The document discusses interpersonal skills and business writing. It provides guidance on building effective interpersonal writing skills, including using relationship building language, understanding the three common types of business messages, and applying business writing prose style principles. For an assignment, students are asked to study these concepts and apply them when responding to a case study involving drafting a refund letter, memo report, and email to a supervisor about an issue. The case study poses challenges around conveying negative news diplomatically without blame.

1. 1
Interpersonal Skills and
Business Writing

2. • Put simply, interpersonal skills refer to an
employee's ability to get along with other people while
getting their job done.
• Interpersonal skills include everything from how you
communicate; how you listen; your attitude and
manners; to how you dress.
• Interpersonal skills are closely related to intercultural
skills which is the knowledge of social expectations
and customs of another culture and the ability to
adjust your interpersonal skills accordingly.
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3. For deliverable 1 of this project, you will need to study concepts that build
effective interpersonal writing skills as explained in this slidedoc and apply
these when responding to the case study.
• Use Relationship Building-Language, slides 4-10.
• Learn the Three Common Types of Business Messages and how to apply
these when responding to the case study, slides 11-17.
• Use Business Writing Prose Style Principles, slides 18-22.
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4. Use Relationship-Building Language
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5. How prose style affects the workplace.
• The way in which you write and respond to others can foster positive
workplace relationships or negative ones.
• Your prose style can show respect or disrespect for others and
reveal positive or negative intentions.
• This lecture uses examples from Business Writing with Heart: How
to Build Great Workplace Relationships One Message at a Time by
Lynn Gaertner-Johnson.
• I highly recommend this book because it contains many additional
examples that you will find useful when writing to others in the
workplace.
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6. Use Language that
Builds Relationships
with Others
• Simply adding please,
thank you, expressing
appreciation, and
displaying respect for
other people’s time goes
a long way to build and
preserve good workplace
relationships.
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7. Examples:
When requesting work from others: ask instead of tell.
• Do you have time to get me this information today?
When someone expedites work to you, thank them.
• Thanks for getting me this information today, I greatly
appreciate it.
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8. Emphasize what can – not what can’t
Can’t Attitude:
We’ll be using the conference room for most of the
day, so you can’t have it before 2 today.
Can Attitude:
We’ll be done with the conference room at 2 today,
so it’s all yours after that.
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9. Use Positive Language and
Avoid Negative
Positive
• looking forward
• happy to
• terrific
• glad
• etc.
Negative
• no idea
• no way
• impossible
• fail to
• etc.
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10. Explain why.
• We’ve changed the date of the meeting because
Tom has a prior commitment.
• I would appreciate your assessment by June 16
(I’d like to get this wrapped up and to the client
before I leave for a month-long road-trip next
week).
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11. Three common types of messages in
business correspondence.
• Neutral messages convey information that the recipient
would view as neither good nor bad news.
• Negative news messages convey information that the
recipient would receive as negative, unpleasant, and
may disappoint, upset, or even anger the recipient.
• Positive news messages convey information the
recipient would view favorably.
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12. Seven Goals to Keep in Mind
When Delivering Negative News
1. Be clear and concise in order not to require additional clarification.
2. Help the receiver understand and accept the news.
3. Maintain trust and respect for the business or organization and for the
receiver.
4. Avoid legal liability or erroneous admission of guilt or culpability.
5. Maintain the relationship, even if a formal association is being terminated.
6. Reduce the anxiety associated with the negative news to increase
comprehension.
7. Achieve the designated business outcome.
• From Writing Commons Delivering Negative News
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13. Direct vs. Indirect Approaches
• Some people prefer their bad news to be direct and
concise. Others may prefer a less direct approach.
• Whether you determine a direct or indirect approach is
warranted, your job is to deliver news that you anticipate
will be unwelcome, unwanted, and possibly dismissed.
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14. In Person? or Written? or Both?
• This combined approach of a verbal and written message is
increasingly the norm in business communication.
• When responding to the Case Study, consider what you might do in
person before submitting a report about the problem to the
supervisor. In your self-evaluation explain if you think contacting the
supervisor in-person or by phone would be a good first step or not.
• Use standard formatting conventions for each document (see
slidedoc 1).
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15. Case Study: Letter
• The refund letter is mostly a positive message.
• Analyze the case study closely, however, before
composing your letter.
• A key challenge is to issue the refund and state why you
are issuing it without admitting or implying that your
business is liable for the problem this customer
encountered or blaming the customer.
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16. Case Study: Memo Report
• The memo report is a negative news message.
• You are conveying information about a problem and also
documenting that it exists. This documentation will
create a record for legal purposes if needed.
• Your challenge will be to explain the problem while
conveying your concern about a potential liability without
being alarmist.
• Your second challenge will be to do that without blaming
anyone.
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17. Case Study: Email
• The email conveys the memo report as an attachment.
• Because the case study explains that you would have
discussed the problem with the supervisor, your email
would be considered a neutral message.
• Keep the email short.
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18. 18
Business Writing
Prose Style Principles

19. Principle 1:
Write Concisely
• The goal of concise writing is to
use the most effective words to
meet audience needs and your
purpose for writing.
• Concise writing does not always
use fewer words, but it always uses
the strongest ones.
– The reason parents will buy this
product is that… (wordy)
– Parents will buy this product
because… (concise)
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20. Principle 2:
Use Action Verbs
• Action verbs make your writing
more concise, direct, and easier to
understand.
• We need an impending study that will
ascertain the feasibility of our obtaining
a solution. (action is unclear)
• We need to study the feasibility of this
solution.(action is clear)
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21. Principle 3:
Use Active Voice
• In active voice, who is doing the
action is the subject of the sentence.
– Our team discovered the problem
yesterday.
• In passive voice, the action is the
subject of the sentence and who is
doing the action is either missing or
stated as a “by” phrase.
– The problem was discovered
yesterday.
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Tip: if you can add “by
zombies” to a sentence, it is
likely in passive voice.

22. Principle 4:
Use Shorter
Sentences and
Shorter Paragraphs
• Typically, modern business prose
style uses shorter sentences and
paragraphs.
• The average sentence length is
between 14 and 20 words, but
avoid applying this average as a
rigid rule. Vary sentence length to
improve cadence.
• Keep paragraphs to one topic even
if the paragraph is only two or
three sentences.
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23. Principle 5:
Use Business Jargon
Appropriately
• Jargon is industry or discipline
specific terminology.
• Use jargon when the audience
is knowledgeable about how the
term is both being defined and
used.
• When your audience would not
have this knowledge, then
jargon creates a problem with
being clear.
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