negative letter assignment

Organizing Refusals and/or Negative Letters To Peers or Subordinates

This Outline/Approach Works For: a) Simply telling people "no", as in "you did not get the job" or "you did not make the team" or "you will not pass this class" or "we ain't dating no mo'". 

b) With some changes, telling customers you cannot fulfill their order, etc.

The difference between the two is that with:

a) You want to reader to go away as quietly as possible and to leave you alone

b) You want the reader to continue doing business with you.

General Hints: Keep in mind that, generally, people know when either they have screwed-up or circumstances have caused the negative to occur;  therefore, you usually want to avoid hurting their ego or over-emphasizing the negative even or especially when the negative is the reader's own fault.  Remember that cornered dogs bite (and you are hoping to avoid being bit) so protect the reader's ego even when you are angry at the reader or it really is their fault;  this is the usually the quickest route toward your own goal.

Therefore: use much, much, much You-Attitude:

Avoid using "I" or "We" and "You". 

Only use "we" if it includes the reader and is positive: We can work this out. 

Only use "I" and "You" if the phrase is positive and protects the reader:   I am sorry. I want to help you. You did your best.

This is one of the few places in your writing to favor the passive voice (the passive voice generally hides the subject of the sentence and begins with the object.)

Active Voice: You are delinquent in your payment.  I am pissed off at you.  You will suffer if you do not pay up.

Passive Voice: The delinquent payment is due.  Anger is being experienced.  Suffering may occur if the funds are not paid.

Hide the Negative : Bury the bad news in a paragraph so that they cannot see it when they skim the letter; this will make them read the letter before finding the bad news.

Empathy : at some point in this letter, it is often wise to carefully express understanding for the reader's frustration etc.

Generally, order paragraphs and/or content in the following order:

1) Reason:   When you have a good reason that the reader will find easy to understand and accept, give the reason before the refusal or bad news. 

2) Refusal/Negative News: Avoid over-emphasizing a refusal, but still make it crystal clear.

      - De-emphasizing a refusal may make the refusal unclear or confusing.

      - Don’t put a refusal in its own paragraph because it is too visible; try to tie a refusal into the center of the second paragraph.

 3) Alternatives/Compromises: Present alternatives or compromises, if available.

    - This is the place where you can help avoid psychological reactance by giving the reader choices and/or something to do, a task to soak up the negative feelings and offer some hope.

    - When possible, be extremely specific:  if, for example, you are referring someone you've fired or a customer elsewhere, give him specific names, phone numbers, email addresses etc.

    - Attempt to gently persuade the reader away from negative, destructie choices and toward positive ones.

    - If at all possible, explain the upsides of this admittedly bad news.

 4) Positive Ending: End with a positive, forward-looking ending.

    - The positive message should be directly related to the topic and not generic.

    - Be sincere and empathetic; don't tell someone to "have a nice day" if you've just blown a whole in their lives.

    - Ideally, this ending looks forward to the solution to the problem: leave the reader feeling hopeful, not depressed.

Example: Johnny Can't Read

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8.3: Negative Messages

Learning objectives.

i. Outline the structure of an indirect-approach bad-news message ii. Explain the importance of communicating bad news carefully in professional contexts

Just as in life, the workplace isn’t always a bowl of cherries. Sometimes things don’t go according to plan, and it’s your job to communicate about them in a way that doesn’t ruin your relationships with customers, coworkers, managers, the public, and other stakeholders. When doing damage control, bad-news messages require care and skillful language because your main point will meet resistance. Rarely are people okay being told that they’re laid off, their application has been rejected, their shipment got lost en route, prices or rates are increasing, their appointment has to be moved back several months, or they’re losing their benefits. Though some people prefer that the messenger be blunt about it, in most cases you can assume that the receiver will appreciate or even benefit by a more tactful, indirect approach. Keep in mind the following advice whenever required to deliver unwelcome news.

Negative Messages Topics

8.3.1: The Seven Goals of Bad-news Messages

8.3.2: indirect bad-news message organization, 8.3.3: avoiding disaster in bad-news messages, 8.3.4: crisis communications.

• 8.3.5: Direct Approach Bad-news Messages

Your ability to manage, clarify, and guide understanding is key to addressing challenging situations while maintaining trust and integrity with customers, coworkers, managers, the public, and other stakeholders. Keep in mind these seven goals when delivering bad news in person or in writing:

• Be clear and concise to avoid being asked for additional clarification.
• Help the receiver understand and accept the news.
• Reduce the anxiety associated with the bad news as much as possible by expressing sympathy or empathy.
• Maintain trust and respect between you and your audience to ensure the possibility of good future relations.
• Deliver the bad news in a timely fashion in the appropriate channel(s).
• Avoid the legal liability that comes with admitting negligence or guilt.
• Achieve the designated business outcome.

Let’s look at how we can achieve these goals in examples of the tricky situations in which we might find ourselves in the workplace.

