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Author: Patricia Iyer

Do you have an amazing business success you want to share? Pat Iyer has worked with experts helping them share their knowledge since she first began writing and editing books in 1985. Pat Iyer has written or edited over 800 chapters, books, case studies, articles or online courses. She delights in assisting people to share their expertise by writing a book. Pat serves as a developmental editor and ghostwriter.

Pat built a service business assisting attorneys with cases involving medical issues. After growing that business to a multi-million dollar one, after 25 years, she sold it in 2015 and now devotes her time to mentoring, writing and editing. Get tips for polishing your writing style and gaining business through the material you write: Listen to Writing to Get Business Podcast on the C Suite Radio platform.

Reach her through Patiyer.com|Do you have an amazing business success you want to share? Pat Iyer has worked with experts helping them share their knowledge since she first began writing and editing books in 1985. Pat Iyer has written or edited over 800 chapters, books, case studies, articles or online courses. She delights in assisting people to share their expertise by writing a book. Pat serves as a developmental editor and ghostwriter.

Pat built a service business assisting attorneys with cases involving medical issues. After growing that business to a multi-million dollar one, after 25 years, she sold it in 2015 and now devotes her time to mentoring, writing and editing. Get tips for polishing your writing style and gaining business through the material you write: Listen to Writing to Get Business Podcast on the C Suite Radio platform.

Reach her through Patiyer.com|Do you have an amazing business success you want to share? Pat Iyer has worked with experts helping them share their knowledge since she first began writing and editing books in 1985. Pat Iyer has written or edited over 800 chapters, books, case studies, articles or online courses. She delights in assisting people to share their expertise by writing a book. Pat serves as a developmental editor and ghostwriter.

Pat built a service business assisting attorneys with cases involving medical issues. After growing that business to a multi-million dollar one, after 25 years, she sold it in 2015 and now devotes her time to mentoring, writing and editing. Get tips for polishing your writing style and gaining business through the material you write: Listen to Writing to Get Business Podcast on the C Suite Radio platform.

Reach her through Patiyer.com

Categories
Growth Personal Development

Will You Write a Book in 2021?

You could hardly find a better time to write a book. On every level, 2020 shook the world out of its familiar patterns of operation. Nowhere is this truer than in the area of how we do business.

You could have several compelling reasons to write a book.

  • Your business has created and successfully implemented new methods for managing your remote office work situation.
  • You’ve discovered new ways to reach customers, via creative use of blogs, newsletters, and other forms of communication.
  • You’ve organized successful online conferences.

These are only a few possibilities.

Maybe you’re a visionary with a gift of anticipating trends. With your picture of the future in mind, you have a number of ideas for restructuring aspects of your business to meet anticipated needs.

Other business leaders want to know about whatever you have to contribute. The times demand increased cooperation and sharing of ideas.

“But I Can’t Write a Book.”

This argument gets weaker with every technological advance. In one of my blogs last month I mentioned that some aspiring writers dictate for five minutes a day into their phones. In a year, this can yield enough material for a book.

I had a potential client who asked me if she could narrate her chapters and have me turn them into a book. I assured her that I could, and I have done this kind of work on many occasions.

Maybe You’ve Already Written a Book

You might be surprised how quickly blog posts can add up to book-length material. If your blog is 500-800 words in length, and you write one weekly, that’s 2000-3200 words a month. A year’s worth of blogs comes out to 24,400 to 38,400 words. These are decent size books.

We tend to be conditioned by the idea that books are long, 400-500 pages, which depending on page and type size, can log in at over 100,000 words. In reality, as people’s attention spans have contracted, books have gotten shorter. A 100-page book, which can run from 24,000 to 30+ thousand words in length, is thick enough to have a spine, which you want in your print version. E-books can be as short as you want.

Most business books are getting shorter.

Your blog posts have already landed you at the low end of that range. Editing and expansion of key ideas can move the text into the higher range.

