes out of it. Did you send out an invitation by email with an incorrect date on it? An excellent reason for a followup, which now, with a subject line like “Correction of previous email!” or—even better: “Calling back first email” nearly guarantees that both the original and the follow-up will be read.

Your own perception of success or failure plays a crucial role in how you frame a situation and how you respond to others. Have you ever caught yourself gratefully thanking someone for his work even though the outcome he delivered was far below your expectations? If someone beams at us with pride over a job well done and is apparently convinced that she has been successful, it creates a certain expectation and pressure for us to respond positively.¹¹ Especially if we like the individual, if she smiles and believes in herself, we will tend to give her performance a better review. In both circumstances, those who did the work are framing the situation in their favor, even if it didn’t meet our expectations. The lesson here is that you, too, should be framing your response to a situation in a way that causes the other party involved to see the upsides, or at least still see the positive effort on your part. Therefore, always consider carefully whether the news you are going to deliver really is as bad as you first thought, and then try to frame the news in a way that is as positive as possible.

Bad News Can Also Simply Be Bad News

There are, however, truly bad pieces of news that you cannot turn into anything positive, and do not wish to. For example, maybe you need to get your customers to accept a hefty price increase even though there is no improvement in your product. Or say you lost a contract in a bid that was really important to your company, or you left a folder at a café that contained absolutely confidential information about a factory closing.

What do you do with such bad news? Avoid being associated with it. To put it bluntly: don’t show up. Do not be physically present when the bad news is reported. Instead, let someone else do it—an assistant or a team member—or deliver it yourself by telephone or email. By not being there, you will be less strongly associated with the evil tidings. Of course, much tact and finesse must be used in these situations.

When it became known, in 2004, that Shell had nearly four billion fewer barrels of oil reserves than forecasted, CEO Sir Phil Watts practically went into hiding—he stopped nearly all public appearances and made no statements. When I asked him about his approach at a function in Oxford, he told me that he, as CEO, had known nothing of the mistake and that he could not be held responsible for miscalculations made before his accession to the CEO position.¹² He was forced to resign only a few weeks later.

What are the implications of this? When there are truly serious problems, the presence of the leader is absolutely necessary, no matter whose fault they were. People who apologize for an obvious mistake will more likely be thought of as likable, independent of whose failure it was.¹³

However, you must act astutely in such a case, because the halo effect is merciless—anything negative on such a major, public level will always rub off on the most visible person, such as the CEO or president. To minimize the negative effect when having to present bad news, you must, in contrast to the way you present good news, behave as inconspicuously as possible—be present but be invisible at the same time. Lively gestures and any other movements or actions that direct attention to you must be avoided.¹⁴ For example, in a meeting where you’re relaying bad news, if possible, remain seated and do not place yourself in the middle of the room. Avoid direct lighting and be sure the entire room around you is well lit, so you’re not in the spotlight. Darkening the room can also have the same effect, especially if you provide a focal point such as a PowerPoint presentation, video, or other bright visual aid. The main point: direct the attention away from you!

How, you may ask, could these tiny differences have helped Sir Phil justifying the lack of four billion barrels of oil? To answer this question, let’s take a look at an even more serious case. On June 1, 2009, the CEO of Air France, Pierre-Henri Gourgeon, held a press conference about Air France flight 447: on the way from Rio de Janeiro to Paris, the plane had crashed and all 228 passengers had lost their lives. No, there was no way to gloss over the event or spin it as a positive. So how was the podium set up at the press conference? Unlike the setup at Gourgeon’s excellent presentation of the annual report, he was not in a spotlight this time. Instead, the entire room was brightly lit. There was no Air France logo anywhere to be seen. Gourgeon was not exposed on a stage; instead, the press surrounded him at eye level.

To sum it up, with a success, remain in the center. With a failure that cannot be framed otherwise, be as inconspicuous as possible—depending on the situation, either don’t be there at all or position yourself on the edge, almost in the shadows, or disappear in the crowd. In this way, the outcome will more likely be attributed to external circumstances than to your incompetence.

Anger and Neutrality

When presenting truly bad news, there are some other factors that will improve your standing. What feelings should be on display when giving an apology? Or is it best not to show any feelings at all?

The tone of voice plays a decisive role. Sadness, for example, creates the impression that neither you nor anyone else is directly responsible for the outcome. The result is that you come across as weak, a victim of circumstances.¹⁵ And someone who apparently has no control of the situation cannot be very competent.