Let’s say you are a supervisor and your manager has tasked you with getting Chris, an employee who is usually late for work and has been arriving even later recently, to start arriving on time. Chris’s tardiness is impairing not only his performance but also that of the entire team that depends on his work. You figure there are four ways you can handle this:

• Stop by Chris’s cubicle and simply say, “Get to work on time or you’re out”
• Invite Chris out to a nice lunch and let him have it
• Write Chris a stern email
• Ask Chris to come to your office and discuss the behaviour with him in private

Let’s see how each of these alternatives meets our seven goals in delivering bad news.

First, if you approach Chris with a blunt ultimatum at his desk, you can get right to the point there but risk straining the supervisor-employee relationship by putting him in his place in front of everyone. The aggressive approach might prompt Chris to demand clarification, make defensive excuses, or throw hostile counter-offensives right back—none of which are desired outcomes. For that matter, the disrespectful approach doesn’t formally confirm that the tardiness will end. The lack of tact in the approach may reflect poorly on you as the supervisor, not only with Chris but with your manager as well.

When you need to speak to an employee about a personnel concern, it is always best to do so in private. Give thought and concern to the conversation before it occurs and make a list of points to cover with specific information, including grievances. Like any other speech, you may need to rehearse, particularly if this type of meeting is new to you. When it comes time to have the discussion, issue the warning, back it up in writing with documentation, and don’t give the impression that you might change your decision. Whether the issue at hand is a simple caution about tardiness or a more serious conversation, you need to be fair and respectful, even if the other person has been less than professional. Let’s examine the next alternative.

Let’s say you invite Chris to lunch at a nice restaurant. He sees the fine linen on the table, silverware for more than the main course, and water glasses with stems. The luxurious environment says “good job,” but your serious talk will contradict this nonverbal signage, which will probably be an obstacle to Chris’s ability to listen. If Chris doesn’t understand and accept the message, requiring him to seek clarification, your approach has failed. Furthermore, the ambush fails to build trust, so you don’t know whether Chris is going to make the extra effort to arrive early or just put in his time there doing the bare minimum while looking for another job.

Let’s say instead that you’ve written Chris a stern email. You’ve included a list of all the recent dates when he was late and made several statements about the quality of his work. You clearly say he needs to improve and stop being late, or else. But was your email harassment? Could it be considered beyond the scope of supervision and interpreted as mean or cruel? And do you even know if Chris has received it? If there was no reply, do you know whether it achieved its desired business outcome? A written message may certainly be part of the desired approach, but how it is presented and delivered is as important as what it says. Let’s examine our fourth approach to this scenario.

You ask Chris to join you in a private conversation. You start by expressing concern and asking an open-ended question: “Chris, I’ve been concerned about your work lately. Is everything all right?” As Chris answers, you may demonstrate that you are listening by nodding your head and possibly taking notes. You may learn that Chris has been having problems sleeping or that his living situation has changed. Or Chris may decline to share any issues, deny that anything is wrong, and ask why you are concerned. You may then state that you’ve observed the chronic tardiness and name one or more specific mistakes you have found in Chris’s work, ending by repeating your concern. Because showing your concern makes Chris feel valued, he opens up about his situation so that you understand where he’s coming from. It may turn out that he has to drop his kids off for school at 8am and then contend with Queensway traffic for the next hour to get to the office, consistently making him a half hour late. You can then both agree that he’ll stay a little later or put in the missing hours at home, then write up that agreement in an email with your manager Cc’d.

Regardless of how well or poorly the conversation goes, if Chris tells other employees about it, they will take note of how you handled the situation, and it will contribute to their perception of you. It guides their expectations of how you operate and how to communicate with you as this interaction is not only about you and Chris. You represent the company and its reputation, and your professional display of concern as you try to learn more sends a positive message. While the private, respectful meeting may not be the perfect solution, it is preferable to the other approaches considered above.

One additional point to consider as you document this interaction is the need to present the warning in writing. You may elect to prepare a memo that outlines the information concerning Chris’s performance and tardiness and have it ready should you want to present it. If the session goes well, and you have the discretion to make a judgment call, you may elect to give him another week to resolve the issue. Even if it goes well, you may want to present the memo, as it documents the interaction and serves as evidence of due process should Chris’s behaviour fail to change, eventually resulting in the need for termination. This combined approach of a verbal and written message is increasingly the norm in business communication (Business Communication for Success, 2015, 17.1) .

Return to the Negative Messages Topics menu

Key to achieving Goal #2 of delivering bad news—i.e., helping the receiver understand and accept information they don’t want to hear or read—is organizing the message using the indirect approach described in §4.1.2 above. If you tactlessly hit your audience over the head with really bad news, you run the risk of them rejecting or misunderstanding it because they may be reeling from the blow and be too distracted with anger or sadness to rationally process the explanation or instructions for what to do about the bad news. A doctor never delivers a really serious diagnosis by coming right out and saying “You have cancer!” first thing. Instead, they try to put a positive spin on the results (“It could be worse”), discuss test results in detail, talk about treatment options, and only then come around to telling the patient the bad news. At that point, being clear about the bad news ensures that the receiver understands the gravity of the situation and is therefore motivated to follow through on the therapeutic recommendations given earlier. Key to avoiding misunderstandings when delivering bad news, then, is the following four-part organization:

• Justification
• Bad news + redirection
• Positive action closing

This is much like the three-part structure we’ve seen before in §4.1 , only the body is now divided into two distinct parts where the order really matters, as we see in Table 8.3.2 and the explanation for each part below it.

