In this world of technology, we need to read and write. Police officers write reports, Chefs and restaurant owners write reviews, business letters, and now are blogging too. Managers often ask teams to write the status of what they are working on. Performance appraisals often ask employees to write a self-evaluation, complete with performance goals. Every business person I have worked with since the last century has communicated via email.
It’s my experience that most folks don’t have training or confidence in how to put what needs to be said into writing. This not only causes miscommunication, it also reflects on job performance, projecting a lower image of competency than is reality. The gap in training and confidence also steals time and causes stress as people work and worry over how to express their ideas and issues in writing.
Even teachers have this problem.
Though enthusiasm and job commitment help to overcome hurdles in other situations, at the juncture of writing without confidence, experience, or complete training, enthusiasm, and commitment can often cause additional stress and be debilitating. Writers begin to self-edit before they have even started writing, and they get what folks call writer’s block. What they really have is a major case of stress cause by a fear of failing. It’s dangerous to miscommunicate in writing.
How to Lower Stress When Writing
I offer this checklist to help writers refocus, to bring their thinking back to the writing, it’s purpose, and the audience it will be serving.
- Make the work area visually clean.
- Think about the person that is the audience. If the audience is a group, imagine a prototypical individual from that group to write for. Let’s call that person your reader.
- Consider your reader’s traits and characteristics — know that your reader is intelligent, but doesn’t have the information you are about to share.
- Decide what you want your reader to remember. Write that out in words your reader might actually use to say it.
- Prepare notes — bullet points — to organize your thoughts around what you want your reader to remember. Most informal communication should convey less than three bullet points. One idea or bullet point is perfectly fine in an email.
- Use the right tool to communicate. Know the heirarchies of business communication. Understand which is most appropriate and effective for the information you have to share.
Instant Message > Email > Business Letter > Formal Proposal
Instant Message > VoIP/Telephone > Meeting
- Write up your message, using your notes and a clear mental image of your reader and the venue as you write.
Follow this checklist and you’ll find that stress will fall away. Writer’s block won’t be a worry, because you’ll know what you want to say, who you want to say it to, and how you want to say it. You’ll know the type of communication and the venue. You’ll be able to imagine your audience and get to what they need to hear from you to understand your message.
Almost always writer’s block is caused by the fact that we don’t know what we want to say or who we’re talking to.
Behind every Successful business is an Outstanding manager. –Perfect Virtual Manager
Liz Strauss
