Communication Skills: Techniques for Leaders and Team Members

Oakland, CA, January 13, 2015 (Newswire.com) - Writing skills remain a critical aspect of both leadership and teamwork in the workplace. US employers recently ranked leadership, teamwork, and written communication skills as the top three professional abilities they hire for. These three skills are strongly linked. With the right books, HR managers and individual professionals can quickly improve all three skills together.

“A strong work ethic” lagged three to eight points behind writing and leadership as a hiring priority in a fall 2014 survey by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. Diligent effort is beside the point when a team member can’t send concise status updates or clear requests for information, or when a manager can’t unite a cross-functional team with a compelling vision.

I was able to apply 100% of Write It Well's techniques toward improving my communication style and effectiveness. Their training and workbook helped me develop a successful business plan and deployment strategy for my program.

Don Taylor , Hewlett-Packard Technology Solutions Group, Headquarters Presales

Write It Well is the leading developer of content on business writing; the consulting firm has 35 years of experience and offices in California and Singapore. Managing Director Natasha Terk is the author of The Write It Well Series on Business Communication.

The series fosters teamwork and leadership skills across the full range of writing that professionals need to produce:

• Concise, clear work email
• Resumes and cover letters to land a job
• Performance reviews to help HR set goals and track performance
• User-friendly, well-organized reports, procedures, and technical writing
• Proposals to pitch services and land high-stakes projects

Check Point Software Technologies Director of Corporate Marketing Martin Johnson said, after a training, “Write It Well’s workbook laid a foundation for improved writing across the board at our multinational company. Just about everybody in the organization writes, so there’s always room to improve our image by improving our writing.”

“Like all businesspeople, I’ve wasted countless hours reading through confusing emails, websites, and RFPs,” Terk says. “Business writing should never leave people guessing why you just led them through a dense forest of details. I help our training clients and individual readers plan how every minute of writing time on the job can accomplish a clear, specific goal.”

Google Director of Corporate Communications David Krane said, after a training on email, “This workbook should be required reading for new entrants to the workplace.”

HR managers around the world hire Terk’s firm to foster leadership, teamwork, and communication skills for their employees. The workbooks have been equally useful across a range of Write It Well clients:

• From small businesses to multinationals
• From individual readers to large teams
• From new hires to seasoned managers

Millennial Branding reported in 2012 that a full 98% of US employers require communication skills from employees. All of Write It Well’s training engagements reflect a need to keep employees’ communication skills sharp to protect a client’s bottom line.

“Each of our books helps readers match every single document to a specific business need,” Terk says. “If your email’s subject line is irrelevant, a busy team member may not bother opening it. And site visitors won’t have time to guess about your leadership potential if your About Us page buries crucial info.”

She adds, “You’ll also choke off business opportunities if your proposal doesn’t spell out why people should work with your team. Clients have hired us after learning that a long-winded, badly planned proposal lost them years of potential project work.”

Terk’s books show how team members and managers can accomplish a variety of tasks:

• Make complex analysis crystal clear
• Send user-friendly updates to keep project management successful
• Explain innovative benefits in language a general reader can understand

Terk says, “Any professional can use these books to figure out what readers will need to learn, hook their attention right away, and make it easy for them to cooperate on a specific business task. The books include the same communication techniques we teach our clients for saving time and sending effective messages.”

She adds, “With the right planning, you can always harness your writing to a specific task that you, your team, or your employer need to get done. That kind of streamlined work means every single minute you spend writing will advance your business goals.”