Table 8.3.2: Bad News Message Outline and Example Message

(Business Communication for Success, 2015, 17.1)

8.3.2.1: Bad-news Message Buffer

Begin with neutral or positive statements that set a welcoming tone and serve as a buffer for the information to come. A buffer softens the blow of bad news like the airbag in a car softens the driver’s collision with the steering wheel in a high-speed car accident. If there are any silver linings that can calm the poor person about to be pummeled by the dark thunder clouds of bad news, here at the beginning would be a good time to point them out. The following are some possible buffer strategies:

• Good news : If there’s good news and bad news, start with the good news.
• Compliment : If you’re rejecting someone’s application, for instance, start by complimenting them on their efforts and other specific accomplishments you were impressed by in their application.
• Gratitude : Say thanks for whatever positive things the recipient has done in your dealings with them. If they’ve submitted a claim that doesn’t qualify for an adjustment, for instance, thank them for choosing your company.
• Agreement : Before delivering bad news that you’re sure the recipient is going to disagree with and oppose, start with something you’re sure you both agree on. Start on common ground by saying, “We can all agree that . . . .”
• Facts : If positives are hard to come by in a situation, getting started on the next section’s explanation, starting with cold, hard facts, is the next best thing.
• Understanding : Again, if there are no silver linings to point to, showing you care by expressing sympathy and understanding is a possible alternative (Guffey et al. 2016, p. 194)
• Apology : If you’re at fault for any aspect of a bad news message, an apology is appropriate as long as it won’t leave you at a disadvantage in legal proceedings that may follow as a result of admitting wrongdoing. (See §8.2.2.2 above for more on effective strategies for apologizing.)

The idea here is not to fool the audience into thinking that only good news is coming but to put them in a receptive frame of mind for understanding the explanation that follows. If you raise the expectation that they’re going to hear the good news that they’re getting what they want only, to let them down near the end, they’re going to be even more disappointed for being led on. If you hit them over the head with bad news right away, however, they may be more distracted with emotion to rationally process the explanation or instructions for what to do about the bad news.

8.3.2.2: Bad-news Justification

The justification explains the background or context for the bad news before delivering the bad news itself. Let’s say that you must reject an application, claim for a refund, or request for information. In such cases, the explanation could describe the strict acceptance criteria and high quality of applications received in the competition, the company policy on refunds, or its policy on allowable disclosures and the legalities of contractually obligated confidentiality, respectively. Your goal with the explanation is to be convincing so that the reader says, “That sounds reasonable” and similarly accepts the bad news as inevitable given the situation you describe. On the other hand, if you make the bad news seem like mysterious and arbitrary decision-making, your audience will probably feel like they’ve been treated unfairly and might even escalate further with legal action or “yelptribution”—avenging the wrong in social media. While an explanation is ethically necessary, never admit or imply responsibility without written authorization from your company cleared by legal counsel if there’s any way that the justification might be seen as actionable (i.e., the offended party can sue for damages).

Use additional strategies to make the justification more agreeable such as focusing on benefits. If you’re informing employees that they will have to pay double for parking passes next year in an attempt to reduce the number of cars filling up the parking lot, you could sell them on the health benefits of cycling to work or the environmental benefit of fewer cars polluting the atmosphere. If you’re informing a customer asking why a product or service can’t include additional features, you could say that adding those features would drive the cost up and you would rather respect your customer’s pocketbooks by keeping the product or service more affordable. In any case, try to pitch an agreeable, pro-social or progressive benefit rather than saying that you’re merely trying to maximize company or shareholder profits.

8.3.2.3: The Bad News Itself and Redirection

Burying the bad news itself in the message is a defining characteristic of the indirect approach. It’s akin to the “poop sandwich” organization of constructive criticism sandwiched between statements of praise (see §11.1.4.2 below). Far from intending to hide the bad news, the indirect approach frames the bad news so that it can be properly understood and its negative (depressing or anger-arousing) impact minimized.

The goal is also to be clear in expressing the bad news so that it isn’t misunderstood while also being sensitive to your reader’s feelings. If you’re rejecting a job applicant, for instance, you can be clear that they didn’t get the job without bluntly saying “You failed to meet our criteria” or “You won’t be working for us anytime soon.” Instead, you can clearly imply it by putting the bad news in a subordinate clause in the passive voice:

Though another candidate was hired for the position, . . .

The passive voice (see §4.3.4 above) enables you to draw attention away from your own role in rejecting the applicant, as well as away from the rejected applicant in the context of the competition itself. Instead, you focus on the positive of someone getting hired. While the rejected applicant probably won’t be throwing a celebration party for the winning candidate, the subordinate clause here allows for speedy redirection to a consolation prize.

