Skills and Qualities Shared by Successful Workplace Communicators

• Ability to perform research. Successful communicators know how to perform primary research (discovering new information through experiments, observations, interviews, surveys, and calculations) and secondary research (finding existing information by reading what others have written or said). Successful communicators seek out information from people who use the products and services, not just from the manufacturers. Therefore, although successful communicators would visit the Toyota website to learn about the technical specifications of a Prius if they wanted to find out what it is like to drive, own, or repair a Prius, they would be sure to search the Internet for information from experts not associated with Toyota, as well as user-generated content: information from owners, presented in forums such as discussion boards and blogs.
• Ability to analyze information. Successful communicators know how to identify the best information—most accurate, relevant, recent, and unbiased—and then figure out how it helps in understanding a problem and ways to solve it. Successful communicators know how to sift through mountains of data, identifying relationships between apparently unrelated facts. They know how to evaluate a situation, look at it from other people’s perspectives, and zero in on the most important issues.
• Ability to solve problems. Successful communicators know how to break big problems into smaller ones, figure out what isn’t working right, and identify and assess options for solving the problems. They know how to compare and contrast the available options to achieve the clearest, most objective understanding of the situation.
• Ability to speak and write clearly. Successful communicators know how to express themselves clearly and simply, both to audiences that know a lot about the subject and to audiences that do not. They take care to revise, edit, and proofread their documents so that the documents present accurate information, are easy to read, and make a professional impression. And they know how to produce different types of documents, from tweets to memos to presentations.

  In addition to the skills just described, successful workplace communicators have seven qualities that relate to professional attitudes and work habits:

• They are honest. Successful communicators tell the truth. They don’t promise what they know they can’t deliver, and they don’t bend facts. When they make mistakes, they admit them and work harder to solve the problem.
• They are willing to learn. Successful communicators know that they don’t know everything—not about what they studied in college, what their company does, or how to write and speak. Every professional is a lifelong learner.
• They display emotional intelligence. Because technical communication usually calls for collaboration, successful communicators understand their own emotions and those of others. Because they can read people—through body language, facial expression, gestures, and words—they can work effectively in teams, helping to minimize interpersonal conflict and encouraging others to do their best work.
• They are generous. Successful communicators reply to requests for information from colleagues inside and outside their own organizations, and they share information willingly. (Of course, they don’t share confidential information, such as trade secrets, information about new products being developed, or personal information about colleagues.)
• They monitor the best information. Successful communicators seek out opinions from others in their organization and in their industry. They monitor the best blogs, discussion boards, and podcasts for new approaches that can spark their own ideas. They use tools such as RSS (really simple syndication or rich site summary, a utility that notifies users when new content appears on sites they follow) to help them stay on top of the torrent of new information on the Internet. They know how to use social media and can represent their organization online.
• They are self-disciplined. Successful communicators are well organized and diligent. They know, for instance, that proofreading an important document might not be fun but is always essential. They know that when a colleague asks a simple technical question, answering the question today—or tomorrow at the latest—is more helpful than answering it in a couple of weeks. They finish what they start, and they always do their best on any document, from the least important text message to the most important report.
• They can prioritize and respond quickly. Successful communicators know that the world doesn’t always conform to their own schedules. Because social media never sleep, communicators sometimes need to put their current projects aside in order to respond immediately when a stakeholder reports a problem that needs prompt action or publishes inaccurate information that can hurt the organization. And even though speed is critically important, they know that quality is, too; therefore, they make sure every document is fully professional before it goes out.