This week I had a great opportunity to attend an AMA seminar titled “How to Sharpen Your Business Writing Skills”. As my mentors here at Leader to Leader and I continue to work on my professional development, I was excited to attend some outside training and learn more about working in a professional environment.

The course was four days long and taught by Dr. Sal Iacone , an expert in professional writing and editing. I grew up with text messages and “leetspeak”, a dialect of abbreviations and emoticons. I had high hopes that this course would provide insight into the kind of writing expected in a professional setting.

The course was a hugely successful experience for me. We covered basic grammatical rules, requirements for proper mechanics, and effective diction, but we also covered more abstract topics like writing for individuals whose native language is not English, personalizing writing to make it more effective and a technique called mind-mapping which is useful in organizing one’s thoughts before writing.

Sal’s teaching technique was laid back and approachable; some of the most insightful moments came through anecdotes and personal tangents. We were a talkative class, with participants from Tampa, Philadelphia, Raleigh, Washington DC and San Antonio. While I was the only NYC local, by the end of the class everyone was discussing Times Square and Broadway like old hands at navigating the city (they certainly picked it up more quickly than I did when I moved here!)

My big takeaways from the class include both some really specific notes and some very general ideas. For example, in writing a business letter, I always thought you addressed the recipient “Dear _______,” when the standard format is actually “Dear _______:” That colon makes all the difference in a professional appearance and I have been doing it wrong for years! Did you know that the plural form of “email” is “email”? Too many of us say “emails”, but you wouldn’t check the mailbox at your house for new “mails”, would you? Sal also drew my attention to my own tendency to use the passive voice (“the document was received by our organization” instead of “our organization received the document”) and to get ahead of myself with run-on sentences. Beyond the grammar notes, it was a great benefit to spend time with experienced business professionals, to hear their stories and speak with them on an equal level. These conversations reinforced my educational and career path choices and my work here at Leader to Leader.

Sal and the group joked around with me a couple of times that perhaps I wasn’t in the right class—I have a BA in English literature with minor concentrations in creative writing and journalism and I’ve worked as both a writing tutor and a copy editor—so what was I doing in a class on improving writing skills? A self-professed grammarphobe, I did already know a couple of the things we covered. But my biggest conclusion about the class was that there is no harm is reinforcing knowledge you may think you already have, calling attention to things you may have gotten lazy about and that there is always more knowledge to gain. I know I am taking away a sharper eye and a more honed ear as well as a new confidence in my professional correspondence.

***AMA/Leader to Leader Scholarship

Each year, Leader to Leader partners with the American Management Association to provide 75 scholarships to nonprofit leaders. The scholarship, among other things, includes one management education and professional development seminar offered by AMA in the United States.

Apply for the scholarship.

Please contact Risa Cohn, risa@leadertoleader.org if you have any questions about the application process.

By Caitlin Orbanek. Contact Caitlin at caitlin@leadertoleader.org