Redirection is key to this type of bad news’ effectiveness because it quickly shifts the reader’s attention to an alternative to what they were seeking in the first place. Some kind of consolation prize (e.g., a coupon or store credit) helps soothe the pain and will be appreciated as being better than nothing, at least. Even if you’re not able to offer the reader anything of value, you could at least say something nice. In that case, completing the sentence in the previous paragraph with an active-voice main clause could go as follows:

. . . we wish you success in your continued search for employment.

This way, you avoid saying anything negative while still clearly rejecting the applicant.

8.3.2.4: Positive Action Closing

As we’ve seen in previous explorations of message organization (e.g., §6.1.7 on email), the closing here involves action information. If your redirection involves some alternative, such as a recommendation to apply elsewhere, some follow-up details here would help the reader focus on the future elsewhere rather than getting hung up on you and your company’s decision. Your goals here are the following

• Ensure that the reader understands the bad news without rehashing it
• Remain courteous, positive, and forward-looking
• End the conversation in such a way that you don’t invite further correspondence

The first and last goals are important because you don’t want the reader to respond asking you to clarify anything. The second goal is important because you ultimately want to appear respectable and avoid giving the reader a reason to smear your reputation in social media or proceed with legal action against you.

Delivering bad news can be dangerous if it angers the reader so much that they are motivated to fight back. If you’re not careful with what you say, that message can be used as evidence in a court case that, when read by a judge or jury, could compromise your position. You can lower the risk of being litigated against by following the general principles given below when delivering bad news.

8.3.3.1: Avoid Negative or Abusive Language

Sarcasm, profanity, harsh accusations, and abusive or insulting language may feel good to write in a fit of anger but, in the end, make everyone’s lives more difficult. When someone sends an inflammatory message and it’s interpreted by the reader as harmful to their reputation, it could legally qualify as libel that is legitimately actionable. Even if you write critically about a rival company’s product or service by stating (as if factually) that it’s dangerous, whereas your version of the product or service is safer and better, this can be considered defamation or libel. If said aloud and recorded, perhaps on a smart phone’s voice recorder, it is slander and can likewise be litigated. It’s much better to always write courteously and maturely, even under difficult circumstances, to avoid fallout that involves expensive court proceedings.

8.3.3.2: Avoid Oversharing but Tell the Truth

When your job is to provide a convincing rationale that might make the recipient of bad news accept it as reasonable, be careful with what details you disclose. When rejecting a job applicant, for instance, you must be especially careful not to lay all your cards on the table by sharing the scoring sheets of the winning and rejected candidates, nor even summarize them. Though that would give them full picture, it would open you up to a flood of complaints and legal or human-rights challenges picking apart every little note. Instead, you would simply wish the rejected candidate luck in their ongoing job search. When you must provide detail, avoid saying anything bad about anyone so that you can’t be accused of libel and taken to court for it. Provide only as much information as is necessary to provide a convincing rationale.

At the same, it’s important that you tell the truth so that you can’t be challenged on the details. If you are inconsistent or contradictory in your explanation, it may invite scrutiny and accusations of lying. Even making false claims by exaggerating may give the reader the wrong impression, which can lead to serious consequences if acted upon. Though some might say that omitting the truth is a form of lying, telling the truth selectively is the necessary compromise of a professional constrained by competing obligations to both the organization they represent and the reader who they don’t want to anger or severely disappoint.

8.3.3.3: Respect the Recipient’s Privacy

Criticizing an employee in a group email or memo—even if the criticism is fair—is mean, unprofessional, and an excellent way of opening yourself to a world of trouble. People who call out others in front of a group create a chilly climate in the workplace, one that leads to fear, loathing, and a loss of productivity among employees, not to mention legal challenges for possible libel. Called-out employees may even resort to sabotaging the office with misbehaviour such as vandalism, cyberattacks, or theft to get even. Always maintain respect and privacy when communicating bad news as a matter of proper professionalism (Business Communication for Success, 2015, 17.1) .

A rumour that the CEO is ill pulls down the stock price. A plant explosion kills several workers and requires evacuating residents in several surrounding city blocks. Risk management seeks to address such risks, including prevention as well as liability, but emergency and crisis situations happen anyway. Employees also make errors in judgment that can damage the public perception of a company. The mainstream media does not lack stories involving infidelity, addiction, or abuse that require a clear response from a company’s standpoint. In this chapter we address the basics of a crisis communication plan, focusing on key types of information during an emergency:

• What is happening?
• Is anyone in danger?
• How big is the problem?
• Who reported the problem?
• Where is the problem?
• Has a response started?
• What resources are on-scene?
• Who is responding so far?
• Is everyone’s location known? (Mallet, Vaught, & Brinch, 1999)

You will be receiving information from the moment you know a crisis has occurred, but without a framework or communication plan to guide you, valuable information may be ignored or lost. These questions help you quickly focus on the basics of “who, what, and where” in the crisis situation.

