What's Wrong With This Message?

Being able to adopt the right tone of voice is a very useful skill that takes practice and experience. Getting it right is the difference between junior and experienced consultants.

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Let’s imagine you’re working on a project that has run behind schedule due to an additional task being added and a colleague being sick.

You’re worried about how the client is going to react to the delay, so you send a message along the lines of:

I’m really, really, sorry but due to the additional task of [x] we didn’t anticipate and my colleague being off sick this week we’re not able to complete the project by [date]. We therefore need to push the date back to next week.

We highlighted in the contract that unforeseen events might cause delays. This is one of those situations. If you have a problem with it, please contact me directly.

Can you spot what’s wrong with this message?

I’ll give you a couple of beats to consider it….

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The problem with this is the language. It’s overly defensive and unnecessarily combative. It anticipates client anger before it’s happened while also telling th…