Communicating in difficult circumstances
Correspondence sometimes takes place in difficult circumstances: for example, you may need to write to tell someone he didn’t get the job he applied for, that her funding proposal was not successful, to clarify a misunderstanding with a colleague, or decline an invitation. In this course, we refer to such correspondence as a “bad-news” documents. If you have to give someone bad news, style, tone and the structure of the document are all important.
Writing an effective bad-news document requires that you recognize the reader’s needs very clearly. You must explain why you are writing and convey your main message – in those two elements, writing a bad-news document effectively is no different than writing any other document. An additional challenge in conveying bad news is that you must try to anticipate the questions and/or objections your reader may have once he or she has absorbed the main message. Such questions can usually be answered by explaining the reasons for the decision – telling the reader “why”. Since you will need to answer the “why” question, note the reasons for the decision or circumstance you are explaining as you organize your thoughts to convey and explain the bad news.