Format: Live online (or catch up on recorded replay)
CPD: 3 hours of learning for your records
Award: Professional certificate of attendance
Communicating bad news and tricky messaging
The tricky message toolkit – a practical course for the difficult comms moments
There’s a particular kind of dread that comes with delivering bad news as a comms pro.
It’s not the kind of thing you can rely on AI tools to do for you – far more tricky and sensitive.
Job losses. Your organisation has messed up somehow. A service cut. You’re about to do something that is going to be unpopular.
Take the course
For: Communications and marketing professionals
When: 25th November 2026: 10am – 1pm
Where: Live online training (Zoom)
Resources: Course replay on-demand, PDF toolkit
Cost: £499+VAT per person
(Free for Comms Creatives Academy members)
Or it could be a statement from leadership team needs to go out today, worded exactly right, with legal watching and the comments section already loading in your head.
Get it wrong and you’re managing a second crisis on top of the first.
Too cold, and you look like you don’t care. Too soft, and it reads as spin.
Most comms professionals are never taught how to handle this moment, they just learn it the hard way, one difficult message at a time.
This course gives you a clear structure to follow when the news is bad, so you’re not starting from a blank page under pressure.
During the session we will cover:
- A step-by-step structure for planning and drafting difficult messages
- How to balance honesty with legal and reputational caution
- Getting the tone right first time, without endless rounds of edits - with lots of real examples and case studies from varies industries on anything fro slightly annoying disruptions to full-on terrible news
- Anticipating the reaction before you send, not after Language that acknowledges a problem without sounding like an admission
- Handling the response and aftermath: comments, questions and follow-up fires
We made this course because comms people told us they are challenged by:
- sFear of saying the wrong thing and making a bad situation worse
- sGetting caught between what leadership wants said and what the audience needs to hear
- sNot knowing how to acknowledge a problem without sounding like an admission of liability
- sWorrying about tone, too cold and they look uncaring, too soft and it looks evasive
- sDreading the comments section, the reply-all, or even the response from colleagues before they've even hit send
And we designed the training so comms pros can:
- Use a clear structure to follow when the news is bad, so they're not starting from scratch under pressure
- Gain confidence that they've struck the right tone before it goes out
- Get fewer complaints, and fewer follow-up fires to put out
- Be able to say something honest without it becoming a legal or reputational headache
- Have a way to say something honest without it becoming a legal or reputational headache
- Feel prepared instead of panicked when the tricky brief lands on their desk
Managers: why you should send your colleague on this course
Every organisation has to deliver bad news eventually.
This course means your team handles it with a clear process instead of guesswork, based on sound thory and the latest thinking, protecting your reputation and saving you the clean-up when a difficult message goes out wrong.
About your course tutor
Hel Reynolds is the founder of Comms Creatives Academy, a comms creatitivy expert, and has been training communications professionals for over a decade.
She loves to geek out helping comms pros handle the messages that keep them up at night, the ones where tone matters as much as the words.
She uses psychology, real-world examples and a fair bit of straight talking to take the panic out of the process.
Delivering bad news feels like we’re dancing on a minefield, but there’s actually a structure you can learn once and reuse under pressure every time.
This course goes deep into that structure, with proper practice time on real, tricky scenarios, so you leave with a process you trust and a toolkit you can pick up the moment the hard brief lands.
Book your place now
Need to book by invoice?
Email lesley@commscreatives.com and tell us which course you’re booking on, and how many people you’re booking for.
Otherwise, buy it now below by credit card.
£499+VAT per person
(Comms Creatives Academy members watch for free)