cognitive dissonance

How to Get Bad News to the Top

What exactly is it about bad news that makes leaders want to ignore it? “There’s a bias for optimism in humans and in organizations,” says Chip Heath, a professor at Stanford Business School who studies how bad news circulates. “Individuals don’t ever go looking for bad news, and we don’t like telling it to others. So bad news is unlikely to get to the people who can actually do something about it.”

This is quite common, unfortunately. For all the useful tips in the FastCompany article cited above, if the powers that be are not willing to accept that reality isn’t living up to their expectations, you have your own cognitive dissonance to work through: do I stay here and help them work it out or do I take care of myself?

According to cognitive dissonance theory, there is a tendency for individuals to seek consistency among their cognitions (i.e., beliefs, opinions). When there is an inconsistency between attitudes or behaviors (dissonance), something must change to eliminate the dissonance. In the case of a discrepancy between attitudes and behavior, it is most likely that the attitude will change to accommodate the behavior.