124 | How To Avoid The High Cost Of Miscommunication | Erin Lebaqz

Welcome to the Building Better Cultures podcast, where I talk to leaders about how internal communications, engagement, and leadership all play a key role in creating amazing and successful cultures.

The biggest connection in today's world between writing and business success is actually employee retention. People are leaving workplaces when they don't feel happy, appreciated, or like their growth is cared about. And where do we get those messages? Through communication.

Hello there and welcome to this episode of the Building Better Cultures podcast with me, Scott McInnes. Thank you very much for listening. I appreciate you taking the time. A couple of quick housekeeping things as usual before we get into our chat with today's guest. Firstly, if you are listening on a platform that allows you to give a little rating and a comment on the podcast, please do so. If it's a 5 or even a 4, that would be very much appreciated. Thank you very much. It just really helps to get the podcast out there and in front of more people like you who might benefit from listening to today's interview. The second thing is just my usual thank you to Workvivo, our friend and sponsor and partner who've partnered with us for a number of episodes now. If you are struggling with communication and communicating with your staff, and I think as I've said before in previous episodes, that's particularly difficult for organizations now with hybrid working and people in the office some days and not in the office other days, you know, something digital might be the best way to, uh, go forward for your organization. If it is, workvivo.com is well worth a look, uh, and you'll hear a little bit more from them later. So my guest today is Erin Labax. She is a US-based author and founder of high-value writing. And we're gonna talk today about something that's very close to my heart. And that's the written word. 'Cause I think that so often we get it really, really wrong. When actually, I nearly said that it's not hard to get it right. It is actually hard to get it right. And it minds me of that saying from ages ago, "I'm sorry I had to write you such a long letter, but I didn't have time to write a short one." Because actually writing can be difficult and getting it right is really, really important. So Erin, I'm really looking forward to our conversation. You're very welcome on the podcast.

Well, thanks so much, Scott. Hi everyone, I'm happy to be here.

Brilliant, thank you. Listen, why don't we kick off as we always do with you just telling listeners a little bit about you, your career, and what you do today?

Yeah, thanks, Scott. Well, I've been a teacher my whole life. I did not intend that, um, or intend to teach writing, but when I started, I saw the power that writing ability and confidence has for people. And so I've kind of made it my mission since then to help folks who may not have had access to certain educational models, get writing under their own control, right? We can feel like writing isn't up to us, that we're just hoping that someone will deem it good. But in fact, all of us can kind of own our writing and be more intentional and know confidently, yeah, that is good for this reason. So I've worked with folks in that regard and largely through university systems, a little bit around the world, mostly in the US. For the last 5 years, though, I've had my business, High Value Writing, where I bring this education into the workplace and around the world through YouTube and e-courses. And the point here is we can all learn to write in a way that helps us reach our goals. And it's hard to— like you kind of mentioned, even the goal of writing concisely eludes us many times, right? What about the goals of sounding the way we want to sound when we're applying for a promotion? Right? Without access to writing instruction, people cannot always reach their goals, especially if they're not from a place with a high level of education. And so that's what I do, try to bring writing instruction in different forms that work for people in different situations to empower their lives.

Brilliant. And with 3 teenagers in my house, it was literally only yesterday I was having the conversation about, you know, just things like capital letters, the odd comma here and there, a full stop, you know, those types of things that are, that are kind of important. Maybe that's just old fogies like me, I don't know. We'll get into that in a while, possibly. Um, you know, and I kind of— one of the things I said to my 15-year-old yesterday was, you've got to think that the words that you write and what you're trying to say isn't necessarily what the person on the other end is going to hear. So you've got to think about it from their perspective first. And we might, we might chat about that a little bit later on. But you said rightly that your focus now for the past 5 years has been on kind of helping people in business to write a little bit more effectively. And I wonder, I suppose my, you know, the million-dollar question, I guess, is why is clear and impactful writing so important to business performance? What's, what's the link between the two?

