Business Writing. Part One
Business Communication and Audience Analysis in Professional Writing
Learning to communicate with clarity, purpose, and brevity is an invaluable skill in any career path.
Why do we care about possessing good communication skills? On the most basic level, we want to be understood. In the working world, being understood makes our jobs easier. Learning communication strategies equips us with the essential tools to perform our daily communication tasks effectively.
In an organization, people and groups must coordinate their activities to achieve specific organizational goals. Communication is the thread that links these people and activities.
As a professional, you will find yourself processing information that comes to you from just about anywhere within and outside the organization. You will interact and communicate in terms of your role, not as an independent individual. Thus, you must learn ways to get your message across clearly, in a business-like manner that does credit to you and your organization.
Messages have many forms but always involve an exchange of information.
Business writing is unique because it is consistently "reader-centred.”
Understanding your reader's "needs" and "interests" is essential to developing a successful message.
A careful analysis of your audience is a vital initial step in communicating successfully. As readers can be overwhelmed with daily messages, it is essential that your writing is concise. Writing with the absolute economy is what business writers should aim for.
Let us address specific writing techniques that will help you become a skilled professional writer.
This post is the first article in a series of discussions about effective communication.
Audience Analysis
The term audience here has a special meaning. The audience is the recipients of your messages, those who listen to an oral report or read your written documents.
As reports and other messages function as devices for co-ordination among all units, they may cut across formal boundaries and address numerous readers. Individuals within different groups have different organizational roles, so you must consider your audience diverse.
Readers need information and advice from your reports to do their jobs, so your purpose in composing reports is to enable others to make changes in the organization that satisfy individual needs.
Considerations in Audience Analysis
Audience Needs
Different readers have different needs and differing levels of interest and knowledge, so the audience is also heterogeneous, not homogeneous. They also read for differing purposes, not just to get information. Expect your report to be used as a tool.
As a writer, you must appreciate how readers in organizations behave. The person addressed is often not the real audience. The protocol usually requires reports to go to individuals who are sometimes not real users. Readers are not always experts in the field. Readers, therefore, are not always familiar with the situation being discussed. Your boss and her boss may know details, but outside your department or company, readers may know little.
Write for all readers' needs, and try to remember that reports are not only about something; they are, more importantly, to someone. You must consciously shift your focus from the technical material to the organizational function of the message.
Distances Between Readers and Senders
You may have readers at four distances from you:
In your group (team, unit or department)
Near
Elsewhere in your organization
Outside your organization
Be sensitive to individual values and interests and ask yourself how your message will affect the reader's role. If your report recommends a change in personnel, remember there are people involved both positively and negatively.
Classification of Your Readers
Classify your audience in terms of importance. Direct your communication choices mostly to your primary readers, those who will make decisions and act upon your information to solve their problems. They may be above, equal to or subordinate to you in the organization, but they are of prime importance as an audience. Secondary readers include people who must implement your recommendations or who are affected by them. Nominal readers are often a part of the audience, because of their position in the chain of command, like the boss who approves the report before leaving his department.
Message Tone
It would help if you also considered the tone of your message. It must accurately convey the relationship between you and your reader. Are you on a first-name basis? Can you be less formal, or does this reader demand formality in all reports?
Audience Knowledge and Experience
The last consideration affecting your communication choices based on an audience is their levels of knowledge and experience. There are three levels:
General: readers are intelligent, possess common sense, have high school level education, but little or no experience in the field.
Informed: readers have some training and experience applying their knowledge about your subject matter.
Expert: readers have spent considerable time learning a field, applying knowledge to various situations, and may have more experience than you do in some areas.
Remember, however; you are the expert for the moment. You know something that others seek to know through your report.
When you determine how the audience will use your report and who your audience is, you then know how to design your message effectively. Tailoring your message is sometimes a real challenge. Try this simple exercise in creating a message for specific audiences.
Activity
Look in the dictionary for a complicated definition or use a technical description, you know.
Try to identify four different audiences using both proximity and level of expertise as criteria: for example, experts in your group; informed financial people in your organization; general members of the public; and grade four students; then try to write a paragraph adapted to each level explaining the definition. You'll notice differences in tone, word choice, emphasis, length, and even graphics, for example, for the grade four class.
Adapting to Audiences
Your communication focus now is likely on what you need others to know — the information itself. To make sure you convey this information, you need to shift your focus to knowing others understand what you want them to understand. When you do this, you shift your focus from the information to its transmission, from your needs to the audience's needs.
Even when you know your audience well and have planned your ideas, there are several more ways to shape your messages for maximum impact, which will look at below. These adaptations suggest you care about your audience, creating goodwill in your readers.
Convey Reader Benefits
Reader benefits are the advantages the reader gets from complying with whatever you are suggesting be done. Customizing your message to the reader includes highlighting why it is worth the reader's while to comply. Present the reasons logically and explain them in precise detail.
Source: Short Management Report course materials at Ryerson University