ENGL 106: Written Business Communication

Direct feedback is a response that comes from receiving comments from stakeholders. In a professional relationship with stakeholders, it is of utmost importance to get your message across clearly and concisely. The goal is to have clear communication take place in one exchange. However, based on the topic and its complexities, this may be unrealistic. Therefore, communication on a topic may have to occur in a series. A few phone conversations, a few -email, a posting on social media or text exchanges, or a few face-to-face encounters. It is this direct feedback, whether through written, nonverbal, interpersonal, and/or oral communication that you must assess to evaluate your professional communication effectiveness. Here is an example: You post updated instruction about your company’s new convection oven. When you come back to the posting four hours later, there are 30 comments. As you scroll through the comments, and find three inquiries about the oven and 27 comments and questions about key features and the specifications about the convection oven. You thought this information was covered in the instruction. The postings serve as the direct response to your writing and provides a way for you to assess its effectiveness. Indirect feedback is a response that does not come directly from the stakeholder. It resembles the grapevine. The stakeholder receives the message, but instead of providing feedback to you, the stakeholder will provide feedback to others and it comes to you second hand. In other words, you may receive comments, email, or information from individuals within your organization about what customers have told them. For example, customer services representatives may receive a phone call about the instruction of the convection oven. Or stakeholders may communicate with their friends and family about the oven. Since information is not communicated directly to you, the reliability of the information may be limited; however, it is important to assess.

One technique writers must master is conciseness. What does conciseness mean for the business writer? First, it is important to understand that conciseness does not mean sacrificing content and meaning for the sake of a short message. Conciseness means including the needed information—explanations, details, and examples-- without including unnecessary word. Conciseness means writing in the active voice instead of the passive voice. The result of the active voice is it eliminates unnecessary words. For example: The article was written by Jamie Swartz. Jamie Swartz wrote the article. When the subject of the sentence performs the action, the result is an active and concise sentence. Conciseness means eliminating redundant pairing. For example, first and foremost; each and every; Conciseness means eliminating unnecessary phrases For example: “We here at”; “due to the fact that”. Conciseness means reducing propositional phrases. Propositional phrases can lead to wordy constructed sentences. Refrain from writing sentences with multiple appearances or uses of “at,” “for,” in,” and “on”. To increase the effectiveness of your writing, incorporative a concise writing style.