Communication skills at work

Post Reply New Topic

Since my boss wants me to get more involved into work communication lines I am also interested in more work communication skills (and acquiring them). In the past I was kept from more work related communication, because my previous boss questioned my communicative skills.

Thinking about my communication skills it is important how to communicate, but for me it is also important what to communicate to whom and when. Also it is important to me, how to use the mail system effectively. What do you write in your mail, and when do you use the To: line, the CC: and the BCC: line in the mail composition window in for example Google Mail or Outlook?

Knowing or starting to know these things makes feel me more useful at work than I already did. I feel, work related communication is a bit different from social communication (more related to social skills).

I have done several tasks, about 90 since the summer vacation. About 4 of them crossed the deadline (where the root cause is not me but elsewhere) and one has been canceled (due to an urgent task that could not be delayed, let alone canceled itself).

For having the task crossed the deadline, there is often a root cause that I want to find out, BTW.

What are your experiences with work related communication skills?

These are my suggestions, and are only intended to help:
The first thing I noticed about your writing is that you meander quite a bit. Business writing is concise, to the point, and purpose-driven. Your message and delivery should be crafted for your target audience.
I also noticed that English is possibly not your native language. If you are tasked with writing messages for an external or broad audience, you may benefit from having a native speaker proof read your work.
There are a plethora of resources available, including books, websites, and seminars, about business communication. I suggest you acquaint yourself with those resources and use them.
As a caveat to the specificity and pointedness of business writing, legal communications or communications that have legal ramifications should be ambiguous.
As with most things, you'll get better with practice.

About your email questions:
The To: line is what you use normally when sending a message to one individual.
The CC line is for when you want to include several people in your message.
The BCC line is for when you want to include several people, but their identity is confidential (other recipients don't know who is included in the BCC).
Be very cautious not to hit "reply all" when replying to an email that was sent to a group. Only do this if you intend to send a message to the entire group.

English is not my native tongue, indeed. Communication will be done in Dutch, my work language. There are different writing styles. In the above message I have a different writing style than I use for work communication. Teaching something by writing is different, for example, than just communicating something.

I mail things like:
- "H., the HDMI cable and the HDMI/display adapter, you were asking for, is now at my office. You can get it from there on next Monday." or:
- "I., the task you gave me, sealing 170 pages, cannot be completed on time, because of late delivery I needed for that task. I apologize for that" or:
- "I have ordered the following items at the 6th of November. Can you give an ETA (Estimated Time of Arrival) of the delivery?"
Or I go directly to the colleague and I communicate these things by speaking.

A while ago my boss asked to my peer colleagues and me to write a manual about how I complete my tasks. Later on I talked with the boss and asked about what language I had to use. For example: A pupil is ill and that fact must be input in the school administration system. I could:
1. write: "Insert the fact that he is ill," or
2. write a detailed lists of steps about what to do, for example: First click on this, enter this or that data, and then click on OK. Then scroll down to that item and wait until this or that tooltipped dropdown list appears, and click on that.
My boss told me to use the language in option 2: a detailed list of instructions what to do. Option 1 is for an experienced user of the school administration system, and option 2 is for a newbie.

If you are writing instructions for someone to following, it is a good idea to also include screenshots. Always put the screenshots in the same place, such as always flush right or always flush left. Or always centered.

If you are writing an email to one person about a group issue, it is often good to CC the other people in the group. This is a "transparent" method. As in, you are letting everyone be privy to the same information. An example of when you might use this would be if you were in a meeting with Ally, Brian, and Cara and Ally asked for a revision, you would then send the revision to all three and say, "Here are the revisions we discussed."

I don't think you would ever want to use BCC. I think most people just forward something to a third party if they want them to see it without the other person knowing.