diff --git a/changelogs/fragments/57770-become-shell-compat.yml b/changelogs/fragments/57770-become-shell-compat.yml
new file mode 100644
index 00000000000..b8e771be70b
--- /dev/null
+++ b/changelogs/fragments/57770-become-shell-compat.yml
@@ -0,0 +1,3 @@
+bugfixes:
+- become - Provide nice error when the shell plugin is incompatible with the configured become plugin
+  (https://github.com/ansible/ansible/issues/57770)
diff --git a/lib/ansible/plugins/become/__init__.py b/lib/ansible/plugins/become/__init__.py
index 17ed0ee34f0..6f7e1d19509 100644
--- a/lib/ansible/plugins/become/__init__.py
+++ b/lib/ansible/plugins/become/__init__.py
@@ -9,6 +9,7 @@ from random import choice
 from string import ascii_lowercase
 from gettext import dgettext
 
+from ansible.errors import AnsibleError
 from ansible.module_utils.six.moves import shlex_quote
 from ansible.module_utils._text import to_bytes
 from ansible.plugins import AnsiblePlugin
@@ -49,7 +50,11 @@ class BecomeBase(AnsiblePlugin):
         if not all((cmd, shell, self.success)):
             return cmd
 
-        cmd = shlex_quote('%s %s %s %s' % (shell.ECHO, self.success, shell.COMMAND_SEP, cmd))
+        try:
+            cmd = shlex_quote('%s %s %s %s' % (shell.ECHO, self.success, shell.COMMAND_SEP, cmd))
+        except AttributeError:
+            # TODO: This should probably become some more robust functionlity used to detect incompat
+            raise AnsibleError('The %s shell family is incompatible with the %s become plugin' % (shell.SHELL_FAMILY, self.name))
         exe = getattr(shell, 'executable', None)
         if exe and not noexe:
             cmd = '%s -c %s' % (exe, cmd)