Last updated on 2019/11/05
Let’s take a few minutes and talk about communications in the business world. As the team I work with knows, I strongly believe that communication is one of, if not the most important element of having a strong team, a strong organization, and a happy and fulfilled role. Communication is how you get through the clutter, provide clarity around objectives and status, and avoid the messiness of office politics.
There are many ways to communicate. Verbal, nonverbal, and written are primary methods of communication. This post is focused on improving your written communications. When people write it is easier than speaking to avoid tendencies. You know, that improvisational ability to add the word “Uh” every 3-4 spoken words? However, sometimes tendencies do show up in writing. In the business world that can certainly come across as unprofessional. While writing blog entries about my ideas and my thoughts it is difficult to avoid overuse of the “I” in my writing. While these are my thoughts and they are coming from me, stating that “I think this” and “I did that” all over the place do not make for a very smart writing style. Tendencies like this also do not show well in a professional environment. Let me try and give you an example. In the next two paragraphs I will demonstrate first an overuse of this personal pronoun and then a secondary example without using it at all. See if you can tell a difference.
I really like talking about writing because I have not always been good at it. I have always written a lot for work – most Engineers that I have seen or that I have known have to and for many reasons. In my time as an Engineer I have written documentation, I have written code, I have written emails, and I have even written specifications for many things. I believe that writing is a critical function to being a successful Engineer.
While attempting to communicate examples of both appropriate and inappropriate writing styles for business communications, it is appropriate to provide ample illustrations of many styles. This provides the reader with visual lessons that they can use to attempt to identify potential tendencies that may reveal overuse patterns or other unconscious inclinations.
See what I did there? Just for kicks, how about we reverse the tendencies for both of the preceding paragraphs?
Expressing communication regarding writing is enjoyable especially when one has not always performed well at this task. From personal experience in writing copious amounts for different job functions, observations of other Engineers also shows a preponderance of written communications as one aspect of the Engineering role. This role has included writing documentation, code, emails, and specifications. Writing is a critical function for a successful Engineer.
I like to tell you about examples of both good and bad writing styles for business communications because I believe it is important to show you these many examples for comparison. I believe that this provides you with visual lessons that you can use to attempt to identify potential tendencies that can show overuse patterns or other unconscious inclinations.
Now these were actually harder to write than I initially thought they would be. This shows the difficulty in changing your writing style, but it can be done with practice. Here are three big ways to improve your writing in the business world and present yourself more clearly and effectively.
Write What You Want To Say Right Now, Stop, Then Re-Write What You Really Want To Say
This method is getting used right now for this post. To use this approach, start by simply not trying to format or think through your message. Just vomit it all out onto your screen and say what you feel. This proves to be a very effective means for generative an authentic message but does not always generate the message that you really need to send. Oftentimes this technique expresses a lot of emotion or carries a tone that isn’t particularly professional. That is OK! Once you get down this initial pass feel free to step away for a bit to relax and reset. This works for not only emotional emails but for blog pasts as well. After some time you can go back to the message and re-write it as a dynamic and forceful communication. Editing your own work after the fact is an amazing skill that can really put some polish on your delivery. I have used this scheme successfully for angry emails and also for posts like this one. While writing this paragraph I paused to consider the next line to write and ended up rewriting bits and pieces of what was already here. This resulted in changing the start of a line from “I have written many blog entries…” to ” While writing blog entries…” and in doing so I have cleaned up my tendency to overuse the “I” pronoun.
Use a Thesaurus
This trick is one that I cannot stress enough both how easy it is to use and how much more effective it can make your communications. This can be seen throughout the paragraph above. The paragraph starts by introducing a method. That word, “method”, is great but I did not want to reuse it throughout the paragraph. The repetitive use of one term is something to try and avoid. Utilizing a thesaurus allows for the meaning to be conveyed throughout a message without repetitive re-use of a single word or idea and doubles as showing off a larger vocabulary which is a big positive for competent communications. In the second paragraph above is the statement “To use this approach…” which started out as “To use this method…”. To avoid this re-use, I pulled up thesaurus.com, typed in the term “method”, and selected an alternate word to use here that would fit with the existing sentence. This was used in the third sentence (“…effective means…”), the fourth sentence (“…this technique…”), and further on (“…used this scheme successfully…”). In each of these instances the term “method” could have been used, but by using the thesaurus the overall flow and depth of the message is greatly enhanced.
Brevity is the soul of wit
In the business world, it is very important to understand how to communicate with people, especially those above you on the corporate ladder. This is one of the more meaningful lessons that I have learned, and I will not forget the specific incident that taught me the value of brevity. There had been a pretty large issue in production. This was the type of issue that was quickly escalated to the upper echelons of management due to the showstopping nature of whatever it was. Honestly, I don’t even remember the crux of the issue, just the results of the communication on the back side. As I was Director of Engineering at the time, the responsibility to addressing this issue fell to me. After gearing up to go fight the fire, the engineering team was able to get things addressed and per my normal process, I went to write a summary and confirmation email. I remember spending quite a bit of time on the email, with multiple revisions. It contained a concise summary of the problem, the immediate corrective action steps, and the long term solution that was implemented to prevent the issue from occurring in the future. Production was back up and running and this communication provided all of the clarity needed to understand the problem and build confidence that it was addressed properly!
Nobody read the email. It is possible that someone on the distribution list read through the whole thing, but if they did nobody asked questions or commented on it. The primary recipient of the communication, the COO (Chief Of Operations) pulled me aside later and made a big impact on me with his message. At the time, I was a newly minted Director of Engineering. I was building my skills around communication and my ability to distill technical terms down into simple language for general consumption (a very important skill for an Engineer). While the message I wrote was not overly long and overall it was fairly concise, if printed out it would probably have filled most of a full page. When talking to the COO about this message he stated in as many words that (paraphrased): “Kevin, I didn’t read it. I got over 100 emails a day. If you can’t tell me what I need to know in a couple of sentences then I am not going to have time to read all of that.” Wow. At the time, it hit me like a punch to the gut.
Does this mean that I am suggesting that you condense all of your business communications down to a few sentences? Of course not! Is the above a full primer on business communications? Definitely not. What I want to convey here is that in order to be the best that you can be, try and understand your own writing tendencies, try and understand your target audience, and use wording to provide effective and readable communication. The above examples are three disparate skills that I have gathered together as an introduction into business communications. Each one deserves additional comment and consideration. For now, they serve as an initial introduction to the massively important skill set that is communication. Thanks for reading!
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