1: Introduction to Business Writing

Chapter Objectives

The purpose of this chapter is to:

• Recognize the importance of practicing proper communication skills in business
• Discuss the difference between verbal and nonverbal communication
• Conduct audience analysis
• Identify writing purposes
• Employ strategies to build and maintain goodwill

Think about communication in your daily life. When you make a phone call, send a text message, or like a post on Facebook, what is the purpose of that activity? Have you ever felt confused by what someone is telling you or argued over a misunderstood email? The underlying issue may very well be a communication deficiency. There are many current models and theories that explain, plan, and predict communication processes and their success or failures. In the workplace, we might be more concerned about practical knowledge and skills than theory. However, good practice is built on a solid foundation of understanding and skill.

In this textbook, you will be introduced to the main aspects of effective communication:

• Analyzing audience and purpose

• Choosing the right medium

• Employing the "you attitude"

• Using plain language

• Using visual aids

• Communicating ethically

Source: Photo by Christina on Unsplash

Importance of Effective Communication

Communication is something we often take for granted but not often something we think to improve. And yet, being a good communicator can open doors for you as an employee, make you more valuable to your employer, and help you get ahead.

Think about the tree swing in Figure 1. The creation of that swing started out all wrong and then got worse from there.

Figure 1: Different interpretations of a project (Attribution: Business Communication Skills for Managers, CC BY)

If each tree represents a different version of the project, then we can assume there were different interpretations of what the customer wanted. Let's approach that process as though you were in charge. How could you have improved that result with better communication?

1. Meeting with the project sponsor: The sales associate of this tree swing met with the project sponsor, Mark, and heard his version of the customer's wishes. Mark very clearly said that he wanted a swing with three seats, one on top of another. However, this request does not make sense to the sales associate, which presents an effective communication opportunity. The associate could have asked questions, clarified and repeated back what Mark was saying. The associate could have told Mark that this kind of swing design was highly unusual and suggest that Mark double check with the customer to make sure that this is exactly what the customer is requesting. An opportunity to engage in effective communication with the customer was missed.

2. Specifying the project request: Here, the sales associate made another mistake. Rather than requesting three seats, the associate requested three ropes to secure the swing to the tree. This could have been another effective communication opportunity. The request should have been proofread and double-checked to make sure the request matched Mark's request, but that did not happen. An opportunity to ensure effective communication via reinforcement and repetition was missed.

3. Designing, production and installation: Here is where the project further deteriorated. The swing production team did not question the request for three ropes; they did their own thing with the concept and design of the product. The architect misunderstood the request completely. The production team reviewed the architect's request and knew the design was not functional, and so made their own changes. Finally, the installation team realized that the product wouldn't work without additional reinforcements, so they did what was need to make the product functional. This could have been yet another opportunity for effective communication. The teams did not communicate with each other and there was no follow-up from the sales associate either.

As a result, the manager, Gloria, is certainly going to be contacted by the unhappy customer, who is very likely to engage another company for the project and Gloria will be left to deal with a costly result of ineffective communication.

Verbal and Non-Verbal Communication

Although business writing consists primarily of verbal communication, it is extremely important to understand the vital role non-verbal communication also plays in business encounters every day.

Verbal Communication

Verbal communication is perhaps the most obvious and understood mode of communication, and it is certainly a powerful tool in your communication toolbox. Put simply, verbal communication is the sharing of information between two individuals using words. While we typically focus on speech while talking about verbal communication, it is important to remember that writing is also a form of verbal communication. After all, writing uses words, too!

Nonverbal Communication

Nodding, facial expressions, leaning toward the speaker to show interest—all of those are forms of nonverbal communication. Body language can reinforce your spoken message or it can contradict it entirely.

There’s a myth that says that when you speak, only 35 percent of your communication is verbal and 65 percent of it is nonverbal. That’s not entirely true because so much depends on the context and situation. It is, however, absolutely true that nonverbal communication can make or break your message.

Here are some types of nonverbal communication and the effects they can have on the success of your communication: facial expressions, gestures, proximity to your audience (personal space), handshake, eye contact, and appearance. Nonverbal communication reveals a lot about you as a communicator and how you relate to other people. It pays to be aware of the elements of your nonverbal communication so you can maximize the impact of your message.

Audience Analysis

The communications landscape changes over time, but one criterion for successful communication remains the same: the importance of knowing who your audience is and understanding their needs.

Imagine you want to give a presentation to people in your department at work. You likely know your colleagues’ personalities and what they expect of you. You might know their education levels and you are sure they understand all of your company-specific jargon. You think delivering your message should be easy, except many of them are so comfortable with you, they decide to skip your presentation because you took for granted that they would be interested. On the other hand, if you had to present to the board of directors, you might need to do more homework on who they are and what they expect from you. In other words, it is always important to get to know your audience as much as possible to give yourself the best chance at communicating successfully.

Source: Photo by Matthew Osborn on Unsplash

Types of Audience

Your success as a communicator partly depends on how well you can tailor the content of your message to your audience. Your primary audience is your intended audience; it is the person or people you have in mind when you decide to communicate something. However, when analyzing your audience you must also beware of your secondary audience. These are other people you could reasonably expect to come in contact with your message. For example, you might send an email to a customer, who, in this case, is your primary audience, and copy (cc:) your boss, who would be your secondary audience. Beyond these two audiences, you also have to consider your hidden audience, which are people who you may not have intended to come in contact with your audience (or message) at all, such as a colleague who gets a forwarded copy of your email.