We know in our own experience the cost of miscommunication, but some studies suggest that it's over $25,000 per employee on a company level when we have miscommunications. Because it's not just about somebody not getting the message clearly and not understanding the information,. It's also about the emotional side of that reader potentially having a different reaction. So in my mind, the biggest connection in today's world between writing and business success is actually employee retention. We're seeing, um, leaders who haven't had the opportunity to figure out how to use their language intentionally towards their teams. Of course, they're very busy, they're trying to accomplish so much, but in reality, people are leaving workplaces when they don't feel happy, appreciated, or like their growth is cared about. And where do we get those messages? Through communication, right? How do we, how do we come to the conclusion whether it's accurate or not that someone doesn't care about me at work? That comes through communication out loud, in person, and as well as written. And I think we've all excruciated over reading and rereading an email we received wondering, you know, is this person mad at me? Do I belong? And so employee retention is sort of the top opportunity we have right now as leaders to write in a way that's strategic and meets our team's needs and helps them motivate and move forward.

Yeah, and I guess that if I've received a message or an email or a text or an SMS or whatever, WhatsApp, and it's not clear, then I'm kind of left guessing what it is the person actually meant. And I also think that that clarity can be very hard to achieve as well. And it's one of those things that, again, back to your point about, $25,000 an employee, the amount of rework, the amount of toing and froing that goes on, an email back and forth and back and forth and back and forth because we haven't managed to be clear in the first instance, that's just wasting a huge amount of time.

Oh, it's so expensive. I mean, I was calculating in my head the other day, I had a corporate client and I was calculating just the cost for each person to be in my class. And it was so huge. And I thought, well, this is just 2 hours talking about writing. What about all the hours they're spending reading emails and other messages that they have to kind of fight through to understand? Because I always say in a written message, someone will do the work. And if it's not us as writers, guess who's doing the work? It's like you said, we receive a text and it's up to us to figure out what it means and what to do. Well, now I've lost 10 minutes of my life, right? And if that's happening across a company, we can imagine the impact. On our efficiency.

For sure. And if I've got an email that I've sent to 50 people and those 50 people are spending 10 minutes each trying to work out what I've said, A, that's 500 minutes we've just wasted. And B, we've got potentially a load of different versions of the truth. There is no one single truth. There is no one single message. So that in itself is a huge problem too. And I wonder, From that perspective then, when you think about how we work now, you know, it used to be that, you know, the boss, you know, she could come out of her office, she walks onto the floor and she says, "Everyone gather around, let's have a quick chat." And that's not really doable anymore with the way that we work now in many, many organizations because we're all over the place all the time. So, how much more important has that whole idea of effective clear, engaging writing become now in that kind of post-pandemic world of work?

Mm-hmm, that's a great question, Scott McInnes. And like you described with this boss, if she's not able to call everyone together into a huddle, what are we doing instead, right? Well, we are not there is the problem, but guess who is there? Our writing. And so it's a little different now that we are almost representing ourselves through our writing because I'm not able to show up perhaps for that morning huddle,. And so now the only way I show up for that boss is through my writing, and that's how she knows me. So we're now in a situation where there are people who we get to know specifically through writing and often only through writing. And so they're kind of gauging who are we as a person, and we're crafting that relationship back and forth through the writing. So we've got both a relationship built through that sort of presence while we're not present, and then we even have opinions of each other that we come to when all the evidence we have are by somebody's written words and we don't have their tone and their manner of walking and their jokes and all of that. Mm-hmm.

And I think what's really interesting about that is that you build then a personality on the back of the written words. So people, as you say, are making assumptions about what your personality is based on the words that you use. And that might be a very far cry from the person that you actually are.

That's right, because like you were talking with your son, you know, interpretation is key here. Interpretation. Like you said, it's not always what we intended. And the leaders I work with, of course, they're kind, thoughtful people. You know, they don't intend for their messages to potentially accidentally alienate a team member, right? None of us is trying to do that, but it's interpretation. And like you mentioned with your son, some of that is cross-cultural, generational cultures, industry cultures, cultures around the world. We don't all see things the same way in terms of what feels polite. And what feels respectful. And so that's when it's kind of on us as writers to think, well, let me do my best to hypothesize what kind of writing would work best in this scenario for this person or this group of people.

