“Show me the numbers!” “Oh yeah, says who?” “Can we really trust this analysis?” Expect your receivers to express doubt at times about your claims and conclusions and demand better proof. It’s not that they don’t trust you. It’s that they need to make sure that the evidence supports a recommended position before taking action. The stakes are simply too high to proceed without evidence.
Imagine what would happen if business people didn’t demand solid evidence. Without comparative sales data, they might pay too much for a property. Without recent investor reports and industry forecasts, they might make poor investment decisions—perhaps selling a stock too soon or hanging onto another too long. Without checking on references, they might hire the wrong senior leader or pass up a junior-level employee who could be a star. Without customer feedback, they might miss out on the opportunity to fix a small problem before it turns into a big problem that hurts the brand. Without all the facts in a dispute involving an employee, they might end up making a decision that could result in a lawsuit. The list goes on.
Because the stakes are high in business, competent business communicators know that they need to be evidence-driven. Evidence-driven refers to the ability to select, interpret, and present credible and relevant data in a compelling way.
Take Stock of Available Evidence
Before jumping in, some terms need to be defined. Evidence refers to the material you use to support the probable truth of your claims. There are two key words in this definition that need further clarification. A claim,or point, refers to a debatable statement that you attempt to make other people accept or understand. In business, you will see claims about costs (is something affordable?), feasibility (is something doable?), style (is something appealing?), comparison (is something better than an alternative?), and more.
Debatable can range from mildly questionable to highly contentious. Mildly questionable claims can be disputed, but most people will accept the premise without much evidence (e.g., “New computer software licenses are expensive”). Highly contentious claims tend to be debated more passionately because they often involve politically-charged issues (“Company initiatives to reduce our carbon footprint are a waste of resources”) or issues that are personally meaningful (“Outsourcing public relations is a great way to cut costs”—if any receivers work in the public relations department).
The second key term is probable truth. Because claims are debatable, you won’t be able to prove absolute truth the way you would with a verifiable fact. Instead, you will attempt to support the claim in a way that reasonable people would conclude that your claim is likely true, credible, and believable. Of course, with highly contentious claims, that task will be much more difficult to do. That is why using good evidence to support your claims is so important in business communication. You need as much support as possible to help your receivers accept the probable truth.
With the key terms (evidence, claim, and probable truth) defined, we can move forward in learning how to identify and select evidence to strengthen your messages and achieve your communication goals. One of the first things you might notice about gathering evidence for business communication purposes is that it is much different from gathering evidence for other purposes. In academic writing, you typically begin by searching online or in a library for articles and books. In business, you typically begin instead by sorting through and making sense of all the evidence around you. Here are some common types of business evidence.
Numerical Data
Because much of business is about generating revenue, containing costs, and maximizing the use of scarce resources, numerical data are going to be essential for many business decisions. Numbers and statistics may come from internal sources, such as sales, costs, profits, losses, and other financial information. They might also include things such as the number of hours spent on tasks, number of employees, and inventory data. Numerical data might also come from external sources, such as government data like the U.S. Census Bureau, industry reports, or academic research studies.
Textual Data
Even though numbers are extremely important, business decisions are not based on numbers alone. Another key source of evidence is textual data. Textual data include any kind of word-based information—whether the words are written or spoken. What differentiates textual data from simple text or words is that it can be qualitatively analyzed to detect patterns. Some common types of textual information in business include comments from customer reviews, open-ended employee responses to organizational climate surveys, and trending hashtags on social media.
Business Publications
Business publications provide valuable information on news and trends in business, which can serve as evidence. General business publications with wide circulations include titles like the Wall Street Journal, Entrepreneur, Forbes, and Harvard Business Review. Additionally, many professional associations publish specialized magazines that help individuals keep up with their field. For instance, human resource managers read HR Magazine, accountants read Accounting Today, and advertising pros read AdAge. Local business publications can be evidence, too. A local business newspaper might sometimes be the best source for information on business trends affecting your community.
Expert Opinions
While you might be tempted to think that an “opinion” doesn’t count as evidence because it isn’t a fact, think again. Opinion-based evidence is critical in business, especially when the source of the opinion is a recognized expert. In most cases, a recognized expert is someone who has collected and analyzed data in their field to make predictions or recommendations. For instance, a trusted financial advisor may predict how a stock will perform after an event, such as a company merger or a new tax code. A cybersecurity consultant may recommend steps to take to prevent your company from experiencing a data breach. An important tech industry leader such as Mark Zuckerberg or Jeff Bezos may speak about how technology will be used in the future.
Testimonials
A testimonial is a statement of endorsement. It may come from an expert or non-expert. But usually, people offering the testimonial should have some sort of personal experience with whatever it is they are endorsing. For instance, you may want to use testimonials from previous clients who had success with your consulting company or your corporate training services. Or you may ask an expert to test your product and provide a testimonial about its quality in comparison to your competitors. Testimonials are powerful because they make evidence personal.
Anecdotes
Anecdotes are short stories—sometimes true and sometimes hypothetical—that are used to support claims and illustrate points. They can be particularly helpful when you need to establish an emotional connection or when you need to provide more tangible support for your claim. For example, you might use a story about how the new employee experienced problems during the onboarding process to support your point that there are inefficiencies in your company’s current HR systems. This story may be used by itself or as an example in connection with numerical or textual data that prove your claim about HR inefficiencies.
