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Written Communication, Fixed · Humanity Working

• 0:07
  SPEAKER_02: Okay, Paul, today's quick fix is written communication.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_02: What do we mean here?
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hey Matt.
• 0:14
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, everybody.
• 0:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um we're gonna talk about written communication, but maybe we should write about it a little bit as well, I guess.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_01: Um but I mean it's really interesting because written communication is expanded so much.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about how verbal communication has shrunk a little bit, but we're we're doing so much more writing than we used to across so many more different uh media.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: So you can think of written communication in its broader sense as every message that you send, whether it is in the longest form possible, like a book, all the way down to a tweet, or if a I don't know what a tweet is today on X, whatever that thing is people do on X.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but it's a but you know, longest all the way down to the shortest.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and interestingly, we would include that as let's say, for example, that you were doing a Instagram reel.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: If you wrote it, that's also a form of written communication, even though ultimately you might be delivering it in a verbal format as well.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: So um in today's workplace, it is it's gone from being something that a few people needed to do well inside an organization, the communications team needed to do well inside an organization, to something that really everybody uh needs to do well.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's been a dramatic shift towards um uh written communication in in the workplace, and that's benefited some people and it's caused some other people some real challenges.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_02: And why do you think that people struggle with it?
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, one thing obviously is that the type of written communication that is needed, particularly in the workplace, um which can be sometimes very short, very direct, um, particularly if it's like a response to a Slack message or or something along those lines, is not the form that we're taught at school most of the time.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: Even the even when we're taught business communications, you'll you'll notice if you if you did any form of like business communication stuff uh at school, even in business school and so on, it's often overly formal and overly flowery and so on, and you and you very quickly adapt and adjust to a to a different format that does work and is in keeping with the environment.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_01: So there's part that, right?
• 2:50
  SPEAKER_01: We're not being we're not being taught what um what's actually needed, and particularly what's actually needed across all of these different uh types of media.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: But then the other thing as well is that by and large the art of this comes not from understanding how you are right, how you yourself are sending this out, it's understanding how other people are receiving it.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: So, for example, the tone of a message that you send out can feel positive to you as the sender, but is often received in a way that is much more negative than you intended.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_01: So this gap that exists between you as the sender and whoever the receiver is is a gap where uncertainty emerges and a lack of clarity occurs.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: And if you don't understand that, if you don't understand how people are receiving the message that you're sending, then you can create an impression of yourself and of the work that you're doing that is not what you intended in any way, shape, or form.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, text messaging is the worst culprit in in this, a simple response that you had no meaning attached to can be received so differently on the other end.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um Well, yeah, and let's think about the the nature of misunderstanding.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: Because people often think about one aspect here, which is clarity.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: So they're like, oh, I intended, I I meant X and they received Y, but that's only one way in which misunderstanding occurs.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah right?
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_01: You can you can create an emotional misunderstanding to your point by sending a text that just feels dispassionate when you're supposedly having where you supposedly have a meaningful and closer relationship with with somebody, right?
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, you and I have known each other for years and years now, Matt.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: And I might, because we've known each other for years, right?
• 4:58
  SPEAKER_01: I might just send something like running late or whatever.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 5:01
  SPEAKER_01: And in if your mood is a certain way, you might be like, oh, he's running late.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_01: If your mood is is another way, it might be like, well, you know, how about why or or what's going on?
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: In one mood, you might be like, is he is he okay?
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: In another mood, you're like, well, you didn't respect my time.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: You know, there's all those kind of different things that can that that can emerge because the words that I type don't have intonation, right?
• 5:32
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas if I picked up the phone and I called you and I said, Hey man, I'm so sorry I'm running late, right?
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_01: And you could hear the stress in my voice, yeah, you would know that it's not to do with you, it's to do with some some thing that's going on.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_01: Whereas if I pick up the phone at the same time and says, Hey, I'm running late and put the phone down, those are two totally different things.
• 5:51
  SPEAKER_01: Text message, they're exactly the same.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_02: Fascinating.
• 5:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, so so that's interesting, right?
