The success of your career, advancement, networking, interviewing, training, speaking, emails, memos, marketing, branding and career portfolio all depend on your ability to effectively communicate. For me, too! I love sharing career tips, but my delivery is not always perfect. In case you didn’t notice (“wink, wink”), I make a mistake or two and must continually strive to polish my communication skills as it’s vitally important to my career and business. In fact, everyone’s career requires some routine maintenance of their professional communication skills—written, spoken and nonverbal.
Communication and your career are interwoven in a way that one directly impacts the other. If you are a good communicator, your message and professional delivery will open doors. If your career is on the upswing, you’ll need good communication skills to keep it on solid ground and growing. Good communicators know powerful messages should be clear, concise and professional. In other words there’s etiquette involved, including timing, language and delivery and this impacts our brand which is a big part of our professional image. To help your communication style sync with your brand and where you want your career to go, I asked Angela Klinske, Director of Communications and Public Relations for Mercy Health and owner of Mixed Media, for a few tips.
“Extra work and missed communication messages can negatively impact your career” she said. “Communicate clearly by choosing the right words and by keeping messages brief. These are great skills to have.” Klinske explained that with the overwhelming amount of communication being exchanged daily, the competition in getting your message across only increases. Being brief and direct is one of the best ways to ensure your message will get read.
“You should not only care about what you say but how you say it,” she said. Klinske explained the importance of syncing body language with the message that you’re delivering and avoiding unnecessary conversation fillers. In addition, she recommends checking and rechecking your writing as it only takes a minute but goes a long way. “If you forget to run a spell check, it makes you look like you just don’t care.”
Klinske shared her 6 C formula for success: “Is your message 1) Concise; 2) Clear; 3) Correct; 4) Complete; 5) Compelling? Then say it with 6) Confidence.”
“Thanks, Angela, for the great tips on communication and your career.” You can follow Angela on Twitter @angelaklinske