Your Written Communication Will Leave a Lasting Impression

Your written communication will leave a lasting impression. Emails are read, then re-read, and forwarded. Mistakes in grammar, punctuation, and spelling will leave a negative impression among your co-workers, bosses, and clients. In some ways, written communication is more hazardous than verbal communication because it leaves behind a trail of evidence and may cement a negative impression of you.

Although it’s also important to be grammatically correct in your verbal communications, your written words will remind people that either you’re a good writer or you are not. Your writing is a lasting record that can be distributed widely and will serve as a constant reminder of your ability (or lack of ability). The quality of your writing will reflect on your job performance. Now that you are convinced that writing can make or break your career, keep reading to learn how to master this very important skill.

HINT: Always use an online grammar-checking tool such as Grammarly.com

 

Your Written Communications WILL Make or Break Your Career

The importance of your ability to write clearly, concisely, and correctly cannot be emphasized enough. For better or worse, the quality of your written communication will directly reflect on your underlying talent and ability. e better you write, the more competent people will think you are.

Consider this very common scenario: Your supervisor asks you to draft a presentation for an important meeting. It may be to introduce a new product, to analyze your organization’s competitors in a new market, or to research a new government policy. This is the first major assignment for which you’ve been given primary responsibility. Naturally, you are eager to do well and impress your supervisor and colleagues.

You begin with online research. You study data from a recent survey and analyze public documents. You read dozens of relevant news stories. After a full week of collecting and analyzing facts and figures, you are ready to document your research and conclusions in a presentation to your supervisor and colleagues.

While you may have done outstanding research and analyzed vast quantities of data, unless you can produce a high quality, written summary of your conclusions, your hard work won’t matter. You will be judged based only on the end product–the presentation. And if that presentation is poorly written, all of your research and analysis will fall under the same negative shadow. You cannot escape it. Poor quality written communication in the workplace is a career black hole —a nearly inescapable trap—that can break your career.

When you graduated, you may have felt a sense of relief that term papers and other written assignments were behind you. In fact, many graduates choose careers in accounting, engineering, or computer science because they didn’t like classes that required a lot of writing. If you are one of these people I have some bad news. As a professional in any industry, writing is one of the most important skills.

Writing is the primary form of workplace communication. So, if you think you are finished with writing because you are finished with college, think again. e good news is that like the other skills in this book, written communication can be practiced and improved.

Here’s more good news. Generally, the average quality of written communication in the workplace is just that—average. With some consistent practice and mastery of a few simple grammar and punctuation rules, the quality of your writing will improve and you’ll stand out among your peers.

High-quality writing is a requirement for being a high quality professional. Outstanding writing can help make you an outstanding professional. You gain a competitive advantage in your career by improving your writing skills. Improve this skill and your work will be noticed and your e orts rewarded.

Email Dominates Your Day

The task of emailing consumes about a fourth of the average worker’s day, according to a 2012 report done by the McKinsey Global Institute and International Data Corporation. A separate survey estimated that the average corporate email user sends and receives about 105 emails per day.

Despite the many efficiencies of email, the sheer volume means you’ve got to use this tool effectively or else it can dominate your workday. Consider these issues:

  • Emails can be issued at a rapid- re pace generating multiple responses for a single subject.
  • Emails can be distributed to hundreds (or thousands) of people in an instant.
  • Email communications have replaced many face-to-face communications. A study done by officebroker.com found that 68 percent of respondents preferred email to face-to-face communication.
  • People will read your emails at different times, so the “conversation” can get out of sync. This is especially true when more people are included in the thread. Also, consider the impact of different time zones.
  • Many professionals use their email inbox as their “to do” list and/or a project management system despite its inherent weaknesses for this purpose.  Do not use your email inbox as a task management system. It is very inefficient.

Use Email Effectively

When communicating by email, follow these guidelines:

  • Be cautious when using “forward.” Does the original sender expect you to forward it? When you send an email, are you sure how it will be handled? Will the recipient forward it to others? Be safe and assume your email will be forwarded.
  • Be judicious when using “reply all.” Does everyone in the thread need to see your response? Or would it be better to reply to the Sender only.
  • Be careful with the “Bcc” function (blind copy). It can be useful to maintain the privacy of recipients in a widely distributed email, but otherwise be cautious.
  • One method that may improve email efficiency is to say something like this: “I intend to do ________ unless you advise me differently by __________.” By explaining your intended next action, you will keep the recipient informed without requiring a response. Some people will appreciate your initiative while others may be uncomfortable with this approach, so check before employing this technique.

TOASTMASTERS INTERNATIONAL (TM)

When it comes to mastering public speaking, there is no greater resource than Toastmasters International. Toastmasters International offers its members a venue for practicing communication and leadership skills.

Clubs meet regularly and members fulfill different roles at each meeting. There is a proven curriculum of increasingly more challenging topics, techniques, and formats. Fellow club members evaluate speeches for each other. They also give support and encouragement to speakers of all abilities. Toastmasters In- ternational has grown to 14,650 clubs in 126 countries since its founding in 1924.

I encourage you to join Toastmasters. Each club has its own personality, so visit several clubs to nd the one that best suits you. Visit the Toastmasters International website to nd a club near you. https://www.toastmasters.org/

Reading List: Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation by Lynne Truss

Why read this book? This best-selling book about punctuation entertains while it educates. The English language is complex and punctuation can intentionally (or unintentionally) add meaning to a word. Consider the book’s title, “Eats, Shoots & Leaves” or an alternative “Eats Shoots & Leaves”—not a subtle difference. Punctuation is too easy to get right. You don’t want a mistake here.

