Negative Contexts & Messages

The organization and writing style you employ to present negative information can have a considerable impact on how the reader views the news or information, how the reader reacts, and how the reader views you and your organization.

Ultimately, when a negative message is the only option, you’ll need to work to maintain a positive relationship with the reader, make sure she or he understands the bad news and the reason for the decision, and (if possible) make sure the reader knows of potential alternatives (to the situation, to get what she or he wanted, etc.)

General Goals of Negative Messages

Because the purposes of “bad news” messages are more numerous and complex than those for positive or neutral messages, what’s below provides additional explanation about various goals you should consider when planning for and writing negative messages.

Encourage Acceptance:

You want to help the reader understand and accept the bad news. This usually means you must also help the reader to understand the reason for the bad news.

Maintain Goodwill/Positive Image:

Although you are writing to communicate negative information, you’ll also want to present a fair, well-intentioned/caring, and professional ethos. In other words, despite receiving bad news, you want the reader to think well of you and your organization. You don’t want your audience to feel that you’ve been unprofessional or impolite (or worse, unfair, unconcerned, cold, or mean), nor you want the audience to feel as if you don’t care about them, their situation, and their wants/needs.

In short, you want to encourage the audience to think well of you and your organization (or if that’s not possible, at least discourage them from thinking poorly of you and your company), strive to reduce bad feelings, and convey fairness, professionalism, and investment in the audience and their needs.

If/when sincere and if/when possible, you should demonstrate that you (and/or your organization) share the same values as the reader. In other words, show that you value the same thing/s as the reader/s.

Ensure Clarity:

Ensuring clarity is related to encouraging acceptance. While you should strive for clarity in all of your professional communications, in situations where you must communicate negative information, clarity is particularly important for a couple of reasons. First, you don’t want your reader to respond to you by repeating their request, by asking you to change your mind, or by otherwise taking up your valuable time. More than taking up your time, situations where you must repeatedly refuse a request are uncomfortable and akward. For the vast majority of people, it’s not a good feeling to say no, to deliver bad news, or otherwise disappoint another human being.

For that reason, you want to be extra cautious in providing clear, accurate details (as necessary) without having to repeat the negative information and without risking additional damage to your readers ego and your readers perception of you and your organization. In short, you don’t want to encourage further communication about the issue.

Protect Yourself/Your Organization:

In situations where you or your organization may be held legally liable, certainly, you should aim to protect yourself and your organization (within ethical standards, of course).

However, this is not a factor for the overwhelming majority of business correspondence most of you will write in your careers. Students often volunteer the popular but misguided idea that professionals should never apologize or even acknowledge error. This is perhaps true in the most extreme circumstances or for those in careers that carry high risk for legal action. For most of us, communicating bad news isn’t a legal liability, but it may be a professional one.

The likelihood that you or your organization’s reputation will be damaged by an angry client or customer writing on social media is far higher than the likelihood that you’ll face legal action as a result a fairly routine business correspondence, even correspondence that communicates negative information.

For the most part, when you think about protecting yourself and your organization you should consider your ethos – others’ perception of your honesty, ethics, reputation, fairness, and professionalism. Although you may never do business with an individual after refusing their credit application or denying them a loan, you may do business (or want to do business) with that individuals family members, friends, neighbors, coworkers, Facebook buddies, etc. People are far more likely to speak out and tell others about dissatisfaction with a service, product, or company than they are about great experiences, excellent customer service, or trustworthy professionalism and fairness. That’s the reason that most major companies have people assigned to customer complaint departments rather than customer compliment departments.

The bottom line is that you should protect yourself and your professional character by being professional at all times, by demonstrating interest in clients, future potential clients, and generally, your goodwill toward human beings. Treat people with respect and kindness, no matter who they are or what sort of professional relationship you have with them. (If you can’t find respect or kindness, the professionalism and politeness will do.)

Organization for Negative Messages: BEBE

What’s below — buffer, explanation, bad news, exit (or, BEBE) — refers to the major/generic organizational divisions of content. Like positive or neutral messages, in their simplest forms, bad news messages can be organized into paragraphs, each addressing a particular element explained below.

However always remember to let your rhetorical approach guide your conscious decisions. Excellent professional writing isn’t about filling in blanks or plugging information into predesigned templates. It’s about knowing how to approach situations, knowing general “best practice” methods and guidelines for particular situations, and ultimately, making decisions about how and what to write in order to accomplish your purpose.

BEBE is just a starting point. Depending on the situation, you may choose to deviate from this guideline if it best suits your audience and purpose.

BUFFER

The buffer sets the tone, allowing you to avoid immediately disappointing or angering your reader, and lessening the risk your reader will shut down to everything that follows (or perhaps, the risk your reader won’t read the rest of the message at all).

To write an indirect opening with a buffer statement, you may

• start with any good news or positive elements the letter contains,
• state a fact, provide a chronology of events, or include some neutral context cues,
• refer to enclosures in the correspondence or other documents/events,
• thank the reader for something he or she has done, or
• state a general principle.

EXPLANATION

It may be relatively simple, quite complex, or uncomfortable—you’ll have to make conscious decisions about how much detail to include. (Remember, if the negative information is unimportant omit it.) In situations with potential legal ramifications, check with your employer before implying responsibility.

