I’m breaking my silence here at Pros Write with these guidelines. They’re the result of a study made available today in Business and Professional Communication Quarterly. With my co-authors (Pierson Carmichael and Jefrey Naidoo), I offer six practical lessons to help change agents manage communication and maintain credibility with stakeholders who have made a hostile challenge like “Why…
People who have influence at work know how to write persuasively. Persuasion is how you successfully lobby for resources from your boss or win funding from an investor. Research found that persuasion was central to the success of 10-30% of all internal, written communication in an organization. The negative connotation of persuasion is created by trust…
A couple of months ago, I summarized the available evidence on writing white papers. I’ve done more digging and want to provide a follow-up with a few more details on developing content, organizing it, and using an appropriate style. (See the earlier post for a description of the white paper as a genre.) The bottom line…
My name is Jessica Crew. I’m a graduate student at the University of Alabama studying Communication Studies and have a personal interest in business and organizational communication. For these reasons I enrolled in Dr. Campbell’s Leadership Communication course. The exam below is an analysis of Nelson Mandela’s effectiveness as a leader in the movie Invictus. This was…
My name is Eric Longenecker. I am a senior and graduating in December 2012 with a degree in Management Information Systems. I am taking part in Leadership Communications (MGT 422) as a part of my specialization, Management Communication. This is an exam I submitted in response to whether leadership was effective or not in the…
To influence people at work, you’ll need to earn their trust (ethos) and make good arguments (logos). See yesterday’s post for more on these rhetorical terms. Evidence is the cornerstone of effective arguments. Not all evidence is equal, of course. The video tutorial I’m posting today focuses on the use of evidence, as well as several…
Most amateurs and at least some pros are willing to ascribe the unethical intentions of individuals to linguistic forms. (See my post on passive voice.) No where is this more obvious than in the case of “persuasive” language. Yes. Workplace writers can use language to market unhealthy food to the children of their customers convince government regulators…