How To Write Effectively
Career Tools
This episode of Career Tools provides actionable strategies for professionals to improve their written communication. The hosts focus on tec
Key takeaways
- Utilize the BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) method to place the most important idea at the beginning of a message.
- Transition from passive voice to active voice by ensuring the subject performs the action to increase directness.
Main topics
- BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front) technique
- Active vs. Passive voice
Notable quotes
Short words are best in the old words when short are best of all.
Conclusion
Effective writing is not about being a novelist, but about using simpl
Transcript preview
Speaker 3 (0:00) Welcome to Career Tools. Speaker 2 (0:02) This is Sarah. And this is Amanda. Today's podcast, How to Write Effectively, part one of one. As always, our content has been crafted by humans and is certified by Proudly Human. The questions that this cast answers are, how do I improve my writing? What tools can I use to improve my writing? And how will I know when my writing is better? If you want answers to these questions and more, keep listening. Speaker 1 (0:32) Most professionals think they know how they come across, and most of them are wrong. The MT-DISC is a behavioral assessment tool that shows you exactly how your communication style lands with the four behavioral types you work with every day. Only 20 minutes to take, $30. Actionable guidance you can use in your next meeting. Get your MT-DISC at manager-tools.com forward slash. MTDisc. That's M-T-D-I-S-C. Speaker 3 (1:07) All right. So, Amanda, today we're talking about something that I think, I mean, if I were new to the Manager Tools community, I would think, really? Seriously? How to write effectively? How hard is that? Right. Yeah. It's something that seems so straightforward. And of course, Manager Tools would have a podcast for that. You know? Speaker 2 (1:27) That's Speaker 3 (1:28) exactly it. We have to have a Speaker 2 (1:28) podcast for everything. Exactly. That's exactly it. Speaker 3 (1:30) So here Speaker 2 (1:30) we go. Right? And the Speaker 3 (1:32) thing is, folks, most professionals who want to get promoted don't. really even think that being a good writer matters. I mean, writing? Who writes anymore? Right. Okay, yeah. And I get what you're saying, but what about emails? And what about performance reviews? Things like that. I mean, haven't you ever read things that you had to read and then reread them and then reread them and then still not be 100 % sure you really know what that person was saying? Yeah. And the reason that experience has happened to you is That's bad writing. Yeah. Speaker 2 (2:06) It's that email. Yeah. It's that email. From that person, I would say. It does matter. It does matter. And to be a manager, you must be a good writer. If you can't be good, you must at least know how to avoid the poor writing. And too many professionals try to solve this problem with big words or complex sentences, thinking it makes them sound smart. Uh-huh. Yep. Well, that's definitely the wrong way. In fact, Churchill may have said it best, short words are best in the old words when short are best of all. Speaker 3 (2:44) Exactly. What's that other saying, Amanda? It's about writing, I wrote you this long letter because I didn't have the time to write you a short one. It's something like that, right? Speaker 2 (2:57) The suggesting of the fact that more words and fancying it up doesn't necessarily make Speaker 3 (3:02) it better. So, folks. In today's cast, we're going to share a simple but powerful tool for improving your writing now, like today. It can work for everyone, even our international members, not just English speakers today. Speaker 2 (3:18) Just to be clear with everyone, we don't believe that this tool will make you Shakespeare or Tom Wolfe or anyone on that level. Speaker 3 (3:25) No, no, no, no, no. That's not what we're doing here. Speaker 2 (3:28) This is not a college English course, right? We believe that we can improve any professional's writing and noticeably. even significantly, but we're not going to try to make artists or novelists or authors out of anyone here today. That's exactly it. Speaker 3 (3:47) And it won't surprise longtime Manager Tools community members, but it may surprise some new to the Manager Tools community people that some of the writing techniques that we're talking about today are ones we've learned from the U.S. Army. And folks, if you'd like, you can Google Army Effective Writing, and you can find a U.S. Army document that talks about some of the things we're going to address in today's cast. Speaker 2 (4:12) So what we're going to cover today is first, put your most important ideas first. Then, use an active voice. Thirdly, eliminate commas. Then read your writing out loud. And lastly, use the writing clarity index. Exactly. Speaker 3 (4:33) And we're going to start with, in Speaker 2 (4:34) my opinion, the most important part, which Speaker 3 (4:38) is put your most important idea first. Now, folks, first off, we can't say this is the most violated rule, as you're going to see from some of the rules that we've got coming up here. But we can say that this change alone. will be the single most impactful part of today's guidance to your writing. When folks apply the Clarity Index to writing the first few times, and we're going to talk about the Clarity Index as we go on in today's cast, when we get to the tool talk, if you will. When people apply the Clarity Index, at the beginning, they're often embarrassed at how much better their writing can be because of something as simple as starting with the most important idea first. Speaker 2 (5:21) Remember, writing is a form of communication. And for all of you longtime listeners or for those new folks, communication is key. We are very big on communication at Manager Tools. And we know that when we communicate, we're trying to persuade someone else to agree with us. If they don't know what we are trying to get them to see or know or agree to, they can't agree and we can't achieve our purpose. We're not going to get that result that we want. Pretty straightforward. But yeah, yes, that's exactly it. When we hide our main idea, we make it harder for the listener or reader. Furthermore, many of our readers will assume that we're hiding our main idea or key points because we're not confident about them. You don't bury things that you're confident in, right? Right, exactly. And we definitely don't want to give that impression. So putting those main ideas first show that we are, in fact, confident of what we're trying to get across. Speaker 3 (6:14) Now, folks, some of you may be familiar with our podcast. We have another podcast that centers around this put your most important idea first concept. The podcast Speaker 2 (6:25) name, which I will link to on today's podcast page, is called Creating a Good Bluff. Speaker 3 (6:30) You can think of the putting most important idea first synonymous with BLUF is the acronym, bottom line up front. And when it comes to the employment, of this technique. Essentially, what we'd recommend you do in order to figure out what that most important idea is that you should put first, after you've done writing, read what you've written and then ask yourself, what's the main idea? Like, what's my topic sentence? And whatever that is, either write that at the front of the message, sometimes in bold or underlined or something like that to highlight it. Or if you find the topic sentence somewhere buried in a paragraph, just move it to the front of the paragraph. Speaker 2 (7:23) I feel like this goes back to like early structure of writing. Yeah, it really does. You Speaker 1 (7:28) first Speaker 2 (7:28) learn how to write Speaker 1 (7:29) a Speaker 2 (7:29) paragraph, your topic sentence, your three details to support it, and then you reiterate it. So it should be at the top. It should Speaker 3 (7:36) be