The second business communication competency is clear, which means making messages easy for your receiver to interpret and act on. Being clear is one of the traits almost universally identified by academics, professionals, and employers as a necessity for effective business communication. Whether in a 20-word social media post or a 20-page formal report, being clear is essential to accomplishing your goals. Clear messages are important for several reasons.
First, clear messages are easier to understand and act on. Most business messages directly request or indirectly support some kind of necessary action: questions need to be answered, instructions need to be followed, or decisions need to be made. When your messages are clear, your receivers will be able to understand the necessary information for taking action.
Second, clear messages are easier to scan, read, recall, and reference. People in business read for instrumental purposes—they need to be able to get work done. Because people are busy, they want to scan messages to see what parts, if any, they should pay attention to. If they need to read the whole thing, they want to be able to read it (or skim it!) as quickly as possible. They also want to be able to go back to the message at a later time and read only the parts they need. When you carefully craft your messages to be clear, you help your receivers process your message.
Third, clear messages are more efficient. Think about some of the unclear messages you’ve received and how much time you wasted either rereading the message multiple times to try to figure it out, asking a colleague to help you interpret it, or responding back to the sender with questions of clarification. Also think about how much time you wasted—and how much frustration you created—trying to follow instructions that weren’t clear. Business communication expert Paula Lentz calculates that a company with 1,000 employees can easily waste more than $1.5 million of employee productivity every year just on clarifying internal email messages.
Finally, clear messages are more persuasive. At the most basic level, clear messages persuade people to act simply because they can easily understand what you want them to do and why. At an advanced level, you can use well-crafted, clear messages to persuade your receivers to accept your point of view or to act on your suggestions.
The bottom line is when your messages are clear, you are more likely to meet your instrumental goals as a communicator. As an added bonus, when your messages are clear, your receivers are more likely to see you as being clear-thinking, logical, and intelligent. Of course, that means you need to take the time while you are creating the message to be clear-thinking, logical, and intelligent. Below are some ways to help you improve your clarity in writing. In the next chapter, we’ll explore ways to improve clarity through formatting and look at how to format common business documents.
Identify the Central Idea
A good business message should advance one clear, central idea. In general, this central idea should be your instrumental goal. So, if your instrumental goal is to ask your manager for a raise based on your performance, that request should be the central idea of your message. You may bring up evidence or sub-points, but your message should remain focused on your request for a raise.
Having a central idea is key to effective communication. Particularly with emails, letters, and other correspondence, introducing multiple topics may lead to important information being lost or questions not being answered. If you need to send your boss an update on a project with one client and you need to address a problem with a different client, it would be much clearer to send two separate messages—one for each client. That way, each email can be addressed separately, and the problems with one client won’t distract your boss from your success with the other client.
Cluster Information Coherently
The strategy for building points is to cluster information into internally coherent points. Clustering refers to the grouping of similar ideas. Internal coherence means that any points and sub-points you make should “stick together.” Another way to think of internal coherence is that each point also should be a single idea. For instance, if you were to write a letter of recommendation, all the things you want to say about your employee’s work ethic would be in one point, and all the things about his or her data analytics ability would be in another point. You wouldn’t want to mix those ideas together, as that would make your message harder to follow. Follow these tips and tools for clustering information coherently.
Write each cluster as a short and focused paragraph, sticking to a single topic each. You may have been taught in school that a paragraph must be at least three sentences long. In business communication, however, the danger is more often that paragraphs are too long. Sometimes paragraphs can be as short as a single, clear sentence that makes a simple point.
Write Short Sentences
The shorter a sentence is, the easier it is to understand. Of course there will be times that you will need to write long sentences. But if you can find ways to rewrite one long sentence into two or three short and clear sentences, your message will be much clearer.
Use Active Voice
Active voice is also clearer than passive voice. This means that you make clear who or what is performing the action and what action was performed.
Passive Voice: “The package was delivered by Bill.”
Active Voice: “Bill delivered the package.”
Active voice is not a hard and fast rule, however. Passive voice can be effective in communicating an action when you don’t know (or don’t want to emphasize) who performed the action (for example, “The package was delivered” keeps the focus on the package).
Use Proper Grammar and Punctuation
Paying attention to the smallest details of your message will also help the overall clarity. Following grammar and punctuation rules may seem nitpicky and unnecessary. However, those rules provide clarity because they help establish shared meaning. Failure to follow grammar and punctuation rules can lead to confusion, misunderstandings, incorrect actions, or loss of credibility. In your business messages, missing or incorrect punctuation or unclear grammar can cost you time and money if your receivers misunderstand your message.
Other Tips for Clarity: (consider using for Chapter 4, Delivering your message)
Choose Clear Words As a business communicator, your job is to make sure that each word you choose means what you want it to mean and that your receiver will understand it correctly.
Define Terms If you use a term that your receiver may not know, include a definition, example, or other kind of explanation. Without a definition, you are putting a burden on your receiver to look it up or risking that your receiver will not understand your message.
Explain Acronyms If you use an acronym, on its first appearance in your message spell out the full name and put the acronym in parentheses immediately following it. For instance, “The Marketing Task Force (MTF) has been assigned…” At that point you can use the acronym exclusively.
Avoid Jargon Try to avoid jargon. Of course, some jargon will be impossible to avoid, especially in internal business communication. But the more you can use terms that all your receivers will understand, the clearer your message will be.
Use Simple Words Shorter and more familiar words tend to be clearer than longer or more unusual words. Consider this example: “Pertaining to our discussion of yesterday, it would be advantageous to allocate additional resources until we reach the optimum parameters.” While all of those words are English, the meaning of the sentence as a whole can be lost in the length and complexity of the words.
Use Precise Words Choose words that are as precise as needed to get your point across. Sometimes a very basic term will work, such as when you point someone to the “red” rental car. Other times, much more precision is necessary. There is a big difference between saying, “We have not reimbursed employees for tuition” and “We do not reimburse employees for tuition.” That one small word can dramatically change the meaning of the message and could generate much confusion.
Clarify Ambiguity Ambiguity occurs when a string of words could reasonably mean different things. For instance, scheduling a meeting at 6 o’clock could mean 6 a.m. or 6 p.m. Or it could mean 6 in New York, 6 in Santa Clara, or 6 in Tokyo. Other times, an ambiguous term can lead to even more disastrous results.
Fix Vague Referents A vague referent occurs when you substituted a noun with a pronoun, but it is not clear what noun your pronoun is supposed to represent. Some of the words to look out for are He, She, They, It, This, That, These, Those. When you have a sentence with any of those words, take a closer look. If it isn’t completely clear what the referent is referring to, fix it by putting the noun back in.
Attributions:
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Business Communication: Five Core Competencies Copyright © 2023 by Kristen Lucas, Jacob D. Rawlins, and Jenna Haugen is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.