Communicating Negative Messages

1. The five main goals in delivering bad news are to convey the bad news, to gain acceptance for it, to maintain as much goodwill as possible with your audience, to maintain a good image for your organization and to reduce or eliminate the need for future correspondence on the matter.

2. The questions you should ask yourself before when choosing between the direct and indirect approaches are: Will the bad news come as a shock? Does the reader prefer short messages that get right to the point? How important is this news to the reader? Do you need to maintain a close working relationship with the reader? Do you need to get the reader's attention? What is your organization's preferred style?

3. The sequence of elements in a negative message organized using an indirect approach are opening with a buffer, providing reasons and additional information, continuing with a clear statement of the bad news, and closing on a positive note.

4. A buffer is a neutral, noncontroversial statement that is closely related to the point of the message. Some people consider is unethical if they are insincere and deceptive.

5. When using the indirect approach to announce a negative decision, it is important to present your reasons before explaining the decision itself because you help maintain focus on the issues at hand and defuse the emotions that always accompany significantly bad news.