Best Practices: Communicating Effectively: Write, Speak, and Present with Authority

Preface

How do you write effective e-mails? What can you do to make your reports more persuasive? If you have an important message to communicate to a colleague in Germany, should you adopt a casual or formal tone? When is it okay to instant message at work? How should you prepare a presentation? Why is it important to watch for nonverbal cues when talking with your boss, employees, or colleagues?

In this book, we distill the wisdom of some of the best minds in the field of business communication to tell you how to communicate effectively. The language is simple and the design colorful to make the information easy to grasp.

Quizzes help you assess your knowledge of communication issues. Case files show how people have addressed their own communication challenges. Sidebars give you a big-picture look at how to deliver your message more clearly and highlight innovative, out-of-the-box solutions worth considering(e.g., e-mail-free Fridays, anyone?). Quotes from business leaders and writing and communications experts will inspire you as you face your daily barrage of meetings, difficult conversations, e-mails, memos, reports, and letters. Finally, in case you want to dig deeper into the topic of communication and management, we recommend some of the most important business books available. The authors of these books both influence and reflect today’s thinking about communicating effectively and related management issues. Understanding the ideas they cover will inspire you as a manager.

Even if you don’t dip into these volumes, the knowledge you gain from studying the pages of this book will equip you with the right tools to communicate clearly every day—to help you make a difference to your company and the lives of the people who support you.

THE EDITORS

COMMUNICATING CLEARLY IN WRITING

You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.

—Lee Iacocca,

former CEO of Chrysler

What is your game plan, and does your team know it? Just like a coach in sports, you as manager are charged with guiding a team of individuals toward its collective goal. Successful execution depends on your capacity to communicate this game plan clearly.

You need to be sure all team members read from the same playbook. Each player’s role and responsibilities must be meticulously defined. The coaching and instruction you give must be delivered accurately and with the right timing. Nothing good happens if communication falters. A championship-caliber game plan is worthless if the coach sends the wrong signals to the players.

If you are reading this book to improve your ability to communicate, you obviously see the link between strong communication skills and career success. In this book you will find advice for developing your own communications playbook. It is not intended to be exhaustive, and its aim is simple: to provide digestible bites of information to help you gain confidence and master the art of both written and oral communication. No matter how high-tech and diverse communication technologies become, they can reach their full potential only when used by a good writer or speaker.

THE BASICS OF COMMUNICATING IN WRITING

The need to write clearly and thoughtfully arises in virtually every situation you face as a manager. Good writing, in fact, is one of the most highly prized competencies. An e-mail, memo, letter, or formal report each has its own special requirements, but fundamental principles apply to all business writing: planning before writing, using correct grammar, knowing your audience, understanding the purpose of your writing, striking the right tone, and revising and editing.

Research and Planning

Before you start writing, gather all the information required to craft an effective message. Consult whatever business intelligence you will need—such as sales forecasts, customer history, industry trends, and other applicable information—so you can back up your statements directly in your correspondence or report. For weighty matters, you may need to do more extensive research to buttress the points you intend to make.

Think before you write. Nothing worthwhile yields to human effort without a plan.

—L. E. Frailey,

author of Handbook of Business Letters

Whether research is needed depends greatly on your subject and the people to whom you are writing. Doing research at a library or performing a detailed search using the Internet is usually sufficient to back up your points with hard facts. In communications within a department or organization, such research may be unnecessary. But supporting your correspondence or sales materials to prospective customers with relevant business information helps win their confidence and can help generate new business.

Before you write, map out the information you plan to share and why you are doing so. Start by jotting down notes on paper and then highlighting the key issues you want to emphasize.

Dos & Don’ts

NOTE-TAKING BASICS

Distilling the most important information from a mass of material is easier if you work efficiently and deliberately. Here are some pointers:

Don’t frustrate yourself with excessive research.

Do jot down only the most pertinent information.

Don’t write sloppily and assume you will be able to read your handwriting later.

Don’t write complete sentences while taking notes (unless needed for clarification). Instead, jot down phrases.

Do use abbreviations, as long as you can understand them. Example: $3K instead of 3,000 dollars.

Do write special comments in the margins for later reference.

The note-taking process is helpful in two ways. First, the act of writing itself tends to stimulate ideas or concepts you had not previously considered—scholars call this emergent information. Second, seeing ideas in front of you makes it easier to sort out the most essential details and organize them in a logical order. Keep similar items and ideas together. This will help you recognize repetition or determine in what form the information can best be communicated.

Grammar, Language, and Style

Regardless of the form in which you are writing—say, a casual e-mail, a formal letter, or a report—you should always aim to write with clarity and simplicity. For example, rather than writing that your company is interested in aligning the potentialities of your company with our long-standing reputation as a global innovator, write that your company has a strong reputation as an innovator. We should discuss how we can benefit each other by joining forces.

In writing, less is often more—keep it short and to the point. Always use correct grammar and accurate language. If you feel this is one of your weak areas, keep a standard grammar and style book such as The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E. B. White by your desk.

Rules of grammar and writing were developed so that we could all understand one another. In contexts where accurate and respectful communication is important, these rules can assume greater weight than they do in day-to-day affairs. Some people are sticklers for minutiae when reading business correspondence. Here are some of the most common mistakes writers make:

Wrong use of contractions. It’s is a contraction for it is. Its (no apostrophe) indicates the possessive case of the impersonal pronoun. For example:

The hotline number is now operating. Its purpose is to provide better communication with our customers. It’s imperative that all messages left on the hotline be answered within one business day.

The contraction they’re and the plural possessive their are also