In today's world, I can see a lot of job positions with descriptions as "good communication skills". You never know what they mean "good communication skills". In general, you expect be good both in writing and speaking. But in reality, all they care is your speaking. Hell, they do not care your speaking at all realistically. To some degree, even if your speaking is poor, as long you speak with the "right attitude", they will praise you with "good communication skills". There are other work job terms that are out dated or really detrimental to be encouraged for the productivity of today's workforce. For example, the popular term "work hard play hard". Seriously? It should be more of "work smart play hard". Instead of working hard for something you really are told to and must treat it as a game, people should think of their own what is best for the organization and play that with all efforts even with the opposition of the rest of the organization. Why? Because, as with recent foundings have found, diversity in the workforce is a key element for an organization. Therefore, each person should show its own individuality, because no matter how wrong the individual is, there must be a part of merit that the individual is right no one has found or can perceive or can focus much on it through the working environment. My main point in here is: Job descriptions do not describe well what the real communication skills are in the work place. In addition, a lot of the job descriptions express stuff so wrong, making them look as saying, "Yes, we are a bad organization and we are not afraid of it". Most of the time people use those words as buzz words because everybody uses it. Other times people use those words without understanding the complete meaning behind. Okay, so I made a point. Where do I take this point? I take this point to this direction: Do not take job descriptions as a father-kid relationship. Do not assume that whatever the job description says is "right" to the same proportions a kid treats everything a father does as "right" or "correct" thing to do. Why the kid feels that way most of the time? The kid feels that way because a parent's sheer power in competency both intelligence and physical size is beyond bound to himself. In other words, you should question the authority of everything you see and have a sense of doubt about the correctness of each statement. Human resource people or any other person with more duties or responsibilities are people just "like" you and me. They just had different experiences and learned different things which are little to moderate easy for any person to anyone to access or experience such events in their life. These people are not perfect, they definitely make mistakes, and may follow norms that are faulty, but have a marketing effect.
Okay, so let us talk about writing in general to our daily life. Some people believe that writing should be done in very limited ways and most of the stuff to be done in speaking. I aim to propose that it is totally wrong. For the long term, it can create detrimental effects, which I am going to mention right now. But before mentioning the detrimental effects, let us see why people chose to speak instead of writing:
- Speaking is better for the purpose of a personal conversation within individuals or groups: So in these terms, speaking creates relationships and to understand more about the other person. In those terms, the content of the speaking does not matter at all. In those terms, the attitude matters and the access of sharing and receiving input of their personal self and my personal self are important so we can know each other. Most of the time, it has no purpose to the project. Is this act recommended to do? Well, I guess it does not hurt. However, how many times I see people taking this conversation in the context of helping the progress of a project and position the discussion as being objectionable and professional? If the conversation did not had any other discussion besides the personal, I cannot see the transparency when it is "booked" as non-personal. Software development focuses most of the time on the non-personal. It is all about machines after all. However, it is the people and not the machines that uses or buys those machines. So it is essential to have a personal discussion of topics to some merits, but most of the focus should be about the cause and effect of the software. This communication style expresses bold statements to the client which if taken in a non-personal way may become offensive to the client. If most of the time the discussions are done in a personal way, then the client will have that "expectation" always to take any statement as personal. This is no good and I have explained in my previous post how this consistent discussions done repeatedly can create an addiction, an expectation to receive the same answer from the client. This is anticipated and hopefully (though I do not promise) to be discussed on a different blog post as "understanding communication styles"
- There is no need of writing cause I will remember it: Some people really do remember about a past event very well. However, how very well do they remember it? Do they remember all the details they once knew a long time ago or just some of it? Some will answer and will say, "yes", they do, but in fact they do not. They may just be confident they remember everything, but in actuality, they may have forgotten a thing or two, that if it was written instead, they could have recollected that memory. Why do we really need to force to recollect every memory without jotting it down in paper? Does it guarantee that we will recollect every memory? This sounds more like creating mind games when it is easy to just prepare ahead that moment when it comes. It is not professional and it is very childish to expect others to remember stuff or making writing inferior to speaking. Instead, it is a better argument for people to check written references and updating written references if something gets forgotten often and it is not written within a reference.
- I am bombarded with too much information. My attitude should be only speaking instead of writing to avoid too much information Which begs the question: Have you ever tried to count how many words you talk per day and how much writing you read per day? Let us say that the cultural organization norm is of writing brief statements. The result will be a lot of questions being asked through speaking, most of them that have already been answered before. There will also be a lot of speaking on going to one direction the one day and a different direction the other day. This happens often because the decisions are done is out of little information and of that, only some of it still collected through memory (through speaking instead of writing). This can result to poor decisions. This will result to changing decisions for the same subject several times instead of very few times if it was done in writing. Now let us see if there was less talk and more writing. The writing at first will be a lot. Compared to speaking that comes within small chunks, writing comes in big chunks (that is the form this communication naturally is unless you "chat or message online" which is not formal writing). At first, the writing will be a lot, but over time , it will be less and less. In the long term, you will be bombarded with less information if writing is emphasized instead of speaking. So although at first it "looks" like speaking makes the process faster, in the long term it does not. When you are used to speaking too much, of course you will see writing as too much information, because you are already bombarded with too much information with most of the time doing short talk! Speaking and not formal writing is the main cause we have too much information bombarded. Speaking however, as mentioned in previous post, is good to clarify things. However, the ratio of speaking and writing should be in levels where writing is more encouraged than speaking (writing also helps in clearing up thoughts and changing perceptions , resulting in your speaking to become more concise).
