Leadership is all about professional communication skills. How to make yourself sound clear, consistent, and engaging when expressing your thoughts and ideas? The best way to do that is to reflect on your own messages and improve the weak spots.
The spoken word is not that easy to analyze, but everything is quite different when it comes to writing. Writing practice helps you present your goals and requests in a structured and comprehensive manner, giving you the material to focus on — your text. The same applies when you’re doing employee appraisals/performance reviews, or giving recognition at work.
Strong writing skills develop your style of speaking and, therefore — thinking.
If you want to be considered as a leader in your team, you should master the art of persuasive writing.
What makes a written message really effective? To craft a good one, you need to learn to look through other people’s eyes. This is called empathy, and when you have an advantage in that, you consider other viewpoints and perspectives, making your messages clearer and more engaging.
If you have problems with interpersonal skills, written communication can improve them a lot.
When working on your texts, you need to keep your audience in mind, building a detailed image of your readers. With regular writing practice, you will get used to think about their possible reactions, predict them, and, therefore — influence. This is something every leader needs to master. When writing for your colleagues and partners, make sure to keep these questions in mind:
Train yourself to write well-structured and relevant texts. When you stick to organization in your writing, you stay concise and deliver only those facts that are important. Your attention to the structure will sharpen the way you think and build your arguments in both spoken and written messages.
When delivering a message to your readers, you need to create a picture in their minds. Writing practice allows you to experiment with style, flow, sentence length, descriptions, and organization.
Effective writing is clear and rich writing.
Clarity and bright language are skills you develop when you try different ways of expressing the same thing, and writing can help you discover new forms. An ability to find the best language is priceless for a good leader.
Writers strive to avoid unnecessary superfluity. To avoid making their texts cloudy, they prefer to use short words instead of tortuous ones and write clear sentences instead of those overcomplicated with jargon (see what I did there). Otherwise, your message can get buried under confusing language.
In the worst case, your readers will suspect that you are trying to hide something with those tricky constructions and unclear wording.
At this point, great leadership and efficient writing coincide. Successful writers strive for powerful and honest language. Successful leaders strive for the same honesty because they want to be open when revealing their aims and ideas.
Trying to sound smart to manipulate people’s opinion about you is a trap. Smartness is about openness, not blurriness. Polishing your writing language in this sense will make you a better speaker, writer, and leader.
It is hard to believe that a person who doesn’t care about the accuracy of revealed information can be a leader. You cannot expect that your team will follow you blindly without testing and overthinking your decisions. Both readers and writers must support their words with facts to sound convincing.
Your audience must be assured that you are smart, knowledgeable, and competent. Be careful — in case they suspect that you were not accurate enough at least once, they can stop perceiving you as a leader forever. Writing practice is connected with background knowledge and investigation. When you devote time and effort to accurate research, this commitment transforms into your leadership philosophy.
So now you know why writing is essential for your leadership success. A written word is a powerful instrument that allows you to connect with other people, prove your credibility, and express your ideas clearly.
These writing principles help you discipline yourself, encouraging you to be transparent and honest with your audience. They improve your thinking, teach you to keep up with the logical flow of your speech and sharpen your understanding of communication as it is.
Polishing your writing language in this sense will make you a better speaker, writer, and leader.
The skills and principles of great writing are the same you need to lead other people. So learn and incorporate them into your leadership style!
Jeff Blaylock is a blogger, writer, and personal tutor. He guides students on his website, providing them with professional assistance on various topics, including leadership. Jeff’s writing career is focused on article writing, training, and counselling services.
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