“But I Don’t Know How to Organize That Material.”

Enter the developmental editor. These are experts who have the gift of looking at your material with fresh eyes and organizing it into a comprehensive and compelling book.

If you go the dictation route, a ghostwriter can interview you by asking key questions. In this format, both the questions they ask and the completeness of the answers you give are what makes or breaks the value of your book, as does the ease of communication between the two of you. Once they’ve gathered the material, they will organize and edit it in much the way that a developmental editor does.

Result: A Book of Which You Can Be Proud

And that book can make a difference in your industry. You can take additional pride in the contribution you make.

Another benefit worth mentioning is that by focusing on particular subjects related to your business or business developments in general, you will discover even more ideas. The questions a ghostwriter asks may spark creativity. The way an editor rearranges your thoughts may have the same result.

You could also become hooked on writing books. And that’s not a bad thing.

Pat Iyer is a developmental editor and ghostwriter. Executives hire her to enable them to get their book done. Connect with Pat at patiyer.com.

 

Categories
Best Practices Growth Leadership Personal Development

Plan for the Coming Year or Is it Pointless to Make Plans?

Many see 2020 as the year that demonstrated the pointlessness of making plans. Even if you’re tempted to agree with this conclusion, you can reframe it to state that this year proved that rigid, mechanical thinking defeats the purposes of innovation and growth.

Let’s learn from the tragedies that characterized 2020 and recognize the necessity of flexible and innovative thinking and the importance of having already high-functioning teams that can engage in that kind of thinking.

Step One: The Vision

Paint your vision of what your company and you as a leader can accomplish in broad strokes. Begin at the conclusion. How and where do you want to envision your business and yourself at the end of 2021? If your company has a mission statement (and it should), take a careful look at it. Does it need modification? Transformation? A good first step might be to confer with other leaders within the C-Suite and in your organization and discuss your business’s purpose.

Step Two: How to Get There

You don’t want to do this on your own. 2020 has also taught us that cooperation is key. Engage your team. Have brainstorming sessions.

Always keep this thought in the forefront: Brainstorming is meant to provide a safe space for all ideas. Any idea, no matter how far-fetched it may sound, can trigger a better idea in another person’s mind.

Brainstorming also assumes a crucial role in these uncertain, rapidly changing times. It’s vital to encourage your team members to take the risk of speaking their minds freely. That encourages spontaneous idea generation, which is a key ingredient to the turning-on-a-dime kind of thinking and action needed at the present.

Assign one person to serve as a scribe who writes down all ideas. Encourage others to keep their own notes. If you’re not already working with the motto that what doesn’t get written down gets lost, adopt it for 2021.

After one or more brainstorming sessions, ask each participant to make written proposals. Come together again to discuss these proposals.

Step Three: How to Implement Proposals

As an example, say that one team member thinks blogs should be posted twice a week instead of once. She delivers a convincing argument that this will increase engagement.

Address these questions to the proposal:

  • How will that happen?
  • Do more people have an interest in writing blog posts?
  • How will the subject matter be decided?

Follow this procedure with any of the areas for which your team is responsible.

Step Four: Restructuring for Innovation

It’s been my experience that working remotely has led to the need for more meetings. This makes sense. You’re not going to run into someone at the water cooler and say, “Hey, I just had an idea. Can we talk about it?”

Online meetings are necessary, but they can lead to “Zoom fatigue.” A helpful way to minimize this is to reduce screen time by having participants present reports and opinions in writing prior to a meeting so that all those attending have an opportunity to consider and form responses to this material.

It’s also important to circulate written agendas so that, again, participants can think about the topics and propose additions, if necessary.

The Value of the Written Word

Business leaders have never had a greater need for communication that is both streamlined and detailed. This has the rewarding side effect of curtailing those who may be a little too fond of the sound of their own voices. It also encourages all members of a team to sharpen their ability to communicate in writing.