So let us focus why writing is so important. First of all, writing is encouraged in the education system. See in colleges and universities on how many classes that are focused in "writing" and how many in "speech". See how most of the assignments in class are writing assignments instead of presentations. See how presentations should include a power point with written words in it. How many presentations have you seen where they were only in the format of speech? Even the ones that are done with speech, most of them include some brief words in them within power points. You can see from education how much dedication it has set to writing. Many meetings you will hear how important is to write brief statements. In other words, to ignore what you learned in school. Those are really ridiculous statements. It is okay to have a brief statement and a long statement so the reader can read only the brief statement, but what you and others want to encourage is for people to see within references instead of wasting your productivity time answering questions that are already answered in a reference that is well organized and easy to access any information they want. Of course, writing/reading requires a learning curve, but it is of the same level as speaking is. It is not how hard or complicated it is, but how harnessed the habits of people are that they do not let explore themselves to other areas that can help the overall well being of an organization. Remember work smart play hard?
Writing is very important in the life of law and order. When you do contracts, which are the ones that will hold your verdict instead of theirs? If it is oral speaking, it has little to no ground unless there were many witnesses or it was pre recorded. If it was written with the signature in it, it holds a very strong ground and your claim is easier that way. For instance, you could say to an employee that they cannot work in another competitive company within the next 5 years. They can reply, "ok, I will not". After 3 years, they leave to a competitive company and all your information is within a rival company. Now they know all your weaknesses and can express to their new prospective customers why they should buy their product instead of their rival product. If you claim in court for damages in lost sales, it will not be a strong claim as much as if it was written in signature. You can see that writing contracts like that are very long. That is because they need to include small details like the example I mentioned. It is more easier to say those stuff to the new employee little by little at a time instead of big chunks, but it is more concrete to have something written in paper where it can be referenced later.
Which comes to the other end of law and order, people who do not want to write show they do not want to lose confidence when something they written in the past does not hold anymore for them on the present or for admitting a mistake. Writing has its disadvantages. For instance, in the terms of contract, once you state something, you cannot change anything in it after that, until the contract expires. So something you wish you wanted to add, cannot be expressed in any other form instead of orally or until the contract expires and requiring the individual to sign a new different contract. In addition, something you have written in a contract or in a formal writing paper may indicate something you do not hold of good value anymore. Compared to speaking, it is easy to others not look at your mistakes or things you do not hold of any value anymore. All you need to do is repeat more of what you hold of value so they can remember those stuff and less or none to the stuff you don't care or made mistakes of so they can forget it over time. In writing, these cannot be done, and for people that do not want to lose confidence or had a bad experience memory when they wrote something they feel regret, they will try to avoid it as much as they can. Of course, people try to be careful with writing and avoid writing pretty much, given that you can get in trouble on something that you have written in email with no intentions of having any hatred to the other. Just by giving constructive criticism to an individual on e-mail or public within social sites like Facebook and twitter, can result in mass media to change the face value of the original message or employees getting fired out of their job.
In conclusion, we saw 3 reasons why people would defend speaking that in the end proved to hold no ground. In addition, we saw how life incorporates writing: Education supports it very much. The power of law is more powerful within writing instead of speaking. And lastly, a person that shows a lack of writing may indicate a mechanism defense of supporting their confidence and living a definite environment where they will feel more confident. Analyzing all of them found us a lot of reasons to tell us that writing is indeed very important. We will summarize in brief the reasons for writing being important.
Formal Writing
- Is less personal and can discuss cause and effect relationships. This can help in encouraging more to keep on track with the project requirements and structure and for discussions to be more non-personal (discussions with personal content are very important! But if you have a pen and paper and jot half the time down while you talk "all" about personal life events, individuals will start to less talk personally as I do not think most will want the other person to be their personal stalker).
- Writing creates references which nobody requires to remember. They can use "that memory space" instead for other more purposeful stuff.
- Formal writing, as counter to what many people think today, creates less bombardment of information.
- It is a skill we have more proficiency in technical abilities to use because it was taught to us at school. Of course, for most of us, we have more experience in speaking than in writing. However, if each of us gave enough attention to every class on our college, our technical abilities in writing will be better than our speaking. That is because most of our classes and assignments with feedback were of the nature of writing. Given that writing has so many advantages and we are more proficient on it, why not use it?
- Writing is more concrete than speaking. Speaking are echoes of words that after a few seconds they disappear in the thin air with the hopes that the people besides you grasped what you said, and can retain it in their heads for long. In contrast, writing is there and will live forever if stored properly. Anybody can read it if they can understand the language at any given time. They do not need to retain it in their memory. They can interpret the same message in different ways when they read it at different times giving new dimensions for the same message. The more concrete, the more support and credibility you will have in life, especially in the world of law and order.
- With writing, you will be more transparent to yourself and others. The individual becomes less egocentric and admits its own mistakes and moves on in life to improve and grow itself instead of holding itself with its weaknesses for the sake of keeping their confidence strong.
There are so much more that it can be said where writing is more important than speaking. One point I just want to make is that: Yes, writing is more important than speaking. However, I do not advocate for speaking to be limited of any form. Speaking is essential and required to make personal relationships with others and it is the best way to get "new" requirements. However, to not jot anything down when getting new requirements or especially to never write anything down will make an organization in brief to "lack foundation in order to hold itself".
Again, I must advocate, that "good communication skills" is indeed to have good writing and speaking skills. Many misinterpret it as having "good attitude" in speaking skills. This "good attitude" is not encouraged as a communicative style all the time, it is an impediment, especially for getting requirements for a project. Another misinterpret it as "speaking fluently". That is to some extent important, but as long as most people understand you and it is not a customer service job, it should not be misinterpreted like that. Many misinterpret it as just "speaking skills" or set more importance to speaking skills, which is the main reason I written this post.