I live near Richmond, Virginia USA, whose mayor is Doug Wilder. He is an historic figure in many ways — first elected African-American governor in the United States, one-time presidential candidate, trying to raise funds to build a National African-American Slavery Museum, and now the first mayor of Richmond since voters changed the city charter back to a popularly-elected mayor rather than one appointed by city council.

One thing you can say about Doug Wilder is that he is unafraid of making bold changes, sometimes facing great resistance in the process. I don’t always agree with his ideas, but one of his latest is brilliant. And I’ve seen it before — in my previous life as a communicator in the corporate world.

This week Mayor Wilder appointed a group called the Neighborhood Roundtable. Each of the city’s council districts has a representative on the Roundtable. Their function is to serve as a communication conduit. They will meet regularly with citizens to hear their problems, concerns, ideas and complaints and then pass the information along to the mayor and their city council members. They also will share information with residents. The Neighborhood Roundtable is not intended to circumvent council members or other city leaders, but to enhance communication between citizens and City Hall. Members of the Roundtable are not politicians, but regular folks who have served in leadership roles in various neighborhood associations.

The Roundtable concept works. I know because I saw it in action in the early 1990s when I managed employee communication at an AT&T manufacturing plant in Richmond. The general manager — whose huge ego and brash demeanor actually reminds me of Doug Wilder — wanted to improve communication throughout the business. He and the senior managers reporting to him each held hour-long Roundtable sessions twice a month. No topic was taboo. People brought their problems, concerns, ideas and complaints — and, in fact, people who we called “committed complainers” even left with a contract of sorts with the senior manager to work together and solve whatever problem they had passionately discussed during the Roundtable.

Over the years, Roundtables led to many improvements in the business, from quality problems to ergonomic concerns. I’m convinced the open communication helped make things run more smoothly when time came for labor negotiations, major process changes, leadership transitions and the eventual closing of the business due to changing technologies.

And here’s an interesting footnote: One of the members of Mayor Wilder’s Neighborhood Roundtable was an employee at that AT&T plant and attended those Roundtables. I’m sure she’s happy to see the concept being used to improve communication in her city.

Twenty nine of the respondents to a survey in the Nov/Dec issue of CW said that bad news in their companies is delivered by e-mail. That response astonishes me. But if misery loves company, there is some comfort in knowing that the companies where IABC members work are not the only ones who don’t know how to deliver bad news, or so I assume.

IABC sent out press releases on the survey results and generated coverage in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette, the New Jersey Courier Post, Human Resources Management, The Charlotte Observer, the San Francisco Examiner, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and The Boston Herald. When I talked to my networking group (12 heads of small businesses who are not communicators)about the press coverage this survey had received, they all asked to get a copy of the CW article. My conclusion is that there is so much interest in delivering bad news because doing it right remains a mystery to many people.

It seems to me that it is just common sense that when you have to deliver news about job cuts, benefit reductions, sale of a company or any other kind of bad news, that basic courtesy would require doing so face to face, not through e-mail.

Do people use e-mail because they are more concerned about efficiency than showing respect for their employees? Or are they just cowards?

I am interested in hearing from other communicators about how bad news is delivered in your organizations. Have you ever been asked by your leadership to deliver bad news via e-mail? What was the outcome?