It's actually funny and exactly that earlier on, I was writing a Teams message to one of the team just to say, you know, can you have a look at this deck? And I wrote the message and then sent it And then I immediately had to follow it up with, 'cause I felt slightly unwell, with, "God, I'm really sorry. I meant, can you have a look at this deck please?" And for me, that's a really, really important thing. And I think for lots of people, my children included at 18, 16, and 14, and they'll grow up and they'll come into the workplace, I don't think they'll have that. I think they'll want to be quite kind of just very, just, "Well, what does it, I need to do? Let me know and then I can get on with it," without any of those, what we might see as pleasantries, I guess.

Yeah, I kind of want to mention two things there because what, in addition to the idea of generations, I liked your concept there that you had to send your team's message again because you didn't feel right about it. And I had never thought of this myself, but time and again when I'm in a group session, someone will say that a key for them is when they read someone's message and that that person doesn't sound like they usually do. And they'll say, oh, I'm so accustomed to Scott being super friendly and having a please. I wonder if he's having a hard day. You know, they'll start to build a narrative when we sound differently than we normally do. And some leaders I've found use this to their advantage where maybe they're a very empathetic, empathy-driven person and they're very friendly and connecting in their messages. And then all they'll have to do to convey, you know what, I'm kind of serious and this is kind of a problem, is just scale back the floweryness a little. And their people know, okay, there's nothing rude in this message. But it's a little less excited than she normally sounds. And that's enough of a clue. So that's another layer. When people are creating this personality for us, it's also like we have a real personality too. And do the two match? But I want to kind of add on to your point about will your kids grow up and not put hi, hello, and the pleasantries. And that's a huge topic right now. Every time I bring this up, people are surprised that I'm hearing people who are hurt because there was no greeting. And that's just one example. But people saying, well, it's, it felt like they didn't care about me because I opened the email and it said, when will marketing have an answer on this? And I'm kind of like, whoa, I just woke up, you know, do you want to say hello? Right? It kind of makes me the receiver feel, oh, you didn't respect me as a human. You just were driven by what you wanted to know. And so we're seeing, yes, that we have to kind of adjust to other expectations and folks who are growing up in a more minimalistic minimalist texting style right now. I think there's a lot to be said that's helpful about that generation's style that older folks can learn from. But it's also true that they can potentially alienate people by thinking that some of those nuances aren't important. Because who judges whether it's important? The reader, not the writer.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. And I think what's really interesting in that example is that they were just cutting straight to the point. And sometimes I'll just send an email and just say, and I might just even use the header and just say, "I'm delayed by 10 minutes. I'll be late joining the call." And I just put EOM, end of message, and just send that because just in that moment, I haven't got time to write, "Hi Aaron, how's it going? How was your weekend? Just to let you know, I'm going to be 10 minutes late for our call." I just don't have time for that. So I think there has to be, like in all these situations, a bit of give and take between reader and writer perhaps.

There does. And I encourage readers to assume benevolent intent. You know, we want to assume good intent for our writers that we're reading from. For example, you know, I have a colleague who's— we've teamed up on things. And when she writes to me, in my mind, it sounds a little serious. But, you know, that's just who she is. And she writes, "Erin, not hi, Erin." And I think, ooh, can't you say hi? And but I— but it's more respectful and formal in many cultures. Or she'll end a sentence, "Thank you for the slides, comma, Erin." And I think, am I in trouble? But no, she's just trying to use my name to show that she cares about me. So it's also a reader's job to think, well, this writer may have intended something else. I, the reader, may have just come out of a meeting that put me in a bad mood, and now I'm reading through that filter, right? We do need to give some leeway to our writers. They're often trying their best and simply haven't had the access to the education on what to do.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And yeah, and I think we all have our styles and there's probably a piece, you know, I think if I've said it once in the past, you know, 120 or so episodes of this podcast, I've said it 50 times, which is just being a little bit aware. I think reader and writer, just having a little bit of self-awareness, you know, to think, well, where were they coming from? And actually, how am I reading this? Am I having a bad day? Did I get out the wrong side of bed this morning? Have I not had my coffee yet? You know, am I going to be in bad form when I'm reading this email? And therefore, maybe I'll just park it and maybe I'll just come back to it later. And I think having that, yeah, having that is really powerful.

