Writing Confidence at Work, Part 5: Standards

Think about what we call standards of good writing. What does that even mean? Does it mean write like me, your manager? Write like the company-provided templates? Write like the standard that we have created for you? 

Whatever it is, do not automatically consider it a standard of good writing. Writing style is arbitrary. I'd bet that you and I would disagree about what defines good writing style. Does James Baldwin have good writing style? Does Joan Didion? Lydia Davis? I would say yes. If you would say no to any of these three writers, then we would disagree about what constitutes good writing style. Yet these three writers have quite different approaches to style. 

Then how do we determine whose judgment of good writing style matters? By how much we respect that person's writing and that person's opinion. If we know they have set a standard that we can aspire to, then their opinion matters to us, for their influences have shaped their style. Those people whose writing style we respect most likely read a lot and learn from what they read. For this reason, I cannot stress enough the value of reading eclectically, something I have noted repeatedly on this blog. Through reading a broad range of writing styles, we discover our own standards and replicate them in our own writing assignments.

But remember: Standards are arbitrary, though excellent writers establish them, and those are the writers whose lead we should follow.

Writing Confidence at Work, Part 4: Efficiency

Writing efficiently means accomplishing the writing task with the least waste of time and effort. When we talk about good writers, we generally refer to their quality: the inventiveness of ideas, fluency of syntax, and precision of diction. We don't talk enough about efficient writers, but we should. To prove my point, let's do a thought experiment.

Let's say you manage two business analysts, both fast typists. Kerry is 35, a native-born English speaker with a business degree from the United States, and Kim, 35, learned English in America at 22 with a business degree from Colombia. Kerry consistently produces excellent reports and proposals but does so at half the speed of Kim, whose quality is weaker than Kerry's. Kim's reports are as comprehensive and organized as Kerry's, but the sentence structure and word choice are usually off. Which analyst would you choose to write a critical review in a flash for upper management? 

I would choose Kim. Kerry would get the job done flawlessly in four hours, and Kim with a bunch of linguistic errors in two hours. I would be able to fix Kim's flaws in 15 minutes and have an hour and forty-five minutes to spare for other business matters.

What is Kim's trick? Confidence. Having the right perspective about the writing process. Certainty that the draft will be good enough for review. Trust in the manager to improve it. Not stressing over the finished product. Understanding that writing quality is subjective. Now, if Kim were uncommitted to improving the quality, then I would eventually indicate this lapse on her performance evaluation and recommend that she improve her writing and her attitude. But speed is so important in businesses where people get hundreds of emails a day. I'll take Kim for any writing task knowing that she'll eventaually improve in her writing quality under my guidance. Kerry's problem, on the other hand, is psychological, and I am not a psychiatrist.

Efficiency is as valuable as effectiveness, and it starts with confidence.

Writing Confidence at Work, Part 3: Feedback

Q: Should you get feedback on your writing?

A: Yes. And you should too.

Q: When?

A: Always.

Q: What do you mean by always?

A: At every step of the writing process?

Q: What steps?

A: In step one, planning, when you're listing ideas to include in the document. Ask your manager and teammates, should I include just the problem or the impact, history, and cause of the problem? Just the solution or the options and benefits of the proposed option? You might be surprised by their answers. They might say, be sure to include the advantages and disadvantages of each option including your proposed one, and the methods you used in determining the options. Step two, drafting based on your plan, seems like a solitary activity, so why seek feedback? Won't that request slow you down? Maybe, but the rewards outweigh the minor drawback and will enable greater efficiency during future writing assignments. Ask, is a rough, single-paragraph draft all right for review? Should I use a preexisting template? If you get stuck in the middle of the draft because you can't think of an advantage of an unpreferred option, ask for someone's opinion. They might see something that was right under your nose all along. In step three, quality controlling, you revise, edit, and proofread. If unsure when revising, ask, did I leave anything out? Should I delete anything? Should I move any section higher or lower? When editing, ask, is that sentence overlong? Did I choose the right word here? Is a question better than a command there? Ask someone you trust to proofread for you. They are more likely to pick up your overlooked errors. Of course, offer yourself as a resource for those you ask when they write complex documents. 

Q: Why bother with all this feedback?

A: This give and take among staff go a long way toward making a proficient writing organization. It also helps writers understand that feedback is not a means of punishment or embarrassment, but a natural element of the writing process. Ultimately, it builds writing confidence.

Writing Confidence at Work, Part 2: Perfectionism

You want to write the perfect feasibility study, procedure, policy, or status report. You think you have but wonder whether it will get the expected reception. Maybe some of those on your distribution list won't even read it. Others might react indifferently to it. Maybe the most important readers will be downright critical of it. You review the document one more time and see why you have had those thoughts. You can make so many improvements, starting with the forcefulness of that opening sentence all the way to that last uncommitted paragraph.