Determining whether your audience is internal (within the company) or external (outside the company) will help you decide what medium you should choose to communicate your message. While email is appropriate for both internal and external audience, memos are only suitable for internal audience. Letters, on the other hand, are largely used for external audience and are used for internal audience only when the content of the message is very important and we wish to maintain a formal tone. You should also always keep in mind the position the recipients of your message holds. For example, if you communicate "upward," writing an email to your supervisor, you will most likely adopt a different tone than when you communicate "laterally," sending a text message to a coworker.

To help you get to know your audience even more, work through a set of steps that, together, spell the acronym AUDIENCE. These steps will give you an idea of what questions to ask and what information can be useful in better connecting with your audience.

AUDIENCE

A = Analyze: Who is/are the recipients of your message?

U = Understand: What is their knowledge about your intended message?

D = Demographics: What is their age, gender, education level, position?

I = Interest: What is their level of interest/investment in your message (What’s in it for them?)

E = Environment: What setting/reality is your audience immersed in, and what is your relationship to it? What is their likely attitude to your message? Have you taken cultural differences into consideration?

N = Need: What information does your audience need?

C = Customize: How do you adjust your message to your audience?

E = Expectations: What are your audience’s expectations?

The better you can understand your audience, the better you can tailor your communications to reach them. To understand them, a key step is to perceive clearly who they are, what they are interested in, what they need, and what motivates them.

Purpose of Your Message

When you communicate with an audience, you are normally trying to achieve one or more of the three outcomes:

1. Inform - raise their awareness and/or understanding about a situation or issue
2. Persuade - convince your audience to do something or take some action
3. Build Goodwill - establish a positive relationship with the audience

Writing to inform and writing to persuade should be familiar tasks for you, but writing to build goodwill is most likely new. It means focusing on the reader and the reader's needs. In professional writing, this kind of reader-centered writing is called the "you attitude" or "you-view."

Five Major Characteristics of Effective Business Messages

• Specific - crafting the message around specific references to the situation that it addresses will make your audience feel that you care and that you pay close attention to the case at hand.

• Sincere - a goodwill message will come off as genuine if it is near to what you would say to the recipient in person. While that does not mean that you should be overly informal, you should avoid excessive formality as well as clichés and idioms. They obscure the message you are trying to convey and frustrate the reader.

• Audience-Centered - rather than focusing on yourself, refer only to the person or people involved and pay attention to their needs. The spotlight should be on them, not you. Avoid telling stories about how you experienced something similar in an attempt to show how you relate. Do not tell them how you feel about a particular issue what you would do if you were in their shoes. Also remember to pay attention to the tone of your message.

• Concise - the message should be presented as briefly and succinctly as possible. People do not have time to read lengthy documents. Provide only information that the audience needs to know. At the same time, don't make the short length of the message deter you from setting aside time to draft it and carefully proofread it.

• Prompt - Move quickly to write your message so that it follows closely on the news that prompted it. If the audience has to wait too long for your message, it will make you look like you can't manage your time effectively or it will give impression that you do not care enough.

Importance of Active Listening

All of the rules and strategies presented above are crucial when we try to compose an effective, impactful message. It is important to remember, though, that the first rule in business is to know your customer. If you don't know what they want or need, as illustrated in Figure 1 at the beginning of the chapter, you can't successfully supply that demand and no one is going to buy what you have to sell. If you don't actively listen to what your customers or managers say they want, or fail to piece together what they don't know they want from their description of a problem they need solved, then you may just find yourself always passed over for advancement. Business "intel" gleaned from conversation is the lifeblood of any business, as is the daily functioning of anyone working within one.

Fortunately, everyone can practice being a more effective listener by making themselves aware of their own listening habits and actively seeking to improve them. If you problem is that your mind wanders, you must train yourself to focus on the message at hand.

Active Listening Strategies

• Work on being mentally present.
• Maintain strong eye with the speaker to show active interest.
• Employ nonverbal cues to demonstrate to the speaker that you are paying attention.
• Devote your brain's full processing power to the message at hand.
• Think of questions you can ask for clarification.

Figuring out when to talk and when to listen also requires social skills. If you get impatient when someone else is talking, you must learn how to practice some impulse control. Take turns. By hearing others out and reserving judgment, you may learn something. If you are dealing with someone who monologues and doesn't know when to pass the ball, read the person's nonverbal cues to capitalize on the right moment to jump in with the right thing to say. On the other end of the spectrum, it takes skill to know how to draw people who are shy communicators out of their shell. Asking questions and showing respect for the speaker's ideas will help you engage in productive communication. Professional success follows from keeping the communication channels open to solve problems collaboratively one conversation at a time.

General Business Communication Tips

• Communication forms a part of your self-concept, and it helps you understand yourself and others, solve problems, learn new things, and build your career.
• Effective communicators choose a form and organizational pattern based on audience and purpose.
• The choice of words, images, and medium sets a tone and defines a message.
• The "you-attitude," which means focusing on the needs of the audience rather than on your own, will help you communicate effectively and build or maintain goodwill.
• The receiver of a message plays a significant roel in ensuring the the goal of understanding is achieved, which means active listening in the case of spoken message and careful reading in the case of written message.

All links live as of July 2021.

This work "Introduction to Business Writing" is a derivative of “Professional Communications” by the Olds College OER Development Team, "Communication at Work" by Jordan Smith, and "Business Communication Skills for Managers" by Freedom Learning Group used under a CC BY license. "Introduction to Business Writing" is licensed under CC BY 4.0 by Iva Balic.