Going forward, this will be an increasingly important skill.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Personal Development

Make Your Newsletter a Communication and Promotional Tool

As distinct from blog posts, which run 500-800 words in length, newsletters give writers the opportunity to expand their views on a subject. They also allow you to include more than one subject and often to use design features with greater creativity.

With a newsletter, you can show off many facets of your company. You can establish recurring features: “Employee of the Month,” “Latest Product,” “This Month’s Quotation,” and helpful suggestions for customers.

I read a newsletter recently from a company that sells health products. The main article explained how to identify the beginning signs of a cough and how to prevent it from getting worse. The information was detailed and both scientific and accessible to ordinary non-scientists. Only at the end did the author mention a product the company sold that could help with the early stages of a cough. It was a well-balanced application of the 80% information and 20% sales formula.

This company repeatedly follows this format in its main newsletter article. I don’t know anything about their sales volume, but my appreciation of the quality of the material they send to customers and potential customers increases with each newsletter. In addition, I have re-ordered the product I buy from them.

Study Newsletters

You may not be the one who writes your company newsletters, but you can give guidance to the person who does. That means knowing what makes a good newsletter.

While you should give careful attention to newsletters sent by your competitors, don’t limit yourself to these. Sometimes a creative approach in a newsletter for a business that has little to nothing to do with yours can spark ideas.

Plan Your Newsletter Topics

Tight planning is probably not possible in these rapidly changing times. However, you can keep in mind certain themes that characterize this era.

  • Unemployment
  • Fear of Job Loss
  • Difficulties of Working at Home
  • Schooling Issues
  • General Feelings of Isolation

This is a starter list. In adding to it or elaborating, think about your issues. What troubles you? What kind of advice and/or reassurance would you like to receive? This perspective will help you empathize with your readers.

Don’t stop with yourself. Create a survey of customers that addresses the above and other issues. Take this inquiry a step further. Ask what kind of information they’d like to receive in a newsletter. What matters most to them?

If your company sells tangible goods, you can also run a survey asking customers how they use them. What advice about usage would they give to actual or potential customers? Results from these questions can yield material for newsletters.

Look at the open and click-through rates of your newsletters. What topics captured the most attention? Give your subscribers more of those as you plan your 2021 newsletters.

Pay Attention to the Tone of Your Newsletter

People want sincerity and honesty. They often also want to know what your company is doing to help others. If your company doesn’t sponsor or lead community initiatives, you have a bigger problem than a lackluster newsletter.

If you are active in the community, find a non-bragging way to say it. You can also contribute within the context of your newsletter by listing useful resources.

Track subscribe and unsubscribe rates and fine-tune your material in response. And of course, you know getting a newsletter is an opt-in experience. Don’t add people to your newsletter list without them asking to be on your list.

Think primarily of your newsletter as a resource for your customers. With the help of your team, create a mission statement that reflects this principle. Evaluate the material for the newsletter with your mission in mind.

Pat Iyer sends a weekly newsletter to those interested in getting tips to make their writing sparkle. Request any of her free reports on patiyer.com and get her newsletter.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Skills

Develop a Plan for Your 2021 Blogs

One of the biggest challenges a blog writer faces is coming up with subjects. The best solution is to plan.

You probably know that C-Suite developed a calendar of blog topics for 2020. The subjects were general; for example, this month’s topic is “The Year Ahead.”

As you plan your blog topics, you may want to borrow the idea of beginning with a general theme for each month in your planning. See if that kind of structure generates ideas for individual posts.

You can also address issues that will come up based on the time of year: back to school (if ever), holidays, summer vacations, etc.

Depending on your business, you may identify other key times of the year. A company that sells gardening supplies might gear its blog posts to different stages and aspects of the growing season and, during non-growing months, focus on harvesting (herbs, for example) and planning the following year’s garden.

At this stage, you don’t want to create more than a general outline and maintain flexibility so that you can accommodate coverage of breaking news. If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that necessity.