You look at the draft an hour later. Now you believe the style is much improved, but another thought surfaces, You believe you've sacrificed style for substance. You go back to your original outline to find that, in fact, you have not removed any detail, but the most essential content is now buried in the middle of overlong paragraphs. You decide to rearrange information to make the key points more prominent. But now the internal logic of the piece has run amok.

You get the point. Perfectionism. You've got to stop somewhere; you've got to press send sooner or later. You can be sure that no matter how well you write a work-related document, you will find ways to improve it as soon as it drops into your files. You are constantly learning, the business is continually changing, and the industry is revolutionizing. Perfectionism is pointless.

Aiming for perfect is a noble goal, so long as you don't let such a pursuit take over your better senses. If you keep focusing on not hitting your mark, on failure, you might as well give up. Just produce. It's just a bunch of words.

Writing Confidence at Work, Part 1: Subjectivity

Possessing a confident mindset matters to writing success at work. Writing ranks as one of the most  common activities in most jobs, so we can't spend even a moment of our workday feeling uncertain about our writing capability or apprehensive about approaching a big writing task. That's why, starting with this installment, WORDS ON THE LINE starts this six-part series dedicated to the concept of writing confidence. 

Why do so many good writers, or at least adequate ones, lack confidence in their writing? I meet them all the time in professional workshops. They openly express their insecurities about the quality of their reports, analyses, or proposals. They wish they could compose faster, fluidly, painlessly. If writing amounts to most of their daily work, then their job is torture.

Confidence is an attitude. And attitudes are subjective, at least as others perceive us. One person's idea of an assertive tone is another's aggressive, one's straightforward another's rude, one's humility another's disengaged. It would help people who beat up themselves over their perceived inadequate writing skills to start with this mindset. Even the most celebrated writers in the world have received bad reviews.

Writing style is also as subjective as any art, song, cuisine, or fashion. We cannot deny that some documents are well written and other poorly written, but the same well written document for one reader might not do for another. Start with that thought the next time you write something important on the job.

New AI Webinar and Course Available

I have just added to my catalogue a new two-hour webinar and full-day course, Using AI as Your Writing Assistant. The basis of this program is my article "Using AI to Improve Writing Creativity, Productivity, and Quality," which appeared in ACS Chemical Health & Safety for the American Chemical Society.

The course focuses on these objectives:

• Using artificial intelligence in work-related writing.
• Plan with AI to enhance creativity.
• Draft with AI to increase productivity.
• Revise, edit, and proofread with AI to improve quality.
• Identify ethical implications of AI usage.

I can offer "Using AI" in multiple formats and durations and customize it to the writing of your organization. If this program is a fit for you and your team, you can contact me at Phil@PhilVassallo.com. 

Talking Up Writing

When I see teams talk up their writing among each other, I see good writers employed in a publication organization. This assertion calls for qualification of three terms: talk up writing, good writers, and publication organization.

Talking up writing is easy enough to explain. Let's say Anita, Brian, Carlos, and Diana—who call themselves the Fab Four—work on the same team in a large company. Anita has never written an internal proposal, but she needs to draft one for management. She asks Brian to share a successful one he wrote last year so that she can use his as a template. Brian, on the other hand, needs to write a monthly meeting review, but he's bored of using the same boilerplate style. So he asks Carlos to read his meeting review before submittal for suggestions on what he might add to or delete from the document. And while Carlos is writing a new procedure, he asks Diana if she can think of a way to make a particular sentence sound better. Meanwhile, Diana, who is crafting a necessarily negative response to a query, asks Anita to look for tone problems before sending it. Just the fact that these staffers are talking up their writing gives them deeper insights into each other's approach to writing and into the writing process itself.

Describing good writers is a tougher nut to crack. To keep it simple, we could say that management almost always accepts the writing of the Fab Four without comment. Or management also turns to the Fab Four to draft their own messages before editing them to reflect their own style. Or the Fab Four's supervisor asks them for their opinion on a business-critical email. Or employees in other departments of the company seek the Fab Four's input at any point of the writing process, from planning the scope of a white paper to drafting a status report on a massive project to reviewing an audit report for precision,  clarity, and conciseness. If any of these situations apply to you and your team, then you are good writers.

Perhaps the easiest term to qualify is publication organization, because these days virtually every company is one. This term does not apply only to book publishers. Does your business create and archive blogs, business forecasts, business plans, disaster plans, procedures, audit reports, meeting reviews, internal and external proposals, project plans, status reports, and completion reports? If yes, then you work for a publication organization. Everything you do must be in writing, so you and your fellow employees are no less writers than novelists, playwrights, and poets. In fact, you and your team likely write more than "published authors"; therefore, you need every writing tip possible to improve the productivity and sharpen the quality of all your documentation. 

Talking up writing at the workplace has many benefits. It will enhance everyone's writing experience and tighten the team camaraderie.