HAVE you ever spent hours crafting a single email? Early in my career, I found myself in exactly that position, sweating over a message that should have taken ten minutes.
The context was high stakes. My faculty was sponsoring a group of students from a rural area as part of a strategic community development initiative. These were model students, destined to return to their villages as leaders. We moved them to Kuching, provided a rigorous support system and watched them successfully navigate their first semester.
But after the semester break, the momentum halted. The students chose to remain in their villages, effectively withdrawing from the programme.
After weeks of failed negotiations with families and community leaders, I had to report this setback to the Dean. I started the draft at 9.00 in the morning. I finished at noon.
The irony of it all? I was a brand-new lecturer teaching Business Communication!
That email became my first real-life case study. I wasn’t just reporting a project failure, I was navigating the complex architecture of professional empathy, corporate accountability and the “indirect’ approach to delivering bad news. Here is how that three-hour struggle helped shape the way I teach, write and communicate today.
Building Goodwill
One of the chapters in Business Communication is ‘Building Goodwill’.
The chapter is the most important chapter for the course. This is because once students “get it”, the following chapters, which are all about applying these goodwill communication skills, will be a cinch.
There are three concepts taught in this chapter: Bias-Free Language, Positive Emphasis, and You-Attitude.
Communicating without Offending
I recall a time when the term “cacat” was acceptable to describe people with disabilities (remember that, my dear older readers?).
You try using that term on live TV these days, and you’ll definitely need to write a formal apology to explain yourself to the authorities and the public as the TV station receives a torrent of backlash.
That specific term was changed to “orang kurang upaya” and changed again later to the more respectful and neutral “orang kelainan upaya”.
Simply put, this concept of Bias-Free Language, which is taught in ‘Building Goodwill’, makes learners aware of their choice of words used when communicating.
For instance, rather than saying “You and your spouse are invited to the event”, we say “You can bring your plus one to the event”. Why so? Well, what if someone is single? Is a divorcee? Is a widow?
It’s not just about physical attributes. Learners are taught to be sensitive to words that are related to religion, culture and gender.
Seeing the Positive
The next concept in that “Rosetta Stone”-esque chapter is Positive Emphasis.
It’s not merely about writing things positively. It is also about the way of looking at situations.
Imagine this: Both you and your friend got invited to this party where a famous band is celebrating their drummer’s 21st birthday.
Your friend drove you there in his brand new car and parked near the swimming pool.
The problem? The drummer is The Who’s Keith Moon.
The legendary rock and roll shenanigan? Keith drove a car into the swimming pool, with him in it.
Okay. You can say to your friend, “Brother, your car is wrecked!” but you can also say, “Brother, you can tell people that your car is now a submarine, christened by the great Keith Moon!”
See? That is how Positive Emphasis is applied!
I mean, that is a worst-case scenario but most of the time, we will also need to hone the skill to view things from a different perspective.
Going back to my personal case study, I shared with the Dean that the students taught us some valuable lessons which we could apply to benefit future students who might experience culture shock. In short, rather than telling him the project was a failure, I chose to talk about things that we could use to look forward to and improve ourselves.
That change of perspective was the thing that took “young me” a long time to figure out when writing that email.
Seeing Things from the Audience’s Point of View
The final concept, which is often where learners struggle is You-Attitude.
This is because most of the time, we communicate from our point of view, not from our audience’s. Therefore, we put the spotlight on the audience, not ourselves.
When communicating in a business setting, we need to be aware that our audience will want us to fill the WIIIFM (What Is In It For Me?) checkbox in their head.
What do you want me to do? What will I get out of this? How will this benefit me?
By answering the questions above, will my message be easier to understand and accepted by your audiences?
Maybe not completely but here are some more tips to help even the odds.
- Avoid mentioning your work or generosity. As an example, rather that saying “I am giving you a discount!”, say “You are getting a 25% discount!”
- Be specific as this saves their time. Refer to the audience’s requests, reference numbers and other relevant information.
- Avoid talking about emotions UNLESS you’re congratulating them or offering your condolences. For instance, “Your leave request is approved” sounds much better than “You will be happy to know that I approved your leave request”.
- In positive situations, use “you” more than “I”. This gives the audience the feeling of being seen and appreciated.
- In negative situations, always protect the audience’s ego by using passive verbs and avoiding assigning blame.
I myself applied some of the above tips when I wrote that nerve-wracking email to the Dean. Now, most of the time, You-Attitude is seamlessly applied when I write business documents.
It takes a paradigm shift to reach a competent application of You-Attitude.
In conclusion, Business Communication takes a lot of practice. You will make mistakes but if you know the basics and are willing to learn from your mistakes, you will get better.
Just ask the guy who is ending this article that you’re currently reading.
See you next time, dear reader!
The views expressed here are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of Sarawak Tribune.
