Answer to Question 1
Answer: Student answers will vary. You may want to give your audience time to think carefully before having to reply. In the Great Expectations scenario, you may choose to communicate the bad news by email to give your audience time to think about the implications of the news and to consider the way best to respond to your request.
If it is crucial that you avoid miscommunication and misinformation, you may want to use email. Some research suggests that people who are uncomfortable communicating bad news face-to-face are more likely to sugarcoat the bad news when talking in person to reduce their own and their audience's discomfort. This distortion can lead to misunderstandings. By contrast, communicators are more likely to be accurate, complete, and honest in email because they do not worry about being confronted by an angry audience.
If you need to get the word out quickly, you might want to use email, a text, or tweet. Bad news travels fast, whether through the grape-vine or the media. Steve Blue, CEO of Miller Ingenuity, suggests getting the bad news out as soon as you know it. Some executives think it is better to keep employees in the dark be-cause telling them the truth might affect productivity. However, rumors and gossip are likely to keep people from focusing on their work.
If you need to communicate bad news to many people in different locations at exactly the same time, you may want to email, text, or tweet the news. When it is critical to communicate bad news to a broad audience, companies sometimes use multiple media to ensure the audience receives the message. For example, when Zappos.com discovered that its customers' account information may have been hacked, it emailed customers with information about resetting their passwords.
Answer to Question 2
Answer: One of the best ways to buffer bad news is to begin with good news and audience benefits, if there are any. Although you need to state bad news clearly, you can ease its impact by using subtle subordinating techniques, such as passive voice or a subordinate clause. The term voice refers to the relationship between the subject and verb in a sentence. In active-voice sentences, the subject performs the action of the verb. In passive-voice sentences, the subject does not perform the action of the verb. Putting the bad news in a subordinate clause means preceding the bad news with a word like although, which will soften the impact. The language you use in bad-news messages influences the audience's response as much as the organization of the message itself. The tone and style of the message should help the audience feel good about you, the situation, and themselves. The following guidelines will help you evaluate your messages for effective language. Your audience will be more open to accepting the bad news if you treat them politely and respectfully. Show that you understand their needs and concerns. Avoid using language that is accusatory or blaming. First drafts of bad-news messages often use words like unfortunately to convey the bad news. As much as possible, review your wording and remove negative words and phrases like these: unfortunately, we cannot, your fault, unable, unwilling, misunderstand, regret, violate, refuse, reject, deny.
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