Showing guilt or shame is even worse than projecting sadness. In an experiment, a doctor presented bad news to a patient while looking ashamed about the circumstances.¹⁶ Shame, however, has a negative effect on the perception of competence, because it does not indicate decisiveness and initiative, but rather self-doubt.¹⁷ Above all, shame signals that the individual feels responsibility and guilt for the negative outcome. Not having control over the situation is obviously bad, but being fully responsible for failure is even worse. There is also, however, an emotion that can have a positive effect when presenting bad news: anger.

One study showed that politicians and CEOs who reacted to their failure with anger were judged to be more competent than ones who remained neutral.¹⁸ Angry behavior creates the impression that you were not responsible for the outcome yourself; rather, the responsibility lies with circumstances that were unusual and outside anyone’s area of control. And yet, you are not weak, as anger gives the impression of assertiveness, decisiveness, and tenacity, and it has a correspondingly positive impact on perceived competence.¹⁹

This “anger rule,” however, is not universally valid. In the case of a trainee—a person of rather low status—it did not make any difference whether he showed anger or acted neutral. For women, anger even seems to have a universally negative effect on their perceived competence. The reasons for these reactions can only be guessed. For example, anger in a man with lower status may seem inappropriate and, in a woman, not “ladylike.”

To sum up, grief, shame, and guilt should be avoided in all situations, even if your performance was absolutely terrible. Presenting a bad result with an angry attitude is the most advantageous way to do so for men with high status—for everyone else, it is best not to show any emotion. Of course, keeping your emotions in check isn’t always easy, especially depending on the content that you are communicating. It is therefore best to follow some simple rules when you know you can’t reframe the situation and you have to fess up to a personal or company-wide failure.

The Shift to Optimism

In order to optimally manage particularly bad news, we can gain some insight from how public relations agencies conduct their crisis communications: You should communicate your failure immediately and completely—any hesitation and procrastination will shed an even worse light on you.²⁰ Mention every point of conceivable criticism as early as possible and express yourself clearly. Calling a mistake by its correct name increases your impression of competence.²¹ Playing down the significance of an obviously miserable situation will have a negative impact on perceived competence.

That all being said, there is a way to manage potential fallout from your admittance of failure. You should play down, as much as possible, the importance of the skills that were lacking in this particular case, and you should make it clear that these skills were so special that they are irrelevant apart from their application to this failed task. By presenting the problem this way, you’re showing that this event is so specific that it is unlikely to occur again—then there won’t be much left for your opponents to say. This response also displays your trustworthiness. In this way, you can move on from this confession as quickly as possible, as every single second it takes will lengthen the time this bad news reflects negatively on you.

You should then immediately turn to optimism—or as the subtitle of a recent book on crisis communication suggests, you should be “Moving From Crisis to Opportunity.”²² As soon as you have dealt with the negative points as quickly as possible, focus on your skills in other areas, which are—of course—much more significant.²³ You must also emphasize what you have learned from the past and what will, as a result, be changed for the better moving forward. Use as much time as you can to explain these positive points. Again, the halo effect will do its work: You will be associated with the positive elements of your presentation, not the negative ones.

Let me illustrate it with a first class fiasco, General Motors (GM) was faced with a few years ago. The instrument panels in Cadillacs went up in flames because the lids of the ashtrays in the cars had not been properly installed.²⁴ A spokesperson for GM was subsequently a guest on Good Morning America, one of the nation’s most popular TV programs. He immediately accepted all responsibility in the name of GM and denied nothing—this only took a few seconds. He then used the remaining time to explain what GM had learned from the incident and what new products were being developed. At the end of his appearance, despite the recent disaster, the audience had received a very favorable impression of him as an individual, and of GM as a company.

Another example can be seen in an event that occurred in New York City on Valentine’s Day in 2007. It was bitterly cold, and the airport was, for the most part, covered by snow and ice. Quite a few flights were canceled. The airline JetBlue was affected the most: over 1,000 of its connections were canceled and some passengers had to endure up to nine-hour delays, sitting in airplanes on the runway. The airline could not get back on schedule for nearly a week, and the result was a storm of criticism. JetBlue’s CEO David Neeleman appeared on countless radio and TV programs to address the situation. During each appearance, after a brief and unequivocal apology, he immediately directed everyone’s attention to a “customer bill of rights” that the airline had just created and was going to implement immediately. It paid off: JetBlue’s popularity hardly suffered.²⁵

If this technique—a rapid admission followed by an immediate return to optimism—is able to make a difference in the case of genuine catastrophes, then it will certainly be able to help with bad news like the delay of a product launch or an email that was sent to the wrong recipient. Communications consultant Suzanne Bates put it this way: “Bad news is bad news, but it’s also good news if you know how to handle it. Managing the tough questions can actually make your organization look better than before. . . . Someone has to be in charge. If you see those moments as leadership opportunities, it will change your attitude and help you when you’re under pressure.”²⁶

The Primacy Effect

What should you do if you have both good and bad news to report? This question is not theoretical: Whether you are meeting with a customer or your boss or have to give a presentation, you will normally have a mixed bag of news to deliver. So, in what order should you present the information?

