A colleague spent two weeks on a proposal. You have decided the team will not adopt it. How should they learn this?
Let them see it in the meeting notes, so the message does not feel personal coming from you.
Tell them the proposal is on hold and may be revisited, so the disappointment is smaller now.
Tell them the decision but not the reasoning, so the conversation does not turn into a debate about it.
Tell them yourself, promptly, and give the actual reason the proposal was not chosen.✓Correct answer
Explanation
The reason is the part they can use: it tells them what would have to be different for a future proposal to succeed, and lets them correct you if the reason rests on a misunderstanding. Saying it is 'on hold' when it is not (option 2) is a statement you know to be false and it costs more later, when they discover it. Withholding the reason (option 3) protects you from an uncomfortable conversation at the cost of the only useful content. Letting the notes deliver it (option 1) avoids the conversation entirely and makes them learn a decision about their own work from a document.