Writing Bad News Messages
Eng 209/WI - Hurley
1.0 USING THE THREE-STEP PROCESS FOR WRITING
BAD NEWS MESSAGES
Communicating negative news is a fact of life for all business professionals, from rejecting job
applicants to telling customers that shipments will be late to turning down speaking invitations.
Bad news messages are challenging to write because we know our readers will not be happy to
receive the news. These messages say "no" to the reader:
No, you will not get your loan
No, you aren't being hired
No, you didn't get the scholarship
No, you aren't accepted into the college of business
No, I can't give a donation
No, I can't help you
No.
Bad news means the reader will not be able to accomplish his/her goals. For example, without a
loan, a student may have to postpone plans to graduate on time because now the person has to go
to work to raise the money. The homeless shelter that doesn't get your donation now has to worry
about how it's going to feed its clients.
But news can't always be good. In life, we do have to reject less-qualified applicants, we don't
have unlimited funds to give money to every deserving charity, and we can't always fill a
customer's request on time.
When we need to say "no" to our readers, we usually mean "not under these circumstances." "No"
now isn't necessarily "no" forever. If the student were to get a co-signer, he/she might be able to
get the loan after all. Perhaps we'll be able to send a donation to the homeless shelter next month,
after we've paid our own bills first.
So how do we give bad news without destroying our business relationship? You can see in list at
the top of this page that stating bad news directly can often be very damaging and unnecessarily
hurtful. When you need to deliver bad news, you have five goals:
1. to convey the bad news
2. to gain acceptance for it
3. to maintain as much goodwill a possible with your audience
4. to maintain a good image for our organization
5. if appropriate, to reduce or eliminate the need for future correspondence on the matter.
Five goals are clearly a lot to accomplish in one message. However, by learning some simple
techniques, you can develop negative messages that reduce the stress for everyone involved and
improve the effectiveness of your communication efforts.
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