When I ask this question at lectures or seminars, the answer I receive is almost always wrong. To illustrate the point, let’s have a look at this now-classic experiment from 1946 from the Polish-American psychologist Solomon Asch:²⁷

Imagine that you are asked to judge the character of somebody based on the following list of adjectives: intelligent, impulsive, industrious, critical, stubborn, envious. Would your verdict more likely be negative or positive?

Now, what if you were given the following list of adjectives to describe the person: envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, intelligent. Would your verdict have turned out differently?

You will have noticed that both lists contain the same six adjectives and the only difference is in their order of appearance. In the experiment, participants only received one of the two lists. Those who were given the first list typically rated the (nonexistent) individual as “competent,” and those who received the second were more likely to describe the person as “problematic.” The order of the adjectives had a decisive influence on the verdict. At this point, the relevance of the first line of this chapter, the juxtaposition of “yes” and “no,” should be clear. If you bet that “yes” occurs more often, you belong to the majority. Most people have this impression because the list starts with “yes,” although “yes” and “no” occur with equal frequency.

This is the “primacy effect” at work: The first words used in describing a person, place, or situation are decisive, because the subsequent words are not seen in isolation—they are only experienced in the context of the preceding words. In the case of the first list of adjectives, one gets the impression of a person who is “intelligent,” and any words that follow are considered in this light, improving the effect of the characteristics that are not unconditionally positive.

“Intelligent and critical,” for example, seems like a good combination. If the list begins with “envious,” however, the adjectives that follow are seen in a completely different light. “Envious and critical” is not a very favorable combination. In fact, even “envious and intelligent” now comes across as negative, as it implies deceitfulness.

The first impression creates a sort of “form,” and the halo effect of that first impression causes everything that follows to be seen in its light. The Austrian-British philosopher Karl Popper summed it up in his “searchlight theory,” according to which humans see the world in the light of whatever thoughts are present in their minds.²⁸ Very similar relationships are discussed in the previous chapter in the context of the confirmation of high expectations: People try to confirm their first impressions. Behavior that deviates from the first impression will be partly ignored, and ambiguous behavior will be interpreted as though it confirms the initial impression.

For example, when colleagues whom we regard as very intelligent make rather unintelligent statements in a particular situation, we do not immediately revise our impression of them. Rather, we will subconsciously seek a plausible explanation, such as that they are often preoccupied by deep thoughts and therefore were not concentrating when they said something foolish. It would take quite a lot to change our original opinion of someone.

In fact, judgments made about individuals in the first 30 seconds of meeting them are not very different from those made after five minutes, even if completely new information about them comes to light in that time.²⁹ Unfortunately, this does not mean that we all have an unerring intuition about other people. Our assessments are not especially accurate, but it is hard for us to revise them. In fact, we tend to make our first assessment of someone even before our first encounter with that person, solely based on what we have heard from others or what information we have received about that person. For example, in a job interview, interviewers have already formed an opinion about you before you’ve walked in the door based on your application, cover letter, and resume.³⁰

As the saying goes, “There’s no second chance to make a first impression,” and understanding the psychological mechanisms behind the primacy effect will help you ensure that your first impression is a success. In the same way an omelet actually tastes better when it is prepared by a chef who truly understands how eggs interact with milk—a phenomenon the Harvard professor Gerard Zaltman refers to as “implementable validity”—when you grasp the principles of perception, you can rest assured that you’ll put your best foot forward.³¹

Therefore, when you first interact with someone, put particular focus on optimizing the perception of your competence. One way to do so is by following automotive executive Daniel Goeudevert’s “Theory of 20.” After studying literature at the Sorbonne in Paris, Goeudevert started selling cars and quickly rose to the board of Volkswagen. He developed his method as a young car salesman and was convinced that placing special emphasis on the “first 20”—the first 20 seconds, the first 20 words, the first 20 steps—was the key to his tremendous success.³² The first 20 are decisive for establishing a positive impression in the mind of your conversation partner—if the first 20 don’t do the job, everything else will be in vain.

The US psychologist Robert Cialdini was so interested in the mysterious techniques used by car salespeople that he took a job in a car dealership without letting anyone know that he was there to study their methods.³³ He found out about a classic sales tactic he experienced called “low balling,” which also uses the principle of the first impression: The salesperson starts by offering a very favorable price and then goes with the customer for a test drive, at which time they discuss the details of the purchase. By the time they return, the customer’s decision has been made and he is ready to buy the car. The purchase contract is on the table, waiting to be signed, but, suddenly, the salesperson “discovers” a mistake.