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_02: So so talk about what does effective writing look like, because in that instance, you wrote effectively.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: And this is really this is really interesting.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And and one of the things that I worry about just a little bit in terms of some of the stuff that is presented around uh around writing effectively and written communication, is that I think it can capture some of the elements that are needed, but it often doesn't capture all of the elements.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so in the research that I've done on this, I've tried to make sure that we're capturing all elements of what is what is effective writing, even if some of those elements may be of less importance, some of them may be of more importance.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: But we the thing that we found to be most effective with people is really a what I would refer to as a layered approach, whereby whereby basically you're thinking of four layers of of um communication that take you from being sort of functionally okay all the way through to being excellent.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: So the first layer um is just is is is real, right?
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so there are a couple of uh a couple of elements to this, right?
• 7:09
  SPEAKER_01: But when we say real, there's the first element of real is is like, is it true, right?
• 7:15
  SPEAKER_01: So in other words, am I if I've if I'm telling you that that X is the case, is is that what is actually the case?
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I am running five minutes late, that's functionally true, right?
• 7:29
  SPEAKER_01: Assuming I am running, assuming I am running five uh five minutes late.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: So there with this reality layer, that's about being clear, it's about being up front, um and it's about not burying the message, right?
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_01: So I can't remember if I said this, but all of these layers begin with an R, so it's nice and easy for us.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_01: The second one is receivable.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: And so this is about making sure that you that I get to the point, the sentences are short enough so that it's easy for somebody else to understand and that it's easy to follow.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that I'm running five minutes late thing again is it passes that test, right?
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_01: The third one is relevant, right?
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_01: So this is the idea of giving the other party the information that is most important to them, right?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_01: And that that is circumstantial.
• 8:27
  SPEAKER_01: So for example, in that exact scenario, I'm running five minutes late.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um that might be under certain circumstances enough, but it might not be in other circumstances.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: So let's say that you and I were going to a meeting together and I was running five minutes late.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Then what might be appropriate there would be I'm running five minutes late.
• 8:55
  SPEAKER_01: Can you begin the meeting without me, please?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: Right?
• 8:58
  SPEAKER_01: That that now is that's relevant to you because without that, you don't know what you're supposed to do by virtue of the fact that I'm uh that I'm running uh running five minutes late.
• 9:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um you might say, I'm running five minutes late.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_01: Can you start the meeting without uh without me, please?
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sorry, or something like this like that's also that's also relevant because then that's helping you understand that I that I regret that, right?
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so that's that's okay too.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_01: But what you don't want in that circumstance is I'm running five minutes late because the there was stuff in the middle of town that caused me to reroute my car, and then I had to park it away uh all the way over here, and blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: All of that is is irrelevant news.
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a line from the British version of the of the office which talks about this specifically.
• 10:02
  SPEAKER_01: Um there is a bit uh where David Brent, who is the Michael Scott character in the in the British version, where he says, Oh, I've got uh I've got bad news and good news.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: And he says, the bad news is that they're closing down this facility, and some of you are gonna get fired, and the rest of you are gonna have to relocate across the country.
• 10:28
  SPEAKER_01: And the good news is that I've been promoted and I'm gonna be running the new office, right?
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_01: And they of course all look at him blankly and said, no, that is bad news and irrelevant news.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you get the point there, right?
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_01: So this is a lot of where a lot of where irrelevance comes in is when it becomes all about you and not about the what is relevant to the to the other party.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_01: And then the last piece of it, which is really where a lot of the art comes in, is resonant.
• 11:04
  SPEAKER_01: And so that is around making the tone fit the situation you're in.
• 11:10
  SPEAKER_01: Warm when needed, direct when needed, um, and making sure that it is appropriate to not just the person but the circumstances under which you're communicating all of this.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_01: So real, receivable, relevant, resonant, all kind of layer on top of each other.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_01: And by the way, we talked last week about um verbal communication.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_01: The same thing, all of this applies to verbal communications as well.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: You can just be you can be much more um really thoughtful about adding these layers in when you're when you're doing it in a written scenario because you have time to prepare.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_02: And almost the like a structure helps there, yes, right?