The explanation is the reason for the bad news—the cause of the negative outcome or information.

Consider this hypothetical situation:

She could take this approach:

That’s a lot of negative information about Eddie—his scores are poor (in the lowest 25%) and he has behavioral problems (paste eating, classmate biting, Lego block misuse, and goldfish swallowing). While all of the information in the letter is true, is it all necessary?

What is the actual bad news Dr. Keen has to communicate to Jane?

• Is the bad news that Eddie is academically disappointing? No.
• Is the bad news that Eddie has behavioral problems? No.

Those are reasons or explanations for the bad news. The actual bad news is that Eddie didn’t get into Wunderkind — he wasn’t accepted.

Certainly, instead of what’s above, Jane could explain that “Eddie didn’t meet minimum academic requirements,” or “Eddie’s academic aptitude means Wunderkind isn’t a good match for him.” But…

• Does Dr. Keen need to include the specific detail that Eddie is in the lowest quarter of scores? No.
• Does Dr. Keen need to mention behavioral problems? Probably not.

If he doesn’t meet the academic requirements, there’s no need to mention behavioral issues (as those are often more personal, hurtful, and anger-inducing to parents). Certainly, Dr. Keen doesn’t need to be specific and list all of the incidents and events.

Since the bad news is “Eddie wasn’t accepted,” and the real, most objective, and least emotional reason is “academic aptitude,” there’s no reason to include other reasons or go into specific detail.

Remember, if the negative information is unimportant, omit it.

BAD NEWS

State the negative once (only once) and then move on. Don’t repeat the bad news; Don’t return to it later in the message. If you’re apologizing, do it once. There’s no need for repeated apologies.

If possible (and it usually is possible), deliver the bad news gently, in a way that protects the reader’s feelings and avoids blaming the reader directly.

General Strategies for Softening Bad News:

• Minimize the space and time devoted to the negative information or bad news.
• Subordinate the bad news in a complex or compound sentence. (e.g., “We always enjoy discussing opportunities with qualified candidates, and while we would like to hire everyone we talk to, circumstances prohibit us from doing so.”)
• Embed the bad news in the middle of the paragraph.

Additional Strategies & Examples:

EXIT

Remember, among your goals for writing negative or bad news messages are to ensure clarity and to encourage the audience’s acceptance. The two are related — being clear increases the likelihood the reader will accept the bad news, therefore sparing you and the reader from further (perhaps awkward) communication, saving you time, and reducing the risk that you’ll have to repeatedly deliver the bad news. Additionally, the exit should help you to accomplish another goal of negative messages—maintaining goodwill—by allowing you (and the reader) to end on a (more) positive, forward looking note.

Often, novice professional communicators will rely on canned phrases, stock “business-like” language, or boilerplate sentences in their final paragraphs that ultimately undermines this purpose.

Consider the phrasings below^[1]:

• Feel free to contact me if you have any questions
• If there is anything else you need, please let me know.
• If I can be of any further assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact me.
• If you have any additional questions or require further clarification, please, do not hesitate to call or email.
• Please, let me know if you’d like additional information or further clarification regarding this matter.

Of course, such language is familiar and polite (though in a form letter sort of way), but what is it offering? Is it sincere?

Recall the situation with Jane, Eddie, and Dr. Keen.

If Dr. Keen included any of the above canned phrasing, Jane might actually contact her to ask for details, to ask for reconsideration, to report that Eddie had just finished his first week of weekly children’s PEA meetings (Paste Eaters Anonymous).

Unless Dr. Keen really wants to field questions and/or unless there’s a possibility that Dr. Keen might change her mind on Eddie’s acceptance/rejection, Dr. Keen shouldn’t encourage Jane’s questions, pleas, or otherwise awkward conversations.

• Unless there’s a meaningful potential for error, don’t encourage the reader to “contact me if you believe this information is in error.”
• Unless there’s a possibility that you/your organization might change its mind, reverse its decision, or otherwise alter the bad news, then don’t encourage the reader to “contact us if you’d like to discussion your case.”
• Unless you really want to answer questions (or unless your organization wants you to answer questions), then don’t invite the reader to “contact me with any questions you may have.”
• Unless you really want to (or are required to) provide additional information or details, don’t solicit such requests by encouraging a reader to “let me know if you need additional information.”

ALTERNATIVES

When possible, you should include some sort of alternative option or solution that enables the reader to get what she or he wanted. For example, your reader wants a larger line of credit and requests an increased credit card limit of $10,000. Perhaps you can’t grant her the $10,000 credit, but you can offer her an increased credit limit of $5,000. It isn’t exactly what the reader wanted, but it’s another way to get what she wanted — an increased limit.

Providing alternatives

• suggests you care about the readers wants/needs
• enables the reader to reestablish psychological freedom
• allows you to include or close on a positive, forward looking note
• offers the reader another way to get what’s wanted (compromise, substitute, etc.)
• increases the probability of maintaining a good business relationship and/or get the reader’s business some other way.

Like reader benefits, alternatives should be reader-centered, written in “you-attitude,” and should reflect what the audience values. If possible, make the alternative sound attractive—don’t treat it like a concession or a consolation prize. If it’s not immediately clear, frame the alternative as another way for the audience to get what they want.

Example Negative Communication Situation