Unit 28: Goodwill Messages and Recommendations
Learning Objectives
After reading this unit, you will be able to
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- understand the different types of goodwill messages
- write different types of goodwill messages
- know the 5 S’s of goodwill messages
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Introduction
Share the love! Goodwill messages are as essential to healthy professional relationships as they are in personal ones. Thank-you, congratulatory, and sympathy notes add an important, feel-good human touch in a world that continues to embrace technology that isolates people while being marketed as a means of connecting them. The goodwill that such messages promote makes both sender and receiver feel better about each other and themselves compared with where they’d be if the messages weren’t sent at all. In putting smiles on faces, such notes are effective especially because many people don’t send them—either because they feel that they’re too difficult to write or because it doesn’t even occur to them to do so. Since praise for some can be harder to think of and write than criticism, a brief guide on how to do it right may be of help here.
The 5 S’s of Goodwill Messages
Whether you’re writing thank-you notes, congratulatory messages, or expressions of sympathy, follow the “5 S” principles of effective goodwill messages:
- Specific: Crafting the message around specific references to the situation that it addresses will steer such messages away from the impression that they were boilerplate template statements that you plagiarized.
- Sincere: A goodwill message will come off as genuine if it’s near to what you would say to the recipient in person. Avoid cliché Hallmark-card expressions and excessive formality such as It is with a heavy heart that I extend my heartfelt condolences to you in these sad times.
- Selfless: Refer only to the person or people involved rather than yourself. The spotlight is on them, not you. Avoid telling stories about how you experienced something similar in an attempt to show how you relate.
- Short: Full three-part messages and three-part paragraphs are unnecessary in thank-you notes, congratulatory messages, or expressions of sympathy, but appropriate in recommendations that require detail. Don’t make the short length of the message deter you from setting aside time to draft it.
- Spontaneous: Move quickly to write your message so that it follows closely on the news that prompted it.
Types of Goodwill Messages
Thank-you Notes
In the world of business, not all transactions involve money. People do favours for each other, and acknowledging those with thank-you notes is essential for keeping relations positive. Such messages can be short and simple, as well as quick and easy to write, which means not sending them when someone does something nice for you appears ungrateful, rude, and inconsiderate. Someone who did you a favour might not bother to do so again if it goes unthanked. Such notes are ideal for situations such as those listed in Table 28.1:
Table 28.