Communicate with Mastery

3Writing for Impact: Active, Brief, and Clear

When I teach business writing, I often tell students that their writing will go further in the organization than they will. The email you write will be read by the CEO before you ever meet. More people will see your slide deck than will ever sit in an audience at your presentation. Writing matters more than ever now in business, and yet it's one of the hardest things to get people to focus on. Why is that? In a world of quick communication, we often forget that one of the most powerful tools for scaling our leadership is the written word. And for many of us, the stakes feel higher when we're writing—not only because our words often enter the room before we do and stay after we've left—but because writing commits our thoughts to paper in a way that feels definite. Well, writing is high-stakes. But that doesn't mean it has to be confining, difficult, or isolating. The best writing represents you in a way that feels as authentic as a conversation and connects you to an audience beyond your immediate circle.

I like to start with the building blocks of business writing: the ABCs. All business writing should be Active, Brief, and Clear.

Active

I urge my students to adjust their writing to the active voice whenever and wherever possible. This usually requires two steps: First, we have to be able to identify the passive voice in our writing. Second, we have to replace the passive voice with something more energetic and engaging. The distinction ...