People Can Handle Bad News. They Struggle With No News.

A few weeks ago I found myself in hospital needing emergency surgery.

Like many people who have experienced something similar, much of it is now a blur. I met countless doctors, nurses and specialists over a relatively short period of time, all doing an incredible job under immense pressure. Yet one person stands out more than anyone else.

The anaesthetist.

Not because he performed some extraordinary procedure that nobody else could have done, but because he communicated exceptionally well.Before anything happened, he explained exactly what was about to happen over the next few minutes. He talked me through the next thirty seconds, the next hour, the potential complications, what they would do if those complications arose, and what recovery would likely look like over the following days.

In what was a frightening situation, something changed. I stopped wondering whether I was in the right place. I knew I was.

That experience has stayed with me, and not because it was in a hospital. It reminded me just how powerful communication is when people are navigating uncertainty. Recently I’ve spoken to a candidate who’d invested time in multiple interviews before being completely ghosted by the employer. I’ve spoken to someone who raised a formal grievance and then heard nothing for six weeks.

These are obviously very different situations from emergency surgery, but they share something important. The hardest part wasn’t necessarily the outcome. It was not knowing.

Silence creates uncertainty.

And when people don’t receive information, they create their own. Candidates assume they’ve been rejected. Employees assume they’ve been forgotten. Customers assume nobody cares. None of those assumptions may be true, but once people begin filling in the gaps themselves, trust starts to erode.

This isn’t simply a communication issue - it’s an operational one.

As organisations grow, communication often becomes an unintended casualty of increasing complexity. Recruitment volumes increase. Managers have more competing priorities. HR teams become stretched. Processes become longer. Decisions require more stakeholders. Nobody deliberately sets out to keep people waiting. But from the perspective of the individual on the receiving end, intent is largely irrelevant. Their experience is defined by what they hear—or don’t hear.

What’s interesting is that people are often remarkably understanding when you communicate honestly.

• “We’re still interviewing.”

• “The investigation is taking longer than expected.”

• “There isn’t an update today, but we’ll contact you next Wednesday.”

None of those messages solve the underlying problem. But they reduce uncertainty. They demonstrate that someone remembers there’s another human waiting at the other end of the process.

For leaders of growing organisations, this matters more than it may first appear. Every interaction becomes part of your reputation. Candidates who aren’t successful still talk about your recruitment process. Employees remember how they were treated during difficult moments far longer than they remember the policy itself. Customers remember whether they were kept informed when something went wrong. Communication is one of the few parts of the experience that every organisation can control. Not by communicating more. By communicating consistently. The businesses that build trust aren’t necessarily the ones that always have good news. They’re the ones that don’t leave people wondering.

My experience in hospital reminded me of something remarkably simple. The anaesthetist didn’t remove the uncertainty of surgery - he removed the uncertainty about what was happening next.

Sometimes that’s all people need.

And in business, that small difference can shape how someone remembers your organisation long after the process itself has finished. As organisations scale, it’s often the seemingly small operational habits—like keeping people informed—that quietly shape reputation, trust and leadership credibility.

I’m incredibly thankful to everyone involved in my care and, now that I’m well on the road to recovery, even more in awe of the NHS. Their expertise quite literally changes lives every single day. For the rest of us, there’s perhaps a lesson worth borrowing.

Never underestimate the reassurance that comes from keeping people informed.