Hi, I'm Klyna from Workvivo. When working away from the office, it's easy for your people to feel isolated and disconnected from your culture and each other. That's where we come in with our quick-to-deploy employee communications platform. It's all about ensuring that your people feel informed, engaged, and connected to your company culture, values, goals, and each other wherever they work from. For more, see workvivo.com.

You know, when we think back to the, the title of the podcast, Building Better Cultures, um, you know, very much about culture in organizations and How can writing and words impact on a culture negatively or positively in an organization, do you think? Or what have you seen in your experience?

Yeah, I think the most crucial areas in terms of impacting culture are how much trust and respect are coming through in writing from leadership. We often hear, you know, there's that mix of, are we going to set a top-down culture or a bottom-up culture, right? And who gets to create the culture? Well, but we know as leaders we have an extra opportunity to model the culture through our words and to impact the way people feel about where they work by the way we say things. I had— I talked with a young woman recently who was in her second career job of her whole life. She was in her 20s. Her first career job, they received monthly emails from leadership and she felt not necessarily belittled, but sort of like not— sort of forgotten. You know, the emails were really all just about what leadership cared about. Out. And she thought, oh, I see that I'm a peon, you know, that's fine. This is my first job, right? Well, but then she got a new job and her leader in the new job wrote a caring email that was very team-driven and team-oriented every month. This young woman told me that the first thing she did was call her mom and say how enthused she was about her new job and how she would be staying because she felt like she mattered and she was respected. Now these are people, I know this young woman, she has a lot to offer, right? There are people who have a lot to offer, and we're not necessarily getting their best if we aren't able to communicate in a way that brings that belonging by creating trust, the ability to make a mistake, the ability to be vulnerable, all things we can model in our own writing, by the way. So people see that it's okay to do that. So writing actually gives us two opportunities. Number one, the actual communication, and I'm setting a culture with my communication. But secondly, the modeling. As a leader, look at the way I wrote this. I used a lot of headings and bullets so it would be easy for you to read. Maybe everyone else will start doing that now. So, it's twofold what leaders can have, you know, our impact. Yeah.

Yeah. So, let's drill down into that a little bit more then. So, if you were going out and running a course for a client, don't give away all of your IP, just a little bit of it. That's what we're interested in, some kind of hot tips on what What can leaders do to be a little bit more— you used the word earlier on, intentional. I often use the word deliberate. What can leaders do to be more intentional and deliberate in their writing? What are the kind of the top 3 or 5 things that spring into your mind?

Yeah, let's get some tips here. And I love that word deliberate. One thing that leaders can deliberately do is reduce the self-focus that we accidentally might have in our language sometimes. You'll see a lot of accidental use of I, my team, and even I-you language when we could have used we language. So often what leaders can do is increase the amount of times they talk about the we or the team, and they can use these opportunities to pull out other people on the team and talk about them. So instead of something like my team achieved X and Y, we could say like Leticia led my— led our team to achieve X and Y. So we have these opportunities to put other people's names, to use we, our language instead of I language. And then we can also consider that when we describe what somebody on our team did. Maybe it's Leticia again, and it's kind of like Leticia said in the meeting, na na na. Well, what if I change that and say, well, Leticia taught us in the meeting? Well, when Leticia explained. And so I need to deliberately and intentionally provide verbs and descriptions of people's actions that lend to the respect that they deserve. We don't want— we don't necessarily say Erin is running that. We would say Erin directs that, right? We're giving me that power and respect. And so ultimately, I kind of wrap up those two sort of small sentence-level tips with just the concept that when your team reads your email, you have two goals, right? Number one is the informational goal. Say things clearly, use small paragraphs and bullets, frontload your meaning. But the second goal is emotional. How are people going to react humanly to this message? And so that's why we're considering things like, how do I talk about myself versus others? How do I describe the actions of other people? How do I build a community by calling forth what others have done, even if they're shy? And what led me to this was stories from people my age whose children are in their very first career jobs, and they're 23, and they're working from home, and they have no clue whether they fit in on this team, and they're truly lonely. I'm being told truly unhappy, lonely. And we have, as leaders, can use these strategic ideas to create a community by making sure that our writing reflects the prowess of others on our team, the accomplishments, you know, oh, when Blaine made that suggestion, now maybe Blaine is feeling like he's not so unbelonging after all, right? There's a lot I can do there intentionally.