A crisis communication plan is the prepared scenario document that organizes information into responsibilities and lines of communication prior to an event. If an emergency arises when you already have a plan in place, each person knows his or her role and responsibilities from a common reference document. Overall effectiveness can be enhanced with a clear understanding of roles and responsibilities for an effective and swift response. The plan should include four elements:

• Crisis communication team members with contact information
• Designated spokesperson
• Meeting place/location
• Media plan with procedures

A crisis communication team includes people who can decide what actions to take, carry out those actions, and offer expertise or education in the relevant areas.

By designating a spokesperson prior to an actual emergency, your team addresses the inevitable need for information in a proactive manner. People will want to know what happened and where to get further details about the crisis. Lack of information breeds rumours that can make a bad situation worse. The designated spokesperson should be knowledgeable about the organization and its values; be comfortable in front of a microphone, camera, and media lights; and be able to stay calm under pressure.

Part of your communication crisis plan should focus on where you will meet to coordinate communicate and activities. In case of a fire in your house, you might meet in the front yard. In an organization, a designated contingency building or office some distance away from your usual place of business might serve as a central place for communication in an emergency that requires evacuating your building. Depending on the size of your organization and its facilities, the emergency plan may include exit routes, hazardous materials procedures (WHMIS), and policies for handling bomb threats, for example. Safety is of course the priority, but in terms of communication, the goal is to eliminate confusion about where people are, where they need to be, and where information is coming from.

Whether or not evacuation is necessary when a crisis occurs, your designated spokesperson will gather information and carry out your media plan. They will need to make quick judgments about which information to share, how to phrase it, and whether certain individuals need to be notified of facts before they become public. The media and public will want to get reliable information, which is preferable to mere spin or speculation. Official responses help clarify the situation for the public, but an unofficial interview can make the tragedy personal and attract unwanted attention. Remind employees to direct all inquiries to the official spokesperson and to never speak anonymously or “off the record.”

Enable your spokesperson to have access to the place you indicated as your crisis contingency location to coordinate communication and activities, and allow them to prepare and respond to inquiries. When crisis communication is handled in a professional manner, it seeks not to withhold information or mislead, but to minimize the “spin damage” from the incident by providing necessary facts even if they are unpleasant or even tragic (Business Communication for Success, 2015, 17.3) .

8.3.5: Direct-approach Bad-news Messages

We’ve so far looked at expressing bad news using the indirect approach, but is it ever right to deliver bad news using the direct approach? Are there occasions where you can or should be upfront about the bad news? In the following situations, yes, it’s certainly appropriate to deliver bad news by getting right to the point:

• In the case of small price or rate increases, customers won’t be devastated by having to pay more. Indeed, inflation makes such increases an expected fact of life.
• If your job involves routinely delivering criticism because you’re a Quality Assurance specialist, the people who are used to receiving recommendations to improve their work will appreciate the direct approach. Some organizations even require direct-approach communications for bad news as a policy because it is more time-efficient.
• When you know that the recipient prefers or requires the direct approach: Though the indirect approach is intended as a nice way to deliver bad news, some people would rather you be blunt. “Give it to me straight, doc. I’m a grown-up. I can take it,” they might say. Since a message must always be tailored to the audience, getting permission for taking the direct approach is your cue to follow through with exactly that. Not doing so will arouse the angry response you would have expected otherwise.
• When you’re short on time or space: One of the hallmarks of the indirect approach is that it takes more words than a direct-approach message (see Table 6.1.5 for comparative examples). If time is limited or you’re constrained in how much space you have to write, taking the direct approach is justifiable.
• When the indirect approach hasn’t worked: If this is the third time you’ve had to tell a client to pay their invoice and the first two were nicely-worded indirect messages that the recipient ignored, take the kid-gloves off and issue a stern warning of the consequences of not paying. You may need to threaten legal action or say you’ll refer the account to a collection agency, and you may need to put it in bold so that you’re sure the reader won’t miss it.
• When the reader may miss the bad news: You may determine from profiling your audience and their literacy level that they might not understand indirect-approach bad news (see Step 1.2 in the writing process in §2.2 on analyzing the audience). If your reader doesn’t have a strong command of English vocabulary and misses words here and there, they may not pick up on the buried bad news past the mid-point of a challenging message.

In the above situations, structure your message following the same three-part organization we’ve seen elsewhere (e.g., §6.1.5 – §6.1.7 on email parts):

• Opening: State the bad news right up front.
• Body: Briefly explain why the bad news happened.
• Closing: Express confidence in continued business relations with a goodwill statement and provide any action information such as contact instructions should the recipient require further information.

Of course, clarity and brevity in such messages is vital to maintaining friendly relations with your audiences (Guffey et al., 2016, p. 190).

Key Takeaway

2. Sales have decreased for two consecutive quarters at your business. You must inform your sales team that their hours and base pay will be reduced by 20 percent if the company is to break even this quarter. While you may have a few members of your sales team that are underperforming, you can’t afford to be short-staffed now, so you must keep the entire team for the time being. Write negative news messages in both the direct and indirect approach informing your sales team of the news following the advice in §8.3.2 and §8.3.5 above.

