Writing is seen as such a Herculean task that it is often outsourced and that can be a great idea. If you look at the writing involved in a task and you realise that it is something that you cannot handle, it’s easy to get an essay writing service to deal with it for you.
Nonetheless, academic writing is a very useful skill that you must acquire as a manager. People often downplay the importance of writing and that’s why some writers are undercharged because someone somewhere thinks it is a combination of words and nothing more. Alas, there is more to writing than this.
Why is writing important?
You need to be able to effectively communicate in the workplace. In fact, this is not even negotiable. Whether you are sending out emails, memos or any other thing that requires writing, it needs to be well worded and composed with the intent to pass messages how they are meant to be passed.
As a manager, you have to understand the importance of written communication. Being able to pass messages effectively in writing will save you a lot of stress. Information that is written down can always be referenced again, unlike information communicated via word of mouth.
Your ability to successfully communicate in writing is one quality of a good leader. For every message you send out in writing, you are creating a relationship between you and the reader. Your words decide the relationship you create.
On social media, a lot of people often say “I am responsible for what I type. You are responsible for what you understand”.
While this is applicable to social media, it is not in the office space. Whatever information you had in your mind to pass, has to be passed in a manner that the person receiving it understands what you’re trying to say clearly. You need writing for effective business communication and you should know by now that the importance of business communication cannot be overemphasized.
Why do managers need academic writing skills?
Apart from sending emails and memos and every other basic thing that requires writing in the workplace, a manager needs to have the skill of academic writing. The process involved in academic writing is like training grounds for leadership. Academic writing requires a lot of discipline as it is a process that needs the most attention to detail, research, fact-finding, and curation of statistics. Here are some of the reasons this skill is useful for managers:
It helps in communicating formally
When communicating in the office, unless there is a joke being told, there is no reason to laugh. Some people fall into the pit of informal writing while passing a message. When you are writing a business mail, it should be written with the skills of an academic writer. No need to beat around the bush. Just go straight to the point and deliver your message.
Reports and correspondences are written better
Reports require a certain level of discipline and formality; the same type that is required when you write academic pieces. Managers who are unable to come up with good reports and correspondences should have their managerial duties put to the test. These reports are vital and regardless of the reason they were created, they need to retain that seriousness associated with academic writing processes.
It helps to create clear and succinct communication
Another thing about academic writing that should be adopted, is the absence of superfluous words. In a business environment, you cannot send messages that are left open to interpretation. Your official messages have to come out bereft of every unnecessary word and letters.
Academic writing teaches you to go for facts, eschewing all words that are immaterial to the subject matter of time. In memos that should be passed around to the team members, your words should be simple, succinct, brief and share the important information in just the required amounts of words needed.
To provide performance reviews
When a project has been completed by a team, a review is in order. In a project review, it is easy to write, “the project was successful and…”
However, that is not a good review. A good review has to embody the good work that was done and the terrible ones as well. You have to be able to come up with a constructive analysis of how everyone worked, what they did right, what they did wrong, how they can do better and how they can improve on their jobs.
This is a job that you cannot outsource because outsourcing means you would be giving important sensitive information to the writer.
Final thoughts
Effective communication is one of the ways you can ensure effective employee engagement, especially in a time when everyone is learning how to work away from the office. Written communication has to be done right, with the right messages passed across.
Thankfully, managers can now improve communication by learning the art of academic writing. With this skill, you can easily boost communication in the workplace and improve productivity among workers.
About the Author
Amanda Dudley is a writer and a lecturer with a PhD in history from Stanford university. A brilliant writer, when she is not lecturing and helping students with complex assignments, she works as a part time essay writer, providing top quality essay writing services and academic projects at EssayUSA.
Good grief – talk about ignoring your own advice!
While academic writing is actually mostly dreadful, if you want to argue that people should be doing it, it would behoove you to practice what you preach:
“You need to be able to effectively communicate in the workplace. In fact, this is not even negotiable.”
=>
“The workplace requires effective communication. This is not negotiable”.
or, with even less fluff =>
“Workplaces require effective communication”.
I scanned article thinking there would be a definition of academic writing vs. vernacular. As someone who’s written for college management text books, I understand academic writing, which is too laborious for 80-90% of business comm. situations, such as emails, memo’s, collective intelligence notes in weekly or monthly reports. It really only applies to legal or detailed executive communication. The title of the article implies there will be a) help in understanding the definition of academic writing, and b) a contrast to common social/ vernacular styles, and/or how to adapt fully rigorous, traditional academic writing to the work place in order achieve both goals of being effective AND efficient w/ communication. The post did neither – hate to say – and I don’t mean to be mean, but after the title and opening sentence of paragraph one, all I could think was “thanks captain obvious”. Then there’s mostly circular logic from there – “you need academic, i.e., better, writing skills b/c… it’s important to write better”. Beyond that, what did we learn? Do young professionals (I’m 47 btw) really not know that it’s important to follow basic – college 101 basic – business comm. practices? That said, I think a list of the top 3-5 ‘academic” writing principles combined with a “how-to” adapt to the brevity required in 80-90’s of biz comm, would be a very helpful post.
Best,
JG