Yeah, and that, what's really nice is that ties back, as you said, to that whole idea of people maybe only coming into the office a day or two a week or a month and really strengthening that sense of connection, which I think is really, really powerful. Yeah, one thing, just to pick up on one point you made there about using the we instead of I and you, Completely agree. And I'm a huge proponent of first-person pronouns. When I see senior leaders in organizations writing about the company, the people, the team, the this, the— I'm like, it's we, us, our, your, I, together.

Right.

What a massive missed opportunity.

It's, I mean, I always say, you know, you're writing anyway. It's free. You're already spending the time. It's a missed opportunity because how can we create the reality of we without the language of we? There is a relationship between language and reality after all, right? So yeah, that's an opportunity. We always have an opportunity to inject trust, respect, and team building into our words.

Yeah. And again, back to that point earlier about intentionality, what I'm doing potentially there is kind of unintentionally driving a wedge into organizations between leadership and people within the organization by talking about the team. People are thinking, well, so what? You're not part of it?

No.

So, it's us and you, that divide, which is a very dangerous place to go.

It's very dangerous and it doesn't create a culture that we want. And there was a high-profile layoff recently where the company did just that. Their The email kind of went around and the email talked about the company and why these layoffs were helpful. Literally, they didn't talk about the people being laid off. And so, yeah, we can catch ourselves and often we're just trying to be official when we use our company name. Like we're just trying to say, hey, this company achieved this thing. But there's another message there that, like you said, some people may feel like they were not included in that. Yeah.

And it's that lack of, I think it's that underlying lack of ownership. The company said this, even when you said, it's funny, I recoiled slightly earlier on in your story, which is a great story. When you said the leadership, I was like, oh God, yeah. That's a, and that, you know what? Yeah. That's in a word that I was immediately into, well, God, I wonder what that email said if it came from the leadership. And yeah, as opposed to her boss or the CEO or, whatever, it being owned by somebody.

It's a good point that us and them factor can creep in quite easily.

Yeah. At Inspiring Change, we help our clients to implement sustainable change and drive business performance by putting their people first. We do that through a focus on strategic internal communications, employee engagement, and leadership consultancy. If you're struggling with change or getting your people aligned behind your purpose, business, vision, or strategy, then get in touch. Simply visit our website at www.inspiringchange.ie for more. I still think, and I think it's getting better, and I'll be interested in your take on that as well, um, I think we're starting to see more emotion creeping into business writing in organizations, but I still think it's probably still maybe slightly leaning towards the kind of the left-brain, rational, numbersy stuff. And maybe there's not enough emotion in writing. But I wonder from your perspective, what role or what place does emotion have in good writing? And how can leaders maybe bring that to the writing a bit more?

