Writing For Impact

Almost everyone in business has a horror story of how a mis-interpreted or mis-addressed email caused a situation to escalate dangerously. As we communicate more and more quickly, and we increasingly manage long distance business relationships, everyone needs to write more clearly and effectively.

We write proposals, reports, plans, emails, new business letters and PowerPoint presentations every day. Almost every one of these messages is intended, directly or indirectly, to persuade someone to move toward “yes.” The style of our writing nudges readers toward or away from that goal, no matter how good the content. And differences in career hierarchy, in personal backgrounds, even in gender, influence how people perceive our written words.

Effective writing doesn’t come naturally to everyone. But everyone can follow simple guidelines to make their writing have greater impact. In this workshop participants learn how to let their personalities illuminate their writing, how to organize any piece of writing for greatest impact, and how to tailor writing for the people who will read it.

We also review the few grammar rules everyone needs to know, the uses and abuses of PowerPoint, how to use verbs to make the writing sing, how to communicate bad news, and the five biggest mistakes that occur in business writing.

Participants are encouraged to bring to the workshop examples of particularly good and bad writing they’ve seen recently, as well as examples of their own writing to work on during class.