3. Research a crisis in your area of training or career field. What communication issues were present and how did they affect the response to the crisis? If the situation was handled well, what are the major takeaways? If handled poorly, what do you think you would have done differently following the general guidelines in §8.3.4 above?

Guffey, M. E., Loewy, D., Almonte, R. (2016). Essentials of business communication (8th Can. Ed.). Toronto: Nelson.

Lehman, C. M., DuFrene, D, & Murphy, R. (2013). BCOM (1st Can. Ed.). Toronto: Nelson Education.

Mallet, L., Vaught, C., & Brinch, M. (1999). The emergency communication triangle . Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Pittsburgh, PA: Pittsburgh Research Laboratory.

Communication at Work Copyright © 2019 by Jordan Smith is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

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How Do You Write an Effective Negative Business Letter?

Table of Contents

A negative message business letter is essential to deliver bad news when it’s necessary. Sometimes, you may need to decline a request, deny someone employment, or announce a policy shift that not everyone will agree with.

Writing and delivering the negative message business letter is a key component of communication, so you must be prepared if the opportunity arises.

Keep in mind that the goal of a negative message is (paradoxically) not to provide bad news. A negative message letter serves to foster understanding and support in the face of adversity.

4 Part-Structure of a Negative Message Business Letter

The most effective bad news announcements have a four-part structure: an opening, an explanation, the bad news itself, and a call to action. You can easily divide these into four paragraphs. 

However, you may find combining the second and third paragraphs more convenient if the letter isn’t too long. The letter should start with the following:

1. Salutation

Begin your message with a brief, warm “welcome.” Express thanks that the reader has taken the time to write or demonstrate that you’ve made an effort to learn about the reader’s position.

Salutation gives you a chance to put a human face on the message. It also gives the receiver confidence that you and your company take their concerns seriously and take action to resolve them.

2. Explanation and Clarification

This is where you can let the reader in on the inner workings of your company. This step requires you to prove that you’ve established protocols for handling potential crises.

If you want to humanize your company for your readers, show them the faces behind the names. You can also explain a system that benefits everyone.

If you’re trying to hunt down a problem, this is your moment to prove that you’re “going to work” for the customer. Explain that bad things can have positive explanations.

3. Negative Message

If you have negative news to share, such as a refusal or rejection, write it in this section professionally and truthfully. 

Keep the negative news brief. Tuck it inside a phrase or paragraph with some good news, or switch to the passive voice to avoid drawing attention. 

Remember the trade-off between the short and long term for your explanation’s credibility. Your customers may be willing to endure discomfort now in exchange for future benefits.

4. Conclude With an Action Plan

Conclude your message by looking ahead. Do it by providing an alternate advantage or inviting the reader to contact the organization later. 

You can offer a discount, freebie, freebie (coupon), or an opportunity to join a mailing list or receive a newsletter. It goes a long way toward encouraging people to share your content. 

At the absolute least, the reader should come away convinced that continuing to be a customer is in their best interest.

Example of a Negative Message Business Letter Using INK

An effective negative business letter should be concise, clear, and unbiased. Here’s an effective negative business letter with INK .

Subject: Rejection of Grant Request

It is with great regret that we must inform you that your grant application has been rejected. We fully understand the import of your work and hoped to support it. 

However, given the limited resources available to us, we cannot do so at this time. We hope you will resubmit your application later when circumstances are more favorable. Thank you for your understanding.

Closing Salutation

The negative message business letter example above employs the INK professional format. This format gives the letter an elegant, professional appearance in simplicity .

You must ensure that information presented to the reader is concise and easily consumable. Conclude with an action plan that effectively closes the letter without being redundant or excessive.

Abir Ghenaiet

Abir is a data analyst and researcher. Among her interests are artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. As a humanitarian and educator, she actively supports women in tech and promotes diversity.

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CH 4 Assignment: Bad News Letter

*Be sure to have read the previous sections “ Writing Effective Emails ” and “ Business Letter Types ” (‘Bad News Letters,’ specifically) before completing this assignment.

Scenario:  Customer John Smith has been working with you and your shop (or company/organization) for over ten years. He has ordered this kind of work before, and you have done this kind of work for him before. You thought it was an easy job so you asked a new employee to order the parts needed. You did not check their work because you were busy. Your employee ordered the wrong parts.

Ordinarily you would have had time to reorder the parts and still complete the order, but because there was an ice storm and the power was out for two days, you no longer have time to reorder parts and get the job done on time. You are going to be late, and you have to let John Smith know.

You always communicate with John Smith via email. Your task is to write an email to John Smith explaining why the job will not be completed on time .

Feel free to get a little creative by adding details, such as part names, industry-specific language (jargon), etc. You should also consider how you might resolve this issue or compensate John Smith.

Technical Writing at LBCC Copyright © 2020 by Will Fleming is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License , except where otherwise noted.

