There’s a pretty simple fix for this too: “do you have a moment to talk about ____”? And if it’s benign, you can just say “I want to ask about ____”.

These days when you have chat as an alternative to saying it out loud with other people around, you can afford to tell someone what negative thing is coming: “hey when you have a moment let’s talk about how you handled _____”.

Then they know what’s coming. It might be unpleasant, but it’s not spooky.

And if you have to drop the news without a prior hint, regularly scheduled meetings can do that without people having their guards up.