She runs to the sales manager, presumably to plead the customer’s case, but the manager is unwilling to compromise—they would be losing money on the deal. Suddenly, the car is just as expensive as the competitor’s and the salesperson can’t budge because the manager has refused. What to do? The customer looks over at the new car: The children are playing in the back seat, his wife is looking forward to going out for a ride, and he knows his colleagues will gape in awe at his new vehicle . . . sure, he decides, the car is no longer a bargain, but the decision has been made.

Low balling, also called “bait and switch,” aims to concentrate your interlocutor’s attention on the benefits of the product until the decision is made. Only then are the disadvantages of the product revealed. However, due to the primacy effect, these downsides will not have the same weight and they will be more easily accepted. The amateur who wants to sell her car goes about making the sale in exactly the opposite way. She starts by mentioning the small dent in the fender or some other defect before the potential customer has even gotten near the car. After that, everything will be seen in the light of the car’s defects, however minor.

So when facing good and bad news, it should be obvious by now where to begin: the positive aspects should be explained first so the audience starts forming an opinion based on these, not on any negative ones. Afterward, you can mention the negative points, knowing that they will now have a significantly smaller impact. Don’t make the mistake of trying to get the negative part out of the way first. So, with every report, every presentation, every message, don’t start by asking, “Do you want to hear the good news or the bad news first?”—start with the positive!

In discussing how to handle first impressions, I’d be amiss if I did not discuss the last impression as well, which is also of great importance. Indeed, the final impression remains the strongest memory that the other party takes with them, a phenomenon known as the “recency effect.”³⁴ Jurors, for example, tend to best remember the witness who was questioned last. Does that mean that the final impression is more important than the first? Not at all—the first impression still influences everything that comes subsequently. Think of it like the headline of a news article compared to its last sentence.

If you want to sell a house, for example, you certainly want to present it to potential buyers in the most favorable light possible. Therefore, you should start your tour of the house with the most attractive room and finish the tour with the second-best room, showing the others in between. By using this order, you have a terrific beginning and a positive ending. If, however, you start with a bunch of messy storage rooms, the damage will have already been done by the time you finish up with the wonderful conservatory. The negative impression has been established, and even the greatest view will hardly change it.

The same idea can be applied to arguments: Start with your strongest point, one that will immediately be convincing. Then end with your second-strongest point (which can be more complicated than the first one because your listener will have time to think about it after you’ve stated it).

Just remember, when it comes to good news and bad news, start with the best, let the less positive items follow in its slipstream, and then shine at the end with the second best. This combination of the primacy effect and recency effect not only will soften any blow but will help you maintain your perception of competence no matter the information you’re delivering.

Conclusion

When you buy a new television, you are delighted by its razorsharp image and its refined remote. With a new car, you take pleasure in looking at the elegant lines of its silhouette and the beautiful interior. When it comes to services, however, you’re typically employing them to deal with a problem that you’d rather not have. Your heating is not working, you have a toothache, you want to sue someone—all necessary evils. In contrast to high-tech gadgets or a pair of designer shoes, services are rarely a source of daily pleasure.

In fact, you barely notice these services until something goes wrong: the tax consultant misses a deadline, the alteration tailor makes your pants too short, or the cabinetmaker does a bad job repairing your shelves. If you are a service provider, it is much easier to look like a failure in the eyes of the customer than a success, since the customer is already bent out of shape about having to deal with whatever issue you are there to remedy in the first place. To control this negative imbalance, you must make the presentation of your success as palpable as possible and cushion any mistakes that could have a negative effect on the client’s perception of your expertise.

With the help of the halo effect, you can use good news to get the most positive effect on your perceived expertise by making your presence as noticeable as possible during your presentation through physical presence, good lighting and a lot of movement, and anything else that will draw people’s attention to you. With bad news, the opposite is true, as you must avoid being associated with it as much as possible. If you cannot avoid being present when the news is announced, be as inconspicuous as possible in your behavior, and position yourself at the edge of the conversation or room, almost in a shadow. Keeping that in mind, when you cannot frame a negative situation in a good light, admit to your every mistake immediately and then shift your presentation to positive details and the productive outcomes that can be learned from any mistakes made.

The halo effect also explains why the first impression is of crucial importance. Therefore, always begin with the good news rather than the bad news. The primacy effect will make a positive beginning shine on everything that follows. And, since the final communication, according to the recency effect, will remain the strongest point in your interlocutor’s memory, you should end the presentation with the second-best piece of news. Seen in this light, it should not be very surprising that even gigantic mistakes do not necessarily have to have a negative effect on your perceived competence.