WANTED: Writing coach
Do you need to find a writing coach for managers and executives? If you are a leader in training or human resources, you might.
Consider credentials. Don’t hire a soccer coach to motivate a swimming team. Don’t hire a specialist in organizational development to coach employees in telecommuting. Don’t hire a high-school English teacher to coach an executive.
Since no single consultant fits all organizations, look for an experienced coach to match your organization’s goals and the needs of your staff. Find someone who
- Listens to you describe your current situation.
- Agrees to create customized programs for your people.
- Works well with people at all levels of your organization.
I have recently coached these three professionals:
- Joe, a 29-year-old Temple University graduate from the Czech Republic, working in marketing for a manufacturer of sporting goods. I helped him hone his writing skills for communicating to young adults craving expensive sneakers.
- Tina, a 49-year-old human-resources professional whose recent promotion had her editing the writing of others on her team. After discussing kind ways to edit – using green ink instead of red, for instance – we agreed to create a style manual to guide all copy that emanates from her department. Now no one thinks of her as critical, because every possibility has been thought out and addressed.
- Margo, a 35-year-old recovering accountant shifting into the communications field. We worked on starting with catchy openers, using the active voice and identifying and deleting extraneous words.
Find the writing coach you need for the writing problems you face.
It is what it is.
It is what it is captured my attention the first three times I heard the phrase. Those three times might have been before 11 on a single workday. The only time the idiom grabbed me was when my nearly-4-year-old granddaughter was patiently explaining one of her daddy’s frustrating habits. When I asked why he behaved that way, she shrugged and said, aptly, “It is what it is.” Now, when I speak those words, I quote her.
A recent Accountemps survey cites iiwii as one of the most hackneyed terms in the workplace. It ranks with “at the end of the day,” a “disconnect” between people and “viral” phrases.
“When business or industry terms become overused, people stop paying attention to them,” says Max Messmer, chairman of Accountemps and author of Managing Your Career For Dummies. “The best communicators use clear and straightforward language that directly illustrates their points.” My 3 other favorites:
- Leverage: As in, “We intend to leverage our investment in infrastructure across multiple business units to drive profits.”
- Circle back: As in, “I’m heading out now, but I will circle back with you later.”
- Cutting edge: As in, “Our cutting-edge technology gives us a competitive advantage.”
Read more here.
Lesson to be learned: Choose other words instead of using clichés.
LBJ took the IRT
Remember those lyrics? “LBJ took the IRT”? They begin the “Initials” song in Hair.
I have recently learned two new abbreviations that also make me sing.
David, a member of the Philadelphia Writers Group, mentioned TLA. In Philadelphia, TLA stands for the Theater of the Living Arts. In the larger world, David says, it means a 3-letter abbreviation, such as USA, FBI and CIA (all of which appear in “Initials”).
So I was thrilled when Helen, whom I am coaching to improve her writing, offered me a four-letter abbrev that is new to me: HBCU. It stands for Historically Black Colleges and Universities. I Googled it and found hbcu.com. Wish I could work it into “Initials.”
What new or new-to-you abbrevs have you learned recently? Please send them here.
Client mandatories
I am coaching a young man at an advertising/public relations firm. We’re working on his writing. He writes memos referring to client mandatories, which I gently suggest is not a word. He is astonished. The firm uses the word so often, everyone on staff believes it exists. To them it describes the products the client has mandated that they supply.
What word have you — or has your organization — created?
Case study
Here’s a case study in writing coaching.
“Shirley” has a public relations job at a big nonprofit. She writes news releases, newsletters and internet copy, all poorly. She doesn’t know the active voice from apple cider, she confuses their and there and she can’t differentiate a good lead on a story from a bargain on a new set of dishes.
Her supervisors provide little guidance and no feedback on her writing. Shirley hires me to teach her to write better.
Shirley is a good student. She e-mails me pieces she’s working on, and we talk about improving this sentence or that organizational structure. For a few months, she pays attention. She never emits that satisfying “Aha!” sound that teachers love to hear, never indicates that she’s actually learning. But she continues seeking help.
Soon Shirley grows “too busy” to write the news releases on her desk. She e-mails me facts and hires me to ghostwrite her assignments. Sometimes she misses essential pieces of information. Often I need to ask what the story should be about. She passes off my writing as her own.
I don’t have an ethical problem with this situation, because many people hire ghost-writers. As long as she submits the required manuscripts to her manager on time, no one is the wiser. Nor, of course, does Shirley learn to write better.
For a year, Shirley is out of my life. Suddenly she reappears in my inbox with a résumé – again, many people pay for help here – and a gimmicky letter about herself to follow a job interview.
She is applying to manage internal communications at another big nonprofit. Her still-poor writing astonishes. If I edit her prose, I promote an inept candidate. If I don’t, she falls flat.
What’s a writing coach to do?
