So how are things at work?
• Does your boss overlook your contributions? Does your
team ignore your ideas? Do your colleagues forget your
suggestions?
• Do you struggle to create consensus in your department?
• Are you headed for a new company or a new location?
• Are the skills you need for the next position different from
those you mastered in entry-level work?
• Are you on the fast track with a plan or stalled on the
shoulder without a clue?
If your answer is yes to any (or many) of these questions,
this book was written for you. Work is about performance. But
performance—what you’ve done, where you’ve succeeded, and
who knows about it—depends on your ability to communicate.
How can I make the most of the time I have to talk? How can
I persuade others to follow my plan? How can I be sure my ideas are remembered as mine? How can I create authority?
How can I inspire collaboration? Speech and language choices
figure into all these situations, and they are as important to the
solutions as good ideas or an impressive title. Yes, work is
about performance, but recognition and promotion require
good communication skills.
Good communication skills required. Every job posting lists
good communication skills as a necessary qualification. But
what are good communication skills? A loud voice? An exten-
sive vocabulary? The power to persuade? The stylistic flair of
a poet? We often assume communication skills aren’t much
more than the ability to write a clear memo or pull together an
efficient agenda. But spoken language, rather than writing, is
at the heart of most business communication. Talk is how we
prefer to do business. We feel inefficient and frustrated when
the workday is full of messaging options, voice mail, telephone
tag, and the black hole of holding. We want to talk to people
directly, explain ourselves, practice our own brand of chatter
and charm. While memos, e-mails, reports, and letters all con-
vey important information, the relationships we create and the
impressions we convey are built on what we say and how we
say it.
