CHOICES AND STRATEGIES: Responding to Readers’ Attitudes

For tips on critiquing a team member’s draft diplomatically, see Ch. 3.

CHOICES AND STRATEGIES: Responding to Readers’ Attitudes

IF… TRY THIS . . .
Your reader is neutral or positively inclined toward your subject Write the document so that it responds to the reader’s needs; make sure that vocabulary, level of detail, organization, and style are appropriate.
Your reader is hostile to the subject or to your approach to it

  • Find out what the objections are, and then answer them directly. Explain why the objections are not valid or are less important than the benefits. For example, you want to hire an online-community manager to coordinate your company’s social-media efforts, but you know that one of your primary readers won’t like this idea. Try to find out why. Does this person think social media are a fad? That they are irrelevant and can’t help your company? If you understand the objections, you can explain your position more effectively.

  • Organize the document so that your recommendation follows your explanation of the benefits. This strategy encourages the hostile reader to understand your argument rather than to reject it out of hand.

  • Avoid describing the subject as a dispute. Seek areas of agreement and concede points. Avoid trying to persuade readers overtly; people don’t like to be persuaded, because it threatens their ego. Instead, suggest that there are new facts that need to be considered. People are more likely to change their minds when they realize this.

Your reader was instrumental in creating the policy or procedure that you are arguing is ineffective In discussing the present system’s shortcomings, be especially careful if you risk offending one of your readers. When you address such an audience, don’t write, “The present system for logging customer orders is completely ineffective.” Instead, write, “While the present system has worked well for many years, new developments in electronic processing of orders might enable us to improve logging speed and reduce errors substantially.”