If you can’t write well, stay home

It is nearly impossible to overstate the benefits of being able to write well.

In my experience it is more important to be able to write well than to speak well, at least until you reach senior levels of your organization or are interacting regularly with the public directly as a representative of your company.

Writing’s twin skill is speaking, both public and private. Most of us handle the mechanics of private speaking (one on one conversations) fairly well. Then there is public speaking: because so many people are not comfortable speaking publicly, and because the issue is so emotionally charged for so many people, almost everyone can accept a speaker who is simply adequate.

Because of the central role it has in the success of an organization and the execution of the mission of that organization, the ability to express yourself only adequately is simply not, well, adequate.

Writing is different

Much of what you will produce as a technologist will be written products. Product documentation, web sites, progress reports, feasibility studies, and so on are all part of the products we are helping to develop. You may be setting out to build and sell code for medical monitoring, but if the instruction manual or installation guide or product design guidelines for your biochip are unintelligible, your product and your company are not going to be successful.

Even e-mail matters

With the importance of e-mail in all professions, but especially in technology professions, writing has become the foundation of that all-important interaction: the first impression.

Many times the first interaction you have with a client, a peer, or a boss will be via e-mail. Writing well and clearly communicating your message will shape a positive first impression of you and the kind of person you are, and also of your technical competence. Creating a poor personal first impression in writing is something you can recover from when you actually meet the person, but you will have a hard time recovering from the poor impression your e-mail recipient will form of your technical abilities.

Maybe this isn’t fair and they shouldn’t be related, but they are.

The importance of the written word in storing, sharing, and communicating ideas at all levels of all organizations makes a poor facility with the mechanics of writing a severely career-limiting fault. Even if this doesn’t inhibit you in an entry-level position, you will run into a wall on your first promotion. Team leaders have to maintain a variety of written documents, including project progress reports and plans, which many people will review. If you cannot create these written documents effectively, you will quickly stagnate.

Not me, I want to stay technical!

You might say to yourself, “Well, that’s fine for those money-grubbing prep-school folks, but I want to be a doer the rest of my life. I don’t care about getting promoted, so my writing doesn’t matter.”

Wrong! If you want to spend your life head down in the trenches, it is probably because you care passionately about what you are doing. In order for your designs and ideas to be implemented you’re going to have to be able to communicate them to others in…guess what?…writing!

Ok…but how do I get better?

That’s the next post, click here.

This post is inspired by material in my book, The Only Trait of a Leader.