Silence, mortals.

Quick quiz: is the communications discipline a unique function, or is it integrated throughout a business?

Answer: both.

(Did I mention I have a law degree? Lots of my answers are variations on the theme of “it depends.”)

Digging deeper into the question, communication is always happening at all levels of a business. Unfortunately, what is communicated is often what the communicator would never intend. For example, silence is a form of communication, and a particularly pernicious one to many leaders. In the face of management’s silence, employees see only actions. In the absence of verbal messages to modulate these actions, they interpret, speculate, and talk.

Or, in other words, they gossip. When this gossip is handed from person to person, it gains an unmerited patina of credibility. As they’re waiting for a meeting to start, Robynn says to Neville, “I don’t know what’s going on upstairs, but there was a big meeting the other day that wasn’t on the usual management calendar: maybe we’re being spun off.” Later in the day, Neville turns to Fiona and says, “I’ve heard that we might be spun off,” while they’re both waiting for the microwave to free up. Two days later, in response to Chris’ frustrated rant, Fiona tells him, “They’re spinning us out.” In three easy leaps, like that grade school game of “telephone,” a bit of idle speculation is turned into an expensive problem as employees spend their workdays being distracted, worried, and unsettled instead of committing their energies to the corporate problems they are paid to solve.

Can managers always tell employees everything? The short answer is no. The long answer is a complicated and situational mix of what is sensitive, what is useful, and what is mission-critical. But a manager who continually and proactively communicates with staff gains a measure of credibility and a short period of silence is less likely to be filled with fevered speculation and gossip. The main key is the cultivation of a key question: “Who needs to know this?”

This sounds tremendously simple, it’s true – and once it is a habit firmly ingrained, it is simple. But like all good habits, it takes a lot of cultivation. Not every piece of information needs to be communicated to every person, and in the same way every time. Where many managers realize the need for communication in the big, sweeping situations, they often miss the opportunities for communications on smaller issues. The question that needs to become ingrained is, Who needs to know?

A compliment at a senior staff meeting on a project that is being handled by a subset of the manager’s staff? Who needs to know? At the bare minimum, the leader of that project should know. One approach: an e-mail to all staff members on the project, letting them know that their efforts are being noticed.

A technological change that might have some impact on the manager’s IT department? Who needs to know? IT is the obvious port of call here, but managing downstream effects is important also. Therefore, a call or quick meeting with the IT manager to make sure any necessary transition is handled smoothly – and communicated to those end-users affected might be in order.

A staff change at a major competitor? Who needs to know? What member of the manager’s staff is going to find this piece of information useful to fine-tune their approach to their job?

The daily result of such constant communication is trust. And when the spin-out is contemplated but can’t be communicated downstream yet and silence is necessary at the moment, that trust is going to be extremely valuable.

Language and “correctness”

My first post initially contained this first sentence:

Everyone has their parameters for hiring a freelance writer.

One of my first beta-readers alerted me to the fact that some people have issues with this construction: the use of the third-person plural pronoun as a third-person gender-neutral singular pronoun.  I don’t have problems with this construction, though there are other usages that grate (“between you and I,” “I felt badly about it,” – there are more.  I won’t go on).  There are others whom I respect who also find this to be a useful construction, but I will mention two: the website Common Errors in English and the technical linguistics blog Language Log:

The argument was settled long ago: singular they has routinely been used throughout the history of English, by all the best writers,* until certain subcases were artificially turned into “errors” by self-appointed experts. Successively less discriminating pseudo-authorities then generalized the proscription in successively sillier ways, although they have largely been ignored by the users of the language.

[Emphasis mine]

I’ll get back to that last statement in a minute, but first you might have noticed that I changed that initial sentence in the first post.  Was I backing down in my assertion (backed up by some very eminent language scholars and the “best” writers) that use of they/their to indicate a singular third person is correct?  No.  That brings us to our audience.

Users of the language – there’s the rub.  Who is your audience?  Who are you talking to?  Some people really believe that this use of they/their is an incorrect, amateurish construction in any and every case, and my use of it will throw them out of the flow of what I am saying.  They have to get around how I said something to get to the sense of what I said.

In other words, is it more important to be perceived to be technically correct or is it more important to be easily understood?  Anyone reading what I had initially written would certainly understand what I was getting at – but would their eyes and brain then alight neatly on the next thought or would they be mentally hung up by the construction of the first sentence?  If they do hang up – if the mental gears grind and smoke and they wonder, “Is she really a good writer?” or triumphantly think, “Aha – a fraud!” or any other possible response other than, “Yes, okay – and…” – will understanding prevail?

Possibly it will, but not without a lot of work on their (and possibly my) part.  In this endeavor, I am my own client.  Am I served by dragging my audience rather than leading them?  I would say no, and I would say no on behalf of any other client of mine.  Therefore I changed it.

* NB: Jane Austen – ed.

ETA: Language Log again, with a very timely post – and this is exactly the type of singular “they” that does grate.

Hiring a freelance writer

Everyone has individual parameters for hiring a freelance writer.  Audiences are almost always specific, and a writer who excels at crafting speeches for senior executives may not have the requisite technical knowledge to create a software manual.

However, there is one thing that makes a freelance writer effective from your very first meeting with them: asking questions and really listening to the answers you give.

Sounds basic, doesn’t it?  But writers often like to talk even more than they like to write.  When presented with the opportunity to display their cleverness, they have a hard time passing it up.  It isn’t all about ego – a freelancer often wants to reassure you.  You’ve hired the right person for the job.  You are in good hands.  Never fear, this writer is so smart the stakeholders you are communicating with will be bowled over by the writer’s convincing way with words.

These well-meaning phrases that roll trippingly off the tongue can be a rabbit hole, however.  Valuable time can be lost while the writer goes haring off in various creative, possibly entertaining, but ultimately wrong directions.

So, the writer needs to give you the room to speak first.  They should ask questions and really listen.  Their follow-up questions should indicate that listening and be designed to elicit the core of the business problem you are hiring them to solve.  Only after you have talked for some time should the writer start making statements and offering up the beginnings of the scaffold of your new communications plan.