Written communication can make or break your career – Part 3

High-quality writing is a requirement for being a high quality professional. Outstanding writing can help make you an outstanding professional. You gain a competitive advantage in your career by improving your writing skills. Improve this skill and your work will be noticed and your e orts rewarded. Here are two scenarios to illustrate the point:

SCENARIO #1:

Your assignment is to document the current process for handling customer service inquiries for your organization and to recommend improvements in a written report. To gather the information you need for this project, you speak with the manager of the customer service department, interview the five most experienced employees of that department. In addition, you review over one hundred complaints that the department received about poor customer service responses and study a white paper written by your industry trade association entitled Best Practices in Customer Service.

After you’ve collected the data, underlined dozens of key facts and statistics and analyzed the research, you are ready to write the report. Now imagine this—you’ve broken your arm and are not able to compile the report yourself. Your manager arranges for you to collaborate with a colleague. Would you rather collaborate with your colleague, Bill, who majored in English or your colleague, Kimberly, who was a math major? Even though the underlying work, including your data and research, is the same, which team—you and the English major or you and the math major—will likely produce a higher quality, written report?

SCENARIO #2:

You and your co-worker are given similar assignments—analyze and then write a report about the products offered by your company’s top competitors in the marketplace. You research the available products, read online customer reviews, study media reports, and analyze all other publically- available information you can nd. You spend over 40 hours on research and analysis. By your estimate, your co-worker has spent about half that amount of time. While you were skipping lunch and eating dinner at your desk, he was taking long lunches and leaving the office at 5 p.m. every day. The deadline arrives and you each submit your written reports. Your report is ten pages long and includes twelve graphs. Unfortunately, it also includes two typos and a few grammatical errors.

The deadline arrives and you each submit your written reports. Your report is ten pages long and includes twelve graphs. Unfortunately, it also includes two typos and a few grammatical errors. Your colleague writes a ve-page report with three key graphs, an executive summary, and no typos or grammatical errors. Which report will be more favorably judged? What assumptions will people make about the quality of the research that went into writing each report? What will people assume (rightly or wrongly) about the underlying skills of the person who wrote each report?

During the course of a single year, you could be called upon to write many reports, dozens of presentations, and thousands of emails, letters, and other correspondence. It’s not hard to see that if your written communication regularly contains grammatical errors and punctuation mistakes, is excessively wordy, or fails to effectively communicate the main idea, your performance appraisals will be negatively impacted.

Your written communication will leave a lasting impression. Emails are read, then re-read, and forwarded. Mistakes in grammar, punc- tuation, and spelling will leave a negative impression among your co-workers, bosses, and clients. In some ways, written communication is more hazardous than verbal communication because it leaves behind a trail of evidence and may cement a negative impression of you.

Written communication can make or break your career – Part 2

When you graduated, you may have felt a sense of relief that term papers and other written assignments were behind you. In fact, many graduates choose careers in accounting, engineering, or computer science because they didn’t like classes that required a lot of writing. If you are one of these people, I have some bad news. As a professional in any industry, writing is one of the most important skills. Writing is the primary form of workplace communication. So, if you think you are finished with writing because you graduated from college, think again. e good news is that like the other skills in this book, written communication can be practiced and improved.

Here’s more good news. Generally, the average quality of written communication in the workplace is just that—average. With some consistent practice and mastery of a few simple grammar and punctuation rules, the quality of your writing will improve and you’ll stand out among your peers.

Read Part 3 of this post –>

Written communication can make or break your career – Part 1

“It’s none of their business that you have to learn to write. Let then think you were born that way.” – Ernest Hemingway

Written communication can make or break your career. The importance of your ability to write clearly, concisely, and correctly cannot be emphasized enough. For better or worse, the quality of your written communication will directly reflect on your underlying talent and ability. e better you write, the more competent people will think you are. Consider this very common scenario: Your supervisor asks you to draft a presentation for an important meeting. It may be to introduce a new product, to analyze your organization’s competitors in a new market, or to research a new government policy. This is the first major assignment for which you’ve been given primary responsibility. Naturally, you are eager to do well and impress your supervisor and colleagues.

You begin with online research. You study data from a re- cent survey and analyze public documents. You read dozens of relevant news stories. After a full week of collecting and analyzing facts and figures, you are ready to document your research and conclusions in a presentation to your supervisor and colleagues. While you may have done outstanding research and analyzed vast quantities of data, unless you can produce an equally high quality, written summary of your conclusions, your hard work won’t matter. You will be judged based only on the end product, the presentation. And if that presentation is poorly written, all of your research and analysis will fall under the same negative shadow. You cannot escape it. Poor quality written communication in the workplace is a career black hole —a nearly inescapable trap—that can break your career.

Read Part 2 of this post. –>

SOCIAL MEDIA AT WORK – TOP 10 TIPS

There are a lot of rules about the use of social media in the office. Some are formal rules while others are less formal, but no less important.

1. Keep messages professional—related to your work, your organization, or your industry.

2. Use casual language, but use proper English that is clear and concise.

3. Share news links, trends, and other relevant information.

4. Interact with colleagues, clients, customers, and followers.

5. Avoid slams and unprofessional language.

6. Post only appropriate photos and images. If you are not sure, don’t post.

7. AVOID USING ALL CAPS AND EMOTICONS. It can be an- noying and look unprofessional.

8. Understand the terms of use for each social media site you use for professional purposes.

9. Find examples from social media experts in your industry and learn from them.

10. Be cautious about sharing information that may be sensitive, confidential, embarrassing, or illegal. Again, if you’re not sure, don’t post.

 

Adapted from my book, Career-ology: The Art and Science of a Successful Career, Chapter 4: Business Writing. Click here to download 2 chapters of the book for free. Available on Amazon today.