In life, one of the biggest challenges you will encounter is delivering bad news. For many of us, the experience of playing messenger can easily turn emotional or even painful despite the fact we aren’t on the receiving end.
As obvious as it may seem, this is one of the most common mistakes made by people delivering bad news.
As busy as your personal and professional life is, or as seasoned as you assume you are, you should never assume that you can just stroll into a room, improvise on the delivery, and then proceed to deliver the undesirable news.
The reality is that you will find it hard, if not impossible to do so. Alternatively, it may become hard for you to deliver this news in a manner that allows you to retain your composure. Or the best version of yourself. Of course, you will need to improvise at some point.
However, using a letter template to prepare in advance and ensure that you are ready for any scenarios that may arise during that moment makes it easier for you to improvise. In the end, you are able to deliver the undesirable news in a matter that suits all parties involved.
As much as you need to deliver unwelcome news within the shortest time possible, you still want to do it with compassion. No one wants to appear like a robot. But you’ll need to strike the balance between caring and caring far too much that you add to the emotion in the room.
You have to find a way to strike a balance between the two extremes—your goal is to get the message out there while showing that you care about the recipient(s).
While striking a middle balance is not an easy feat, it is something that you should strive to work on through the use of a compassion letter template. Try and develop your interpersonal skills and continue improving them with time.
Delivering bad news is never pleasant. A person tasked with the responsibility of delivering such news is likely to feel partially responsible as a result of empathizing with the person on the other end of the table. Regardless of whether the bad news is minor or major, the messenger may feel anxious about how the victim will react.
Whether it is informing someone that they have a chronic condition or someone they love has passed on, it’s important to get it right. For this reason, we’ve put together 5 letter templates for 5 different scenarios that you can refer to should you find yourself in a similar position.