12 Conquer written communications

 

There aren’t many things as important to a successful career as our ability to communicate effectively with our fellow human beings. But effective communication requires a level of thoughtfulness and practice that many of us lack. Fortunately, you can take some straightforward steps to make your own communications more professional and compelling.

I want to start with a crucial point: this chapter is about communicating. Writing and speaking are two media through which communication can take place, but in this chapter, I’m going to focus on written communication. Nearly everything you learn in this chapter will apply to chapter 13, which is about verbal communication; I just find writing to be a little easier to conquer, so I’m starting with that topic.

12.1 Communicating is telling a story

The purpose of communicating is to convey information from one person to one or more other people. If people were computers—infinitely patient, absolutely unselfish, with perfect attention spans and absolutely perfect recall—communicating would be easier. But people aren’t computers: they have their own priorities, they lose interest in things, and they don’t have perfect memories. That’s why being able to communicate well requires you to do more than just spew information at someone: you need to package your information in a way that will best achieve the outcome you’re hoping for.

A co-worker at a former company once raised an issue in a team meeting:

12.1.1 The rules of storytelling

12.1.2 Applying storytelling to business communication

12.1.3 What about mundane, everyday communication?

12.2 Facing our fear of communicating

12.2.1 Analyze the causes of your fear

12.2.2 Address the causes of your fear

12.2.3 Conquer fear in written communications

12.3 Applying structure to your storytelling

12.4 Practice, practice, practice

12.5 Common written defeaters

12.5.1 Avoid passive voice

12.5.2 Prune that flowery garden

12.6 Action items