Well, you know, Scott, I think that role is growing, the role of emotion in writing, as we were talking about earlier with the pandemic and how we're not together except often through written words. And so, as in a relationship, emotion emotions exist, right? And we can express those when we're together. Even in a business conversation, we can smile. But now we can't do that. And so we're seeing a lot more emotions start to come in for that reason, the connection that people are craving. And secondly, readers are looking for authenticity. Now we're already starting to tire a little bit of the AI sound of writing. Not to say that it isn't useful, but when unchecked, it can sound obviously AI written. And people are starting to feel like, you know, I to hear from this authentic person, and that includes emotion to an extent. And so, and I, I believe it depends also on what industry you work in. Certainly generational culture has an impact here, but so does industry culture. I have clients where I would not put emotion in my email because it's patent law, you know, and that's not a thing. Um, but in most cases, and certainly in cases of relationships, hierarchical relationships, we want that emotion to show that appreciation. And what What people worry about most often actually is not, is it weird to be emotional? People are worrying about, will it ruin my concision if I'm also courteous and friendly and nice? And so then we get to this idea, can we be concise and nice? And yes, we can. We can still be concise but use intentionality when we choose our verbs to describe people and things like that, right? But emotion is creeping in, and I think it's a good thing because writing is what we have right now. To show how we are working on the situation. Quick side note on emoji use. That's what often people will say. Well, I'm worried that my tone might have sounded snarky, so I put a smiley at the end to show, you know, I mean this well. And now we're in a question that's completely reader-driven. Is an emoji okay for your reader or not is a huge question to consider. I would never use an emoji for my patent law client. But I would for another teacher, right? And I've talked to someone who was almost fired for using an emoji. It was— she had a boss, a company in another country. They didn't like that. And but I've talked to other people who find it very helpful, helpful. And in fact, an Adobe study recently showed that over half of people not only feel like emojis help us connect, but believe it or not, help the message sound more credible. Which very much surprised me that over half of people would feel like we're more credible with an emoji. But you know what? I think it's what you said earlier, self-awareness. An emoji shows that that person was aware of how the tone might be, and secondly, cared about you and whether their tone would hurt you.

And so I can see now when I really think about it that emojis can increase credibility as well as a sense of Yeah, you stole the question straight out of my head because that's exactly where I was going to go next. But you've answered it perfectly. So thank you. And I, you know, it's, it's writing is just a bloody minefield. So I think I'm just going to ring people from now on. I'm never, I'm never writing anything to anybody ever again. Yeah. Lest, lest I get into trouble. When, when you think about, and one of the things actually we discussed, which I thought was a really interesting point when we had our chat previously, was this whole idea of writing for you versus writing for others. Tell me, tell me a little bit more about that.

Right, that's a huge one. And you know, that's an outlook that most of us never think of. I taught writing for at least a decade before I even thought of it. So if you haven't thought of this, don't worry. We grow up writing for ourselves. It's for our teacher, but it's for us to be judged by, right? And maybe we write in journals or we write little stories or we write in games with friends, right? When we're at work, though, we're writing for another person who's not a teacher who's gonna gauge the writing against a rubric. It's a person who's going to use the writing, apply what we said to get things done. And so now we're writing for someone who needs to use what we say. And many of us have grown up on what I now consider kind of myths that writing is just to show what you know. That's what we were taught in school. And it's true, right? Let me show you how well I can use my vocabulary and all my good quotes and evidence. But that is no longer the case. And unfortunately, no one really tells us that, you know, oh, hey, you finished whatever level of school, you're going into work, you need to completely switch your outlook at this point because, right, you were not writing for someone's digestion and use before. And so the biggest thing I talk to people about in addition to audience awareness is actually self-management. When we're writing for others, it's our job to use that emotional intelligence and manage, for example, how much detail does that person want in this moment? Maybe my teacher wanted 4 pages of detail, but does the person I'm emailing want all the details? I know, probably not. And I've been guilty of overinforming in an email. Most of us either underinform or overinform, and we want to know our default. If you tend to overexplain, that can actually overwhelm a reader and they can understand less. So what I've coached myself to do is if I have 6 things to say, I say, which of these 6 will I write to this person now? Will I write to them later? Will I write to them never? And I've caught myself, you know, I never need to say that. I was just saying that because I thought it was kind of neat. It's not helpful or usable by them at all. And in fact, they only need these two ideas today, and tomorrow they need two more, depending on where they are. They do not need all six. So that's on us as well in this world where we are writing for others, not for ourselves at all.

