Does most of the writing you do involve your mobile and social media apps? Whilst it is good to know how to ‘talk’ in the newest ways we have to learn how to communicate in different ways for different reasons from business emails, writing reports and text messages.
Miscommunication is the reason for a lot of disagreements within friendships, work and family life. This can be even more of a problem when we use written communication forms like texts, emails and even blogs and articles. There are certain things you cannot get across when things are written down, you can’t rely on body language or tone of voice and sometimes the smiley face emoji just wont do.
Know your audience
Before we start looking at exactly how to improve your messages we need to think about your audience (who the message is for) and the best way for you to share it.
Are you messaging your friend to tell them about your weekend, a group of people to organise a party or are you emailing your team to brief them before a meeting? Think about how professional you might need to be and how well you know the people you are sharing your messages with.
When picking how you get in touch with people think about how urgent the message is. In a business environment you might imagine that email is the best way to get in touch with people but remember that people work differently. Some people find it more productive to only check their emails 3 times a day or they may not be able to read them whilst travelling to meetings so texts and calls work just as well.
However you are contacting people make sure that you get the message right, when we text we often shorten words or add kisses (which you might want to rethink before you send to your boss!).
Improving your communication
So how do you make sure that you are always communicating well, that your emails are read and responded to and that you don’t end up upsetting or confusing people with your words?
Key messages and actions
To make sure that the message you are sharing is understood you need to be really clear what the key message is and what you want the action to be from the people who read it. We are firm believers in only having one key message and action. When we try to shoehorn too much in to a text, email or even a report it can be tiring to read. If you are sharing messages and highlighting everything as important and urgent that sense of what is important can easily be lost.
There will be occasions when you need to share more than one important message and that can be ok too if you do it well!
Break it down
Big blocks of text can look scary and get people lost. If we ever open up an email (or a What’s app that has the read more option) we can feel intimated and most often our response is to close it come back to it later when we have more time.
Making sure that you have clear headings and use bullet points to make key issues clear can really help to make text easier to read and understand. People reading your message are more likely to get to the end and remember what you said.
Be concise & clear
Keep things simple, even in the business world it is most important that what you say is clear. We can very quickly trip ourselves up by trying to use long words or to sound too overly professional. You need a level of professionalism of course so do not use slang or text abbreviations but at the same time no one should have to use a thesaurus to work out what you are saying.
If you are writing an important email it is good to write it once and revisit at least once more. Reading it aloud will often help to see where things are too long or confusing. When we first get to typing lots of things can flow out and we can often repeat our points, read over the email again thinking “can I make this simpler?”
Stay away from jargon too, we can use words so often that we don’t even realise they are jargon and we think everyone knows what they are – never assume that everybody does know.
Young Professional Challenge
We aren’t going to make you write out emails for practise but we want you to stop and think the very next time you are communicating (even if it is on your phone to a friend): think about who the audience is, what the message is and how clear you are being. If you start going through that process now you’ll find it far easier in the future!