Negative Letter Example

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One part of your company's business (again, the same company in the Case Assignments 1 and 2) is website design and hosting services. Your company values its clients and understands that the recession has affected everyone. But lately you've realized that some clients are sapping your business's already stretched resources. One of your first patrons—Minnie MacElroy of Minnie's Miniscule Miniatures—has been a demanding client from the get-go. She asked for changes to the site design she had already approved, forcing you to put in more hours than your quote covered. Once the site went live, Minnie consistently badgered you to make other changes so often that you did them without charge just to get her off your back. When payment of her monthly hosting fee started becoming erratic, you agreed to let her slide until her business picked up. But now she's six months delinquent.

Despite repeated phone calls and several letters asking her to make a payment, you have received nothing. As a business owner, you understand how difficult it is to keep your doors open. You have had to lay off your best Web designer and are now doing your own bookkeeping instead of paying for that service. The contract MacElroy signed has a provision that if an account remains unpaid, your company may opt to render the site nonfunctional. The contract also states that your company retains the copyright on the design of any site it has created. While you are hesitant to lose any business in this economic climate, you have decided that some clients are more trouble than they are worth, and that if MacElroy doesn't begin paying the money she owes you, you will exercise your option of closing her site.

Write a letter informing Minnie that you are closing down her site if she does not pay the money she owes you. Should you fully explain that she has been a difficult customer, or should you rely on her lack of payment as your reason for threatening to break the contract?

Address your letter to

Ms. Minnie MacElroy,

27694 Bay Point Lane,

Bonita Springs, FL 34134.

(Derived from Dr. Guffey's Business Communication Newsletter)

In both letters, include a discussion to explain your approach in each case.

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Solution summary.

This posting gives you a step-by-step explanation of writing a letter asking a customer to pay her outstanding dues or her website will be closed down. The response also contains the sources used.

Solution Preview

In accordance with BrainMass standards this is not a hand in ready assignment but is only background help

Step 1 Letter Header: 26/7 Glenview Avenue, St. Paul's, MN, 55101

April, 10, 2017

Ms. Minnie MacElroy, 27694 Bay Point Lane, Bonita Springs, FL 34134.

Dear Ms. MacElroy I regret that even though I have made several requests for payment of dues for your site, I have not received any payment from you. I inform you that if I do not receive payment from you within the next twenty four hours, I shall be compelled to close down your site. From the beginning of our association I have accommodated several requests from you. I have made changes to the design of your site after your approval and have not charged you for the ...

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He Took a Terrible, Horrible, No-Good 800-Mile Hike So You Don’t Have To

In “A Walk in the Park,” Kevin Fedarko recounts a trek-of-a-lifetime that becomes a nightmare in one of America’s most stunning sites. At least he can laugh about it.

By Blair Braverman

Blair Braverman is a writer, adventurer and dog-sledder. Her most recent book is “Small Game.”

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A WALK IN THE PARK: The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon, by Kevin Fedarko

Maybe it’s when he’s extracting drinking water from damp sand with a syringe, trying desperately not to die from dehydration, but there came a point in “A Walk in the Park,” Kevin Fedarko’s memoir about walking the length of the Grand Canyon, that I thought: Wow, this hike is a terrible idea.

Not that this was a revelation; Fedarko says as much from the start. But I still assumed, being well versed in the rhythms of adventure stories (and the accompanying “wait-till-you-hear-how-bad-it-was” ), that a Grand Canyon hike wouldn’t be uniquely awful. I was wrong.

Fedarko grew up in Pittsburgh, in a landscape drained by coal mining and poisoned by the byproducts of industry; his family recalls the yellow mist of the Donora Death Fog, a quirk of atmospheric pressure that trapped chemical emissions over a town some 20 miles south of the city, killing at least 20 people and sickening many more. As a child visiting his grandparents, he played on hills of strip-mine waste.

But when a magazine assignment brought him to the Colorado River, he fell in love with both the Grand Canyon and the elegant wooden dories that traverse it. He uprooted his life to volunteer for a tour company, handling raw sewage on rafting expeditions in the hope of one day being promoted to the driver’s seat of a dory. As he relates one grievous mishap after another, the reader faces a dawning realization. Wait: Is this guy going to walk the whole canyon because he’s not good enough to row a boat?

Indeed — and outdoor literature is the better for it, because “A Walk in the Park” is a triumph. Fedarko doesn’t describe awe; he induces it, with page-turning action, startling insights and the kind of verbal grace that makes multipage descriptions of, say, a flock of pelicans feel riveting and new. The canyon has no established through route. It is a living oven, full of scorpions, cactuses, venomous snakes, flash floods and various other incarnations of hell on earth.

Indeed, Grand Canyon is one of the deadliest national parks, and Fedarko relates in unflinching details the list of fatalities: Various tourists plummet off viewpoints and a guy drowns while crossing rapids on an air mattress. By the time he explains how the canyon’s extreme heat can cause the proteins in human cells to “denature and congeal as if one were boiling an egg,” I wished he were a little less gifted in his descriptive powers.

