You will learn the fundamentals of good business writing, how to structure and quantify your results. Links are made to the following writing situations and tips are given to engage that specific type of reader: Day to day business writing / Blogs / Board reports / Web-copy / Newsletters / Reports / Technical documents / Email / Social media platforms / PowerPoint slides
Your trainer will decide how much time is spent on these topics based on the needs of your group. They will not make you sit through content that isn’t relevant.
Business writing for leaders
Writing is an essential skill for today’s leaders. As a leader you need confidence that your message is received as you intend. You need to coach the people around you on what good looks like and how to achieve it. You also require a keen eye for how your organisation is perceived. Leaders require vigilance and keen writing skills to audit material published electronically. They have to know what is out there as a permanent record.
All this reflects on your personal and company brand. It strongly influences how others see you. Good business writing skills demonstrates values such as quality, care and attention to detail. Most of all it shows that you respect your reader. Readers like that.
There is a lot of pressure placed on today’s leaders to get it right. But what happens when you aren’t sure yourself? Leaders often attend our workshops. Many lack confidence in their ability to create engaging documents. We frequently hear that writing skills were left out of the school curriculum for certain year groups. A Director of Holst experienced this herself.
It is common for leaders to tell us they have no idea what we are talking about when we refer to concepts such as the active and passive voice. We painfully watch people go silent when asked the definition of an adverb. We hear them lament about how let down they feel by their tertiary education. They tell us that the formula of “volume over quality” has left them at a clear professional disadvantage.
We listened to our business leaders and created our one day Engage Your Reader writing skills course to meet their needs. We know that professionals are busy. We want to respect the precious time of our participants and have filled this writing course with powerful tools that get great results. We ensure concepts are explained clearly. We present a clear logic as to why we have selected techniques we teach. We create a safe environment full of practice for leaders to learn and understand. Once shown they never look back! That’s why we love this workshop. We see real transformations take place. Wow.
Learn techniques to prepare your writing to engage your reader
You will even learn the elements of a good style guide so you can create an internal standard if that is missing from your organisation.
Prepare:
- Learn techniques to focus your writing on your reader
- Quantify clear targets to measure your business writing against
- Make decisions on how your output will look
- Organise your content to achieve great results
All on one page!
Write:
- Discover handy tips to get the job done
- Overcome challenges often experienced in business writing
- Know how to get into your own personal ‘writer’s flow’
Engage:
Learn the tools of the trade including:
Grammar basics
- Some basic grammatical terms
- Common grammar traps
- When to use a colon versus a semicolon
Readability
- Understand how to quantify a good result
- Learn what you need to do to achieve this outcome
- Understand the nature of sentence structure and the impact it has on your reader
Tips when editing
- Learn to proof read like a pro
- Understand what changes you need to make and why
- Discover shorthand tips for marking up your changes
Pull it all together
Pull all your learning together with your trainer on hand to help and coach you. You are welcome to work on your on documents to gain the most out of this time. Or if you prefer, your trainer will have plenty of material you can work on.
The Engage Your Reader checklist and action plan
Finish the day with your Engage Your Reader Checklist to ensure you remember everything you have learnt. Your trainer will encourage you to create an action plan to continue your development back at work.