What Blogs Do You Subscribe To?

And why? What attracted you to subscribe to them? Study these blogs. Do they have any clever tricks, innovative writing styles, engaging choice of subject matter?

If you don’t already subscribe to several blogs related to your industry or business, search for them. Choose the ones you like the most and follow them. Notice what article subjects or formats get the most attention. Read the comments. Do your research and write down what you learn.

A Model Blog

Reedsy (https://blog.reedsy.com) is a site that pairs authors with book and cover designers and other professionals. Their blog focuses on book design, book marketing, perfecting the craft of writing, news from authors, and related subjects.

If you’re a writer, run to Reedsy. Their blog is full of valuable material.

If you’re not a writer, go there anyway to study their blog. You can learn a lot from how Reedsy writers populate their blogs with interesting posts.

One valuable piece of information I acquired was this:

Reedsy likes to use numbers in their articles.

  • How to Publish a Cookbook in 6 Easy-as-Pie Steps
  • 10 Ways to Handle Bad Book Reviews
  • How to Market a Nonfiction Book: 5 Steps to Selling More Books

In one blog post, they explain why they do this. They know, as you should, that using numbers, at a minimum, doubles click-through rates.

This, they theorize, is because the readers think they will get something concrete. “I will come away with five tangible methods to solve my problem.”

Therefore, if you have New Year’s resolutions about your blog, make one of them, “I will use more numbers in titles.”

Make another: “I will check in regularly at Reedsy.”

Is Your Company’s Blog a Group Project?

If not, would it benefit from more participants?

Private individuals, for example, a writer or solo entrepreneur, basically have responsibility for their blogs, although some of that responsibility can be assigned to a ghost writer.

A company blog, though, can more fully represent the business’s nature if different people, at a minimum, have input as to content and other features. Otherwise, it can become stale and repetitive.

Another Way to Get Input: Run Surveys

 You can use various sites to run surveys. This can be valuable for both inhouse and general readers. Learn what people like and don’t like about the company blog. Incorporate these suggestions.

Your blog gives you a weekly, biweekly, or perhaps daily opportunity to connect with present and future clients and customers. Give it your best shot every time.

Pat Iyer blogs at patiyer.com and is the hostess of Writing to get Business, a C-Suite hosted podcast that focuses on how to write and capitalize on books.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Leadership Personal Development

Newsletters: How to Connect With Clients and Employees

Companies have gotten very creative about how they use newsletters to connect with customers//clients, and in the case of The  New York Times, readers, and potential subscribers.

I’m impressed by the variety of newsletters the Times offers. This is a sampling.

  1. “Morning Briefing” analyzes the day’s news and ideas.
  2. “Today’s Headlines” organizes the top headlines of the day into categories.
  3. “The Daily Newsletter” analyzes the development of one of the week’s biggest stories.
  4. “The Cooking Newsletter” has been especially popular during for stay-at-home cooks during the pandemic.

To see the full array of newsletters the Times produces. See https://www.nytimes.com/newsletters. I don’t know if reading any of these newsletters encouraged more people to subscribe to the NYT, but their varied menu demonstrates the potential for reaching people through this format.

The  Medium Approach

Medium.com, an online publishing site, distributes newsletters to both its writers and readers. Magazines within the Medium platform send emails that contain brief summaries of their top articles for the week. In every case, the intention is to get readers to visit the site or the individual magazines, in other words, to increase traffic and engagement. Many of the featured articles live behind  Medium’s paywall, which encourages readers to become paid members.

How Has Your Company Utilized Newsletters This Year?

Many people at home in 2020, and they make up an audience eager for engagement.

  • Most important, did you demonstrate an attitude of caring about your customers? There has never been a more important time to do this.