• 11:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so the structure piece of it is is really interesting.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Some folks, I've mentioned it before on the podcast, some folks might be aware of a book called Smart Brevity.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and it is a book that I'd recommend and we'll and we'll put in the uh we'll put in the show notes.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um the one thing I would just be cautious of is that even if you have like a like a structure, like they propose, for example, in Smart Bready, be careful about over overusing that.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um and be careful about using uh about the circumstances in which you do use it.
• 12:31
  SPEAKER_01: Because there are gonna be times where you do want to be like very clear in your uh in your communications and structure it in a particular way, where you kind of give people like the top line and why it matters and what it's resonant for them and so on.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: Um But you also don't want every communication you do to feel like a press briefing.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: So you gotta make sure that you're um that you're thinking about the principles associated with this, but then also um being authentically you as you're delivering all of that.
• 13:02
  SPEAKER_02: That reminds me of the uh I forget who the quote was.
• 13:05
  SPEAKER_02: Sounds like it'd be something Mark Twain said, but if I had more time, this letter would have been shorter.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Uh Blaise Pascal.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_02: There you go.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_02: Not Mark Twain, but yeah.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, but often miss uh uh often misattributed to Mark Twain.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, is that right?
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_02: So it was up in there rattling around somewhere.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_02: So so with that in mind, uh what's what about using AI for writing now?
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um it's okay.
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but you gotta think carefully about how.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: Um folks might have seen uh a couple of weeks ago there was a news uh story that kind of blew up on online.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: A news this is gonna sound very meta, but it was a news story about a news story.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was the largest um English language uh news written newspaper in Pakistan.
• 13:54
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a front page news story.
• 13:57
  SPEAKER_01: Folks can look it up about um the economics of the automobile industry, and this beautifully written uh piece on on page one of the uh of the newspaper, and at the bottom of it it said, Um, would you like me to break it down into different points?
• 14:16
  SPEAKER_01: I saw that.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and uh and literally the the most amazing thing about that, and this is something that I really caution us all about, right?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Is yeah, you can see, oh, this is you know, journalism is short and all this kind of stuff.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: But here's the most amazing thing about this.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: This went out in a written, uh physical newspaper that was that was published.
• 14:37
  SPEAKER_01: So what that tells you is the journalist missed it, the editor, uh, the editor, the copy editor missed it, and then the overall, you know, these things get checked three times in when you're publishing a newsletter, the equivalent of what used to be a typesetter.
• 14:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so all three of those parties missed it.
• 14:56
  SPEAKER_01: And what that tells you, of course, is that we're developing a society where we're so accustomed to seeing this stuff that we're not um that our brains are filtering it out.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: There and we're just like we're just like, oh yeah, that looks that looks great.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: And we're and so our attention to detail when we're looking through this stuff and and putting our own voice on it is uh is not there as it used to be.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_01: So what does that mean?
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_01: I think what that means is that um it's great to use AI early on in the writing uh in the writing process.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: Um but you good written communications is is a uh is an opportunity to provide people with with your voice.
• 15:43
  SPEAKER_01: You and I have spoken about this, Matt.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_01: We have uh when when I interview guests on the uh on the podcast, if I've read their book and they actually wrote it themselves, I kind of know who I'm gonna be interviewing based on their voice, based on what's happening.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: And you want to maintain that.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: You want to have that idea where when somebody reads what you've written, if they meet you, they're not that it feels like those two things are connected to each other.
• 16:08
  SPEAKER_01: So don't let AI destroy your authenticity.
• 16:14
  SPEAKER_01: Because if it does, then when you're having that second and third communication with them verbally, they're gonna get a lot of cognitive dissonance and it's gonna separate them from you.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_02: Uh maybe another topic for another time, but I I'd love to talk about um the voice of the different mainstream AIs.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 16:34
  SPEAKER_02: Uh, because I find them to have different personalities, the wrong word, but they definitely have different personalities in in how it interprets what you're doing and how it interprets what you feed it and what you get out.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_02: And they're they're extremely different uh in the way you shape those personalities as a thought partner.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_02: So uh it'd be an interesting topic for another another day.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you've accidentally segued us into something that we're gonna be doing actually over the next couple of months, which is that um we're gonna have a couple of longer form discussions that are specifically about AI.