Objects
You’ve probably heard the old adage that a picture is worth a thousand words. So, too, are objects. Objects are anything that can be seen or touched (or even tasted!). Especially when you are communicating with your receiver face to face, an object can be the best evidence. This is why companies roll out new products with presentations where they show pictures, play videos, and give live demonstrations.
Personal Knowledge or Experience
In some instances, you will not have outside information to support your claims and you will instead have to rely on personal knowledge or experience. This kind of evidence might include information you have been given by others, observations you have made, perceptions you hold of various situations, or documentation of what you have done. Personal knowledge is particularly helpful evidence for writing letters of recommendation, completing employee performance reviews, and documenting human resource issues such as sexual harassment or office bullying.
The quality of your overall message is greatly affected by the quality of the evidence you use. If you use excellent evidence, you are well on your way to composing an excellent message and meeting your communication goals. But if you use weak evidence, your entire message may be negatively affected. That’s because if your receiver identifies some of your evidence as weak—even if it’s only one small piece—it may cause your entire argument to be called into question. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to use high-quality evidence. Below are criteria for evaluating evidence quality:
Accurate The most essential quality criterion of evidence is that it must be correct. Evidence marred by miscalculations, misrepresentation, or other inaccuracies can misguide decision-making, damage your reputation, and negatively affect business. So take time to “fact check” your evidence. Here are two key questions to guide you.
First, “Does it make intuitive sense?” For instance, assume you do a salary analysis for your full-time employees and see that your lowest[1]paid employee makes $8,000 per year. An intuition check should tell you there is a mistake somewhere, as a full-time, minimum-wage employee would make much more. If you find evidence that doesn’t pass the intuition check, you should either correct the mistake (if that is within your control) or discard the flawed evidence and search for another source.
Second, “Can it be confirmed?” If evidence is accurate, it should be able to be confirmed. Confirmation can occur in multiple ways. You could rerun analyses and double-check your own calculations. You could verify facts with a knowledgeable colleague. You could seek out other external sources to corroborate the evidence.
Recent
There is no arbitrary rule on how new something must be to be considered sufficiently recent. Instead, the principle here is that whatever evidence you use should be recent enough that newer information hasn’t supplanted the information you’re using. For instance, if you want to update your receiver about your social media marketing campaign, data that are more than a week old may be too old to be useful. You’ll need to get more recent data. But if you are estimating costs for purchasing automobiles or advertising space prices from the last year are probably sufficient. And if you are using evidence from a research study on consumer psychology and how mood affects buying behaviors during the holidays, a study that is 10 or more years old might be perfectly recent. As you look for evidence, track down the most recent sources available.
Representative
Another important quality marker for evidence is its representativeness, or how accurately it reflects or represents something else. There are two important facets of representativeness. First, evidence should accurately represent the broader domain being described. Averages and midpoints tend to be more representative than highs and lows. Views held by a majority of people are more representative than views held by a single person.
For example, if customer reviews of your new product line are half positive and half negative, but you only include the positive comments when reporting to your leadership team, that would not be representative. Instead, as a competent business communicator, you would use evidence that represents the broader reality of mixed reviews and, of course, adjust your claims accordingly.
Second, evidence should accurately represent the intent and content of the source. Statistics and quotations are particularly prone to misrepresentation, whether that is by presenting only a portion of what was found or said, mischaracterizing the broader intent, or not providing enough context to make sense of the evidence.
Consider the difference here:
Partial Quotation: When asked about recent accusations of sexual harassment in the organization, CEO Paul Seaton said, “It’s not my problem.”
Full Quotation: When asked about recent accusations of sexual harassment in the organization, CEO Paul Seaton said, “It’s not my problem. It’s our problem. We have to work as a company to fix our culture.”
Unbiased
In many ways, all evidence is somewhat biased. Even the act of choosing what evidence to include and what evidence to exclude introduces bias. Even though you can never be completely bias-free, you should strive to be as unbiased as possible.
In business, an important type of bias is conflict of interest. A conflict of interest occurs when someone’s impartiality may be influenced by a professional or personal interest. For instance, salespeople may not present a fully unbiased account of their company’s services if they will financially benefit from making a sale. Or managers may not be able to write impartial performance reviews for employees who are also friends.
Simply asking, “Who wrote this?” or “Who provided this information?” can help you determine if the evidence is reasonably free from overt bias. For instance, a source such as Wired magazine is going to present less biased product reviews than websites for the companies that make the products.
Summary
To recap, supporting your claims/points with evidence is essential in business. There are many ways to provide this evidence, such as numerical data, textual data, business publications, expert opinions, testimonials, anecdotes, objects, and personal experiences. Evaluating this evidence for accuracy, recency, representativeness, and bias can help ensure that high-quality evidence is being used.
Activity 10.5
Consider the following examples. What kinds of evidence can you use to support each claim? Try to identify at least two different types of evidence for each one.
1. Your employee has not been performing to company standards
2. Your new product launch was successful
3. Your company should adopt more sustainable, eco-friendly business practices
4. Your recent social media campaign backfired
5. Your company should buy an ad for the Super Bowl
6. Your intern should be hired for a permanent entry-level position
Attributions:
Information for this section was adapted from
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.