Top Three Ways a Business Writing Trainer Can Improve Your Business

Yes, you write every day, and so do all the members of your leadership team. Surely you don’t need training in business writing.

But maybe business writing training could take your team’s business writing to the next level. How? Training could help you reach your goals by teaching you how to:

•   Use writing as a strategic tool

•   Write for action

•   Address employee issues effectively

How strategic is your writing?

When you have so many demands on your attention, it’s easy to write reactively most of the time. You get a zillion emails; you answer a zillion emails. Pretty soon, you’re writing only to respond.

Writing strategically is a completely different experience. When you’re being strategic, you’re proactively sharing your vision for your business, inspiring your people, and laying out a plan for reaching the future you describe.

Of course, you articulate that vision in meetings. When you write about your vision, though, you give it a deeper life and a broader reach.  You can coax your employees closer to you and your vision by  offering specific answers to three strategic questions:

1.      Where are we now?

2.      Where are we going?

3.      How will we get there?

With a business writing coach, you apply new tools for planning and writing  strategic documents for starting many conversations. Your coach can help you rise above the daily focus on immediate management decisions and lift your vision from “worm-watching” to a future that hasn’t yet taken shape.

Do you write to drive action?

A business writing coach can help you focus your content on the decisions and steps your company needs to take to reach the future you seek. So many messages leave readers asking, what is this about? and what does she want me to do? There are tools for  clearly laying out specific tasks  that will accelerate action. People will know specifically what you’re waiting for them to do, and they’ll know what to watch for in your behavior. Change in the wind becomes change on the ground when your writing captures and drives the actions that will move everyone closer to your vision.  

Do you always address employee issues effectively?

In the present environment, with people videotaping random moments, commenting on social media at the slightest provocation and then retweeting half-baked thoughts of others, it’s probably better to address some issues in writing than in a spontaneous oral response. Your business writing coach can help you put into words exactly how you would like to handle issues that arise at work.

For example, suppose you have a new policy that some employees accept calmly, but that others feel is unfair. Your challenge is to make it clear why the policy is fair, and how it is the result of much thought and tapping the ideas of many employees. If you wade into the controversy to speak off the cuff, you run the risk of unsettling the calm employees and giving the disgruntled ones fodder for their complaints.

Your coach can help you remove verbal cues that give away your emotional involvement in the issue and make the new policy sound as normal as peanut butter and jelly. To prevent misunderstanding, isn’t it more strategic to write about the policy?

Would you like some help in attaining your goals?

Your business writing coach knows that many of the paving stones in the road from here to there are well-chosen words, delivered at the right time. It often takes a great deal of talk to get to that shining future. Well-crafted writing can smooth the way.

Try working with a business writing trainer even briefly. You could learn skills that will influence the way you write for the rest of your career—for the better.