• 17:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um and are gonna be looking at uh the safeguards that we need to put in place to make sure that um AI and humans can interact successfully in the uh in the workplace in a way that isn't sort of destroying destroying humans.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_01: This will be part of this be can be part of that discussion.
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: So let's make sure we do that.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_02: Excellent, excellent.
• 17:36
  SPEAKER_02: All right, so let's get one simple thing this week uh that somebody can do in this in this space.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's what you do before you hit send.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so what I would challenge people to do is just they can do it one time, they can do it multiple times this week.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: But when you're writing that response to an email or you're writing that response to a text before you hit the send button, read read through it as though you're the other party listening to it.
• 18:15
  SPEAKER_01: Stop and pause and do that.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_01: And one thing I like to do, don't normally recommend products on here, but um, but there's a product I use called uh Speechify, um, and I get the premium version so it actually has sort of actors uh voices.
• 18:32
  SPEAKER_01: They have Gwyneth Paltro, they have uh they have Snoop Dogg, they have uh they have Mr.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: Beast, they have various various of these other parties, and they read it aloud, right?
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: So the point here is that um there is something different about that.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_01: So if I if I write something and then Gwyneth Paltrow reads it back to me, what I wrote, I inadvertently well, first off, I often spot little mistakes that I that I have just glazed over.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: But secondly, I often start to think, I don't know if that was clear enough, or I don't know if that was resonant enough, or any of those specific things.
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_01: So so you don't have to use Speechify, but definitely take that, take that pause and then hit send.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: We should get Speechify to sponsor the podcast.
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_02: I am I am getting that immediately, and I'm gonna have Snoop Dogg read all my emails back to me because that sounds wonderful.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_02: All right, Paul.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_02: Uh written communication fixed.
• 19:31
  SPEAKER_02: Um, what's the what's the next interview folks are gonna see in their feed?
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Matt, if this was a friends episode, I think you call it the one where Paul gets emotional.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: Uh I uh I spoke to Bill Kurst.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: Um, he's got a great podcast, by the way, um that I would recommend.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Coffee and Change.
• 19:51
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but he's also written a series of essays about AI.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: They've been published in a in a book.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: Uh it's called Leading Change in the Era of AI.
• 20:04
  SPEAKER_01: I'm holding it up there for the people who view this on YouTube.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um and Bill's making a plea for us keeping our humanity as this onslaught of AI happens.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_01: And I'll be honest, Matt, it made me stop and think about just about everything I've been doing over the last four or five years.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: So and you were listening in to that, Matt.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_01: What did you make of it?
• 20:26
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, same same reaction.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um, especially being you know in in a you know a leadership position, having to bring on AI into the business world and doing it responsibly, doing it uh thoughtfully.
• 20:43
  SPEAKER_02: Um really it's it it makes you think about our obligation given that we are gonna be responsible for at least for the time being the ethical guardrails that don't exist yet in this space.
• 21:02
  SPEAKER_02: Um so there's a lot of decisions that need to be made given the tools capabilities.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_02: Uh it's really powerful.
• 21:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:12
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:13
  SPEAKER_01: Uh so that's gonna be on Thursday, and uh we'll be back next uh Tuesday to do another one of these.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: Which one are we doing next Tuesday, Matt?
• 21:27
  SPEAKER_02: Conflict?
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, conflict resolution, yeah.
• 21:30
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so we'll do that.
• 21:32
  SPEAKER_01: We'll do conflict resolution next Tuesday, but don't miss the the Bill Kirst interview because uh, as I say, that was uh a really powerful one.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 21:41
  SPEAKER_01: Um okay.
• 21:42
  SPEAKER_01: Well, we'll uh look forward to both of those and uh see you next week.
• 21:46
  SPEAKER_02: All right, thanks, Paul.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_00: Humanity Working is produced by Matt Neal.
• 21:53
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