Intercultural communication teamwork and leadership/Negative and crisis communications/Delivering a negative news message

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44 out of 365 Bad news.jpg


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Readings

Read Chapter 17 Introduction and Section 17.1: Delivering a negative news message, in Saylor Academy (Ed.) 2012. Business Communication for Success. (See page(s) 646-660 in PDF version.).

These readings examine the impacts of negative workplace news and introduce seven key goals or objectives in delivering effective negative news messages.



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Video: Delivering bad news

View The Irish Hospice Foundation: Delivering Bad News. This short video describes five ‘how-to’ steps to deliver bad news [5:32 min.]. It was made for health professionals who often have to deliver bad news in highly emotional conditions, but has wider applications too.


Keep the advice in this video in mind as you work through the rest of this learning pathway. Can you see how to apply it to the various business contexts described in the materials?



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Video: Delivering bad news scenario

Watch the following video, which is a dramatised scenario of a manager, Marie, informing her employee, Simon, of a forthcoming company restructuring which may result in him losing his job.

The video was made by a training company, SkillBoosters, to demonstrate the wrong way to deliver bad news, and includes has some helpful analysis and comments from a British business psychologist, Clive Lewis. Also, the actors articulate their character's intrapersonal communication out loud to the video recorder, so that we gain some insights into the characters' likely internal thought processes and reactions to the situation.


  • In your learning journal, reflect on how Marie could have handled this situation better by applying the seven goals of delivering negative news set out in Chapter 17.1.



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Activities

1. Consider whether you prefer to receive negative news in a direct or indirect format. Post your answer, with a brief explanation, in a WENote.

Your comment will be displayed in the course feed. Don't forget to look in the feed to see what others have posted.


2. In your learning journal, do Exercises 1, 2 and 4 of the introductory exercises in the Introduction to Chapter 17. Discuss your answers with a friend or colleague if you can.


3. In your learning journal, do Exercises 3 and 4 from Chapter 17.1, which ask you to practise writing negative news messages. For Exercise 3, try writing two versions, one with a direct approach and the other with an indirect approach.