Fedarko’s hiking companion is his longtime creative partner, the photographer Pete McBride. Each man “often found the other to be madly annoying,” writes Fedarko — but some of his warmest and funniest writing is about his friendship with McBride, whether they’re discovering ancient petroglyphs or wrenching pieces of cholla cactus off each other. McBride is made up of equal parts idealism and “pigheadedness.” He theorizes that they don’t need to train because “the hike itself is the thing that’s gonna get us in shape for the hike” — though Fedarko acknowledges, in a lengthy and diplomatic footnote, that his depiction of the duo’s incompetence, while not technically in accurate, may be played up for drama. That it annoys McBride, it seems, is only a side benefit.

The canyon, unlike the reader, is unamused. The prospect of death very real, these men have to get their act together or quit. Though at times they come close to their demise, a team of magnanimous experts helps them to trek on. They encounter radioactive mine sites, wild horses, pools of dead tarantulas and countless other shocks and wonders, such as a cactus that retracts into the dirt and a carnivorous mouse that howls at the moon. Along the way they, and we, meet many of the park’s stakeholders, from Indigenous activists to a professor of Euclidean numbers theory. Fedarko interweaves their stories with wry, precise distillations of natural history and incisive profiles of the investment interests that aim to squeeze wild nature into cash.

The book never shies from its paradoxes: I did this so you don’t have to; I did this because you shouldn’t; I shouldn’t have done this, but it’s good I did. By the time the men complete their yearlong hike, they’ve endured and overcome so much that they’re briefly mistaken for plane crash victims. But in truth, they, and we, are pilgrims on holy ground. Readers will be tempted to visit the canyon just to keep the book’s spell alive longer — and to feel Fedarko’s company in their awe.

A WALK IN THE PARK : The True Story of a Spectacular Misadventure in the Grand Canyon | By Kevin Fedarko | Scribner | 489 pp. | $32.50

Exploring the Outdoors, One Step at a Time

Hiking is a great way to immerse yourself in nature and tune out the chaos of city life. the tips below will help you get ready before you hit the trail..

Hiking offers a host of mental and physical benefits. If you’re new to it, here’s how to get started .

Fourteen years and one Apple App of the Year award in, AllTrails has become something rare: a tool that works for both experts and newbies .

Make sure you have the right gear . Wirecutter has recommendations for anything you might need — from hydration packs  to trekking poles . And remember to try on hiking boots  at the right time of the day .

These clever apps and devices  will help you to find your way, triage an injury and generally stay out of trouble on the trail.

Planning to venture out for a nighttime  hike ? Opt for wide, easy-to-navigate paths.

Experts say failing to alert family or friends of your plans is one of the biggest mistakes hikers make. Here are some more safety tips .

This is the testimony jurors in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial want to rehear

Just hours after embarking on their closed-door discussions, the jury in Donald Trump’s hush-money trial returned with separate notes asking to rehear testimony about the alleged scheme at the heart of the case and to rehear legal instructions from the judge that are meant to guide them in their deliberations.

They’ve asked to rehear former National Enquirer publisher David Pecker’s and ex-Trump fixer Michael Cohen’s accounts of an August 2015 meeting with Trump at Trump Tower where the tabloid boss agreed to be the “eyes and ears” of his fledgling presidential campaign. Pecker said the plan involved publishing positive stories about Trump and negative stories about his opponents, identifying potentially damaging stories about Trump so they could be squashed before being published. That, prosecutors say, was the beginning of the catch-and-kill scheme at the heart of the case.

Jurors also want to hear Pecker’s account of a phone call he allegedly received from Trump while he was at an investor meeting in New Jersey. The publisher testified that Trump tracked him down and phoned him after hearing a rumor that another outlet had offered to buy former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story alleging that she had a yearlong affair with Trump in the mid-2000s.

Pecker testified that on the call, Trump told him, “Karen is a nice girl,” and asked, “What do you think I should do?” Pecker said he replied: “I think you should buy the story and take it off the market.” He added that Trump told him he doesn’t buy stories because they always get out and that Cohen would be in touch.

The publisher said he came away from the conversation thinking Trump was aware of the specifics of McDougal’s claims. Pecker said he believed the story was true and would have been embarrassing to Trump and his campaign if it were made public. The National Enquirer’s parent company, American Media Inc., eventually paid McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story in an agreement that also included writing and other opportunities with its fitness and other publications.

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The fourth item jurors requested is Pecker’s testimony about his decision in October 2016 to back out of an agreement to then sell the rights to McDougal’s story to Trump through a company Cohen had established for the transaction, known as an “assignment of rights.”

“I called Michael Cohen, and I said to him that the agreement, the assignment deal is off. I am not going forward. It is a bad idea, and I want you to rip up the agreement,” Pecker testified. “He was very, very, angry. Very upset. Screaming, basically, at me.”

Pecker testified that he reiterated to Cohen that he wasn’t going forward with the agreement and told him to, “Rip it up.”