Career Trends: 5 Ways to Improve Your Written Communication

Edition: February 21st, 2022
Curated by the Knowledge Team of ICS Career GPS

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• Excerpts from article by Amy Blaschka, published on Forbes.com

Do you admire (or envy) a colleague who can effortlessly fire off an email that’s well-written and well-received? The good news is that great communicators aren’t born; they’re created through purposeful practice.

Your ability to communicate effectively has many benefits, such as:

• It helps you connect to others
• Enhances your relationships
• Builds trust
• Paves the way for career success by bridging gaps between you and your clients, colleagues and partners.

Here are 5 tips to improve your written communication:

1. Keep it simple.

• Written communication is rife with unnecessary complexity. Maximise the power of your words by simplifying them.
• Clarity is the foundation of effective communication.
• When you’re not clear, or use industry acronyms and buzzwords, you’ll force others to do the difficult work of guessing your intended message.
• But when you’re clear, everything becomes easier.
• People understand you, what you offer, your value, what differentiates you, how you can help them, and how they can assist you.
• Clarity helps others know, like, and trust you.
• Swap jargon for plain language to increase the odds of your message being received well and understood.

2. Aim to be concise.

• If every email you send includes a “TL;DR” (too long; didn’t read) summary, you’ve got some work to do.
• When preparing a piece, think concise and compelling.
• It becomes unnecessarily complex when you try to cover too much ground in your communication.
• A good rule of thumb is that each piece of written communication should have one clear takeaway.
• This forces you to get specific about and hone in on your message.
• When you want to deliver a message, make brevity your friend by eliminating extraneous material and getting to the point.

3. Consider your audience.

• Communication is only effective if your audience receives your intended message. So, remember this golden rule of communication: it’s not about you.
• Far too often, we assume that everyone communicates the same way we do, forgetting that our intended audiences may not live and breathe in our business world.
• Consider that even two members of the same team may require a slightly different message tailored to the individual.
• So, before you fire off that email, take a beat to put yourself in your audience’s shoes, consider their wants and needs, and adjust your communications accordingly.

4. Choose your words wisely.

• Your word choice sets the tone and elicits an emotional response — two things critical for effective communication.
• Consider writing the way you speak for the most natural communication style, especially in non-technical formats.
• Incorporating your everyday language into your repertoire opens you up to a more descriptive, interesting lexicon that allows you to infuse a bit of personality into your writing, capturing your audience’s attention and ensuring that your message will be more memorable.
• Remember that how you communicate is just as important as what you communicate.
• Action-oriented language conveys a strong, clear tone and propels people to do something rather than remain idle.
• Where possible, minimise passive language and use active voice to add more power and intention to your words.

5. Proofread before sending.

• Ever sent a message only to realise later it was full of typos?
• Mistakes happen, but if they’re more the norm than the exception for you, they’ll weaken your ability to communicate.
• Protect yourself against communication mishaps by proofreading.
• Before you post, use online tools to review and improve your writing, or enlist the help of an editor to put your best foot forward.
• But be forewarned: even if everything is grammatically correct and contains no misspellings, you could still have problems with using the wrong word.
• So, to stave off those embarrassments and catch any unintended word choices, read your written communication out loud before hitting the send button.

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Have you checked out yesterday’s blog yet?

Education Trends: 4 Psychological Reasons You Should Write Down Your Worries

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(Disclaimer: The opinions expressed in the article mentioned above are those of the author(s). They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of ICS Career GPS or its staff.)

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