We need to make 2011 the Year of the Word – and women are well placed to take the lead in this.
For too long, businesses have treated writing as a soft skill, something admirable and nice to have, but not vital to the hard business of making money.
As someone who has worked with words all my life – as a journalist, novelist and corporate writer and writing trainer – I beg to differ. Words are powerful things, part of the very core of what makes us human, and now is the time for this to be recognised at work.
Words can work profound magic
We spend so much time wading through mediocre writing that we sometimes forget the awesome power of words.
They can work a profound magic on us for good or ill. Badly handled, they can lie prostrate on the page like so much lead type. Well put together, they can enlighten and move and thrill us.
Look how Bill Bryson used them to describe the grim fate of a little United States bird famous for its lovely song: “Its population numbers, never robust, gradually dwindled until by the 1930s the warbler vanished altogether and went unseen for many years. Then, in 1939, by happy coincidence two separate birding enthusiasts, in widely separated locations, came across lone survivors just two days apart. They both shot the birds.”
Of course, Bryson was writing about a very dramatic subject: the possible extinction of a species. But the principles of good writing can be put to use by anyone who writes for business.
Let us count some of the ways good writing can help
Firstly, good writing can save you a great deal of time. If a report gets to the point quickly and efficiently, you don’t have to spend ages wading through it. If the instructions from the new manager are clear and concise, it takes you no time to see what you have to do. If your team member has constructed a great sales pitch, you don’t have to spend ages knocking it into shape.
Secondly, it can avoid damage to the reputation of your organisation. People tend to judge an organisation by the quality of its written material. Unfair, perhaps, but true.
Thirdly, well-crafted words can be more influential. And that applies whether you are trying to get your staff to buy into a major change, or you want to sell more saucepans, impress with the quality of your thought leadership, make your brand hum with energy, educate citizens or raise more funds for charity.
Fourthly, it is an essential component of good leadership. It was Barack Obama’s extraordinary eloquence that convinced the American people to vote for a black president.
Why women can lead the word revolution
There are two main reasons why women can play a significant role in upgrading business writing skills:
Firstly, studies have shown repeatedly that women read more than men, particularly novels. For instance, The Observer reported in 2009 on a survey of 2,000 people in Britain that had found that nearly half of women are avid readers who reliably got through a long list of titles each year. Only 26 per cent of men fell into the same category.
Some experts see this as having its genesis in early childhood. Young girls can sit still for much longer than boys, says Louann Brizendine, author of The Female Brain.
“Girls have an easier time with reading or written work, and it’s not a stretch to extrapolate [that] to adult life.” Indeed, adult women talk more in social settings and use more words than men, she says.
Secondly, increasing numbers of women are rising to executive positions. There they are strongly placed to overturn the old order with its dull and convoluted business language, and vanquish empty buzzwords and the sometimes sinister management-speak.
More women are running companies, and marketing, communications and public relations are becoming ever more female-dominated.
Around 95 per cent of the corporate people who take my writing courses are women. This is partly because the majority of people I train are in the fields I mentioned above, but also, I believe, because of women’s greater interest in the world of words.
I’m looking forward to a new world in which vibrant and well-chosen words are seen as an essential part of doing business.
