Verified against ChatGPT · 2026-08-14
Draft an internal promotion announcement that doesn't accidentally sting the people who didn't get the role
Writes an internal announcement for a promotion or role change, calibrated to the specific interpersonal context so it reads as genuine recognition rather than a corporate press release, without stirring resentment among people who applied and weren't chosen.
The prompt
Ready to copy — highlighted parts are example details you can swap.
Draft an internal announcement for the personnel change below. Match the tone to how this specific team actually communicates, not a generic corporate HR voice. WHAT'S BEING ANNOUNCED Internal promotion of a senior individual contributor to Team Lead. BACKGROUND ON THE PERSON AND WHY THIS DECISION WAS MADE She's been informally mentoring the two newest hires for months and was the one who redesigned the on-call rotation that cut weekend pages in half. AUDIENCE AND CHANNEL Company-wide Slack #announcements channel, ~180 people, mostly people who don't know her directly. SENSITIVITY TO MANAGE Two other people on the team also applied for this role and were not selected; both are still on the team she'll now lead. Write an announcement in three parts: what's changing, in one direct sentence up front rather than buried after a long preamble; specific, genuine detail about why this person earned this — a real accomplishment or pattern of work, not generic praise like "hardworking and a great team player" that could describe anyone; and a brief, natural note on what happens next (reporting line change, transition timeline, who to direct related questions to). If a sensitivity is named — other internal candidates, a team that's been through recent turmoil, a person whose promotion might read as favoritism — do not address it by adding a defensive disclaimer paragraph explaining the decision process; instead, write the announcement so its substance (specific, earned detail) makes the reasoning self-evident without needing to argue for it. Keep the length appropriate to the channel: short and direct for a team Slack channel, slightly more complete for a company-wide email, but never longer than it needs to be to convey genuine specific recognition. WHAT NOT TO DO Do not use the phrase "we're excited to announce" or other stock corporate-announcement openers. Do not list the person's full resume or years of tenure as the justification in place of a specific accomplishment. Do not thank "everyone who applied" in a way that reads as a consolation line pointed at people who didn't get the role — if that needs to be communicated at all, it should happen in a separate, private conversation with those specific individuals, not folded into the public announcement. OUTPUT FORMAT The announcement text itself, formatted for the stated channel, plus one separate short note (not part of the announcement) suggesting what the manager should say privately to anyone who applied and wasn't chosen, before the public announcement goes out.
Customize
Optional — swap in your own details for the highlighted parts above.
Why this works
The mechanistic problem with a generic corporate announcement template is that it substitutes stock phrasing ("excited to announce," "great team player") for the actual, specific evidence of why a decision was made — and it is precisely the absence of specifics that reads as suspicious or political to an audience that includes people who might have wanted the outcome to go differently. Making the announcement's substance carry the justification, instead of adding a defensive paragraph explaining the decision process, works because a defensive explanation implicitly signals that the decision needs defending, which invites exactly the scrutiny and second-guessing it's trying to prevent, whereas a specific, concrete accomplishment (redesigning the on-call rotation, mentoring new hires) is self-evidently a reason and doesn't read as an argument being made. Explicitly banning a "thank everyone who applied" line in the public announcement addresses a common but backfiring instinct: naming that other people applied, even generously, publicly signals to the whole company that this was a competitive process with named losers, which is a worse outcome for the passed-over candidates' dignity than simply not raising it at all — the actual acknowledgment they need belongs in a private conversation their manager has with them before the public post goes out, which is why the prompt separates that into its own private-note output rather than folding it into the announcement itself. Matching tone and length to the actual channel (a Slack post is read very differently than a company-wide email) prevents the common failure of over-formalizing a genuinely warm piece of news into something that reads as impersonal HR process to an audience that knows the person as a colleague, not a personnel file entry.
What you get back
Maya's moving into the Team Lead role, effective next Monday. Over the past few months she's quietly redesigned our on-call rotation and cut weekend pages in half, and she's been the person the two newest engineers go to when they're stuck. If you've got questions about the transition, reach out to her manager directly. Private note: before this goes out, her manager should tell the two other internal applicants directly and specifically what they'd need to show next time, separate from this announcement.
Verified against
ChatGPT GPT-5.1 · 2026-08-14
Changelog
- 2026-08-14 — Initial publish, verified against ChatGPT GPT-5.1.
Need this built into your business?
If a prompt isn't enough — what Scult builds, built and maintained for you — that's Scult's day job.
EXPLORE WHAT SCULT BUILDS
