Examined Competence: Why Leaders Need to Learn the Skill of Writing
Great leaders are also great communicators, but the ability to communicate effectively and efficiently takes time to develop. By owning communications, commanders refine and hone this skill.
- Joe Byerly
Target Article:
Why Leaders Need to Learn the Skill of Writing
by Joe Byerly
Target URL: Why Leaders Need to Learn the Skill of Writing (link)
n.b. I write “Examined Competence” for a weekly internal newsletter at a large American corporation. The primary audience is my peers in our enterprise IT rotational program.
I copy the story both here and to my personal blog (www.thecarolinatechnical.com) for the purposes personal reference, general viewership, fame, and glory. Some specific detail are redacted before publishing here.
Introduction:
Leaders often delegate written communication. This isn’t surprising, or necessarily a bad thing. What difference does it make if a subordinate drafted the email when it is the content of the communication and signature at the bottom that actually matters?
Editor’s Commentary:
While the author takes inspiration for this article from his experiences in military leadership, I very much enjoyed mapping that perspective onto our work in enterprise IT. Frankly, it’s not all that difficult.
But that really shouldn’t surprise us at all — especially in the context of this article. Both both types of organizations are massive in terms of headcount, assets, and deliverables. Both organizations try to address fundamentally complex problems in shifting, geographically diverse environments.
Of course, this applies to more than just organization leaders. It will never be too early to take ownership of your communications. I am in complete agreement with the author: effective written communication is a skill that can be learned and practiced.
In fact, I’d argue that with respect to the technical, collaborative problems we face in our modern workplaces, effective communication is very often more important to the overall success of the project than the execution of the work itself at an individual level.
More quality, external discussion of this article can be found here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24964730
Some Questions
- How do you feel about your written communications? Do you even think about it?
- If you aren’t confident with your written communication, do you ever plan on remedying that?
- Do you have any pet-peeves about the sort of communication discussed in this article?
- Have you ever written extensively outside of a classroom or work environment? Share your experiences!