Review your company newsletters. Do they sound authentically sincere? I have heard/read far too many company/corporate messages that didn’t convince me one bit that the writer cared. Unflinchingly, read what you or someone else wrote. Cut and edit. If you believe that you or the company could have done better, make a resolution that you will do so.

More than ever, customers are spending their money carefully. If you want their business, earn it.

In-House Newsletters

This format, like blogs and carefully written emails, provides an opportunity to keep connections strong among the various divisions of your business and among the employees in general. Since people aren’t in physical proximity daily, deliberately nurture the sense of being part of a team.

If your company does have an in-house newsletter, take a careful look at the issues. (In each case the “you” below might be you specifically or whoever takes responsibility for newsletter content.)

  1. Did you share news that was important to all the employees: innovations and changes in procedures?
  2. Did you emphasize activities that reinforce the company mission statement and vision?
  3. Did you write about employee news?
  4. In what other ways did you build the cohesiveness of your company organization?

Unsubscribe Rate

The end of the year is the best time to check how well your newsletter(s) have been received. You discover this by checking unsubscribe rates.

This requires fine-tuned analysis. Did a certain kind of newsletter article generate a higher-than-usual unsubscribe rate? Studying the statistics gives you a fair idea of what your readership wants. This information can guide your future decisions but bear in mind that in these fast-changing times, readers’ interests and concerns will also shift.

For Both Kinds of Newsletters

Has your company been socially active during the pandemic? What material contributions have you made to help people in need?

Let people, both employees, and customers, know what you’ve doing and what you plan to continue to do. People want to know that you’re making a difference.

Pat Iyer is a C Suite Network Contributor, one of the original 100. Executives hired Pat to help them share their expertise in non-fiction books. Pat writes newsletters for her businesses and recommends the practice.

Pat’s site describes her editing and ghostwriting services. Connect with Pat through her website at patiyer.com.

 

 

 

 

Categories
Best Practices Entrepreneurship Leadership Marketing Personal Development

Get the Most from Business Podcasts

The nature of communication changed profoundly in 2020. Employees work from home, communicating with co-workers and bosses virtually. Many businesses, to survive, have migrated online or broadened and strengthened their online presence. Podcasts, blogs, newsletters, and other forms of written communication became increasingly important.

As part of your year-end evaluation, give particular attention to the quality of your company’s—and your personal—written communication. This month, my C Suite blogs will focus on key aspects of that communication.

Podcasts Are More Important Than Ever

With libraries and bookstores often closed, during the pandemic, people increasingly relied on getting their information and entertainment through listening. The growing receptivity to the spoken word provides an ever-growing popularity of podcasts.

A Podcast Checklist

Did your company produce podcasts this year? If not, I recommend that you add them to your to-do list for the coming year. If you did produce them, you may evaluate their quality against the items in this checklist.

  1. Have you produced podcasts that are short and to the point? Thirty minutes or less in length is often considered ideal.
  2. Did you present timely and informative information about your industry? If so, you have taken steps to position yourself as a leader.
  3. Did you invite other leaders to speak and/or be interviewed on your podcast? This helps to build vital relationships. It can also open the door for you to be invited to speak on someone else’s podcast.
  4. Have you screened interviewees to determine how articulate they are?
  5. Have you done your research on your interviewees and put together a series of evocative and provocative questions?
  6. If they’ve written books, have you read them?
  7. Have you also produced podcasts geared to customers and consumers? If you have, you’ve firmed up your relationship with the people who make your business thrive and give it meaning.

Always Have Transcripts for Your Podcasts

As much as people are drawn to the spoken word, we must always recognize those who respond most strongly to material they can read. I know people who won’t take a course that’s primarily video- and audio-oriented unless they can also read transcripts of the lesson modules.

Don’t leave such people out of your calculations. A 30-minute podcast usually becomes 4,000-5,000 words. People only retain about 5% of what they hear. They may remember something they wanted to review, but they don’t want to take the time to re-listen to the entire podcast. A transcript allows them to go over the material that most interesting to them