So again, using that lens of the recipient as a way to help to dictate what you're actually putting down on paper or on screen, which I think, yeah, it's an interesting perspective. I wonder how can people, whether they're leaders or people more widely in an organization, how can they build that writing muscle? How do they become more confident writers?

Right, and that's a huge question. You know, I, in my classes, I have a self-assessment form that they take before, the participants. Last week, one young woman, the question was, what do you feel confident about in your writing? And then secondly, what do you not? She answered, what do you feel confident in your writing about, with, I never feel confident in my writing. That was her answer. And there are many folks struggling with this. Many people feel that they, quote, cannot write. I can't write. Well, that's not possible because writing is actually thinking. It's not something that you have to be born with a talent for. It's just about logical thought. So what I tell people when they feel unconfident is, okay, number one, writing is situational, right? There's no one right way to write. And that's a message in itself, right? We grew up maybe thinking, oh, you're wrong. That's a myth. There is not one right way to write, of course. And we all know that we text our friend differently than we email our boss. So it's— it proves the point, right? It depends on the situation. Well, guess who knows— who knows more about the situation you're writing in than you? And so what I tell people is writing is situational. You need to rely on your expertise about the situation. And that includes two things: who is going to read it? You've got the expertise to it, even if you don't know them, at least to study them and consider their potential industry culture and things like that. And the other side of the situation is the goal. Are you trying to make someone feel excited about this event? Are you trying to make someone feel like this is mandatory? Up to you, right? But you are actually the expert of the situation. And so there is no guideline of what's right in writing. The situation rules the day. And so you rule that day by figuring out, I figure out my situation and I write to it.

Yeah, you are the boss of your own writing. We are nearly out of time. So I've got my very last question, which I've been asking guests recently just because I think it's really nice to have just a really nice takeaway at the end. And they've actually, in fairness, Erin, there've been tons of takeaways over the past 35 minutes, But, you know, in, in ter— very briefly, what's the one thing that leaders can do to make their writing more impactful?

Um, one thing, you know, I was going to talk about putting others first, but I feel like I've done a lot of that, so I'm going to add a second one because I worry that leaders might think, well, you've told me a lot about how to make others feel welcome, but what about getting things done with these other people? They have to do their work too. So I'll say, you know, leaders, we can write a clear ask ask in a courteous, respectful manner. But often I find leaders are frustrated when they don't get back what they wanted from a message, but often the ask didn't include everything it needed. And the ask needs 3 things. One for sure, which is a command verb. What, what is the thing to do? Provide your edits, reply by Thursday, right? We need to know who needs to do it, what's a command verb, and we probably need to know when and where. To do the action, and the where is probably digital, page 13 of the report, online. People need all that in one sentence. Boom, you're gonna get more responses because that ask will be clear and it won't be hidden in a paragraph.

Brilliant stuff. Brilliant stuff. Be clear. Do not hide the ask in a paragraph. You heard it here. Erin, listen, I've really, really enjoyed chatting to you. As I said, this is, this is a subject that's very close to my own heart as well. So I love talking about it. If people want to find out more about you or get touch? What, what's the best way for them to go about doing that?

Well, I'd love to talk with folks about their writing struggles and questions. I'm on YouTube. We have a great channel going with a lot of international comments and questions, and I answer them back in videos. So it's High Value Writing on YouTube, and we can connect there. I'm also on LinkedIn. And then we have e-courses, courses.highvaluewriting.com. And then of course my book, High Value Writing, um, brings my classroom instruction into a very small, brief conversational guide that's easy to learn from.

Brilliant stuff. Super. Well, listen, if the book is anything like the podcast, I'm sure it'll be fantastic. I have enjoyed our chat, Erin. Thanks so much for taking the time.

Me too. Thanks for having me. Thanks, everyone.

Thanks for listening. To hear from other leaders in our podcasts, to read our blogs, or to find out more about the work that we do at Inspiring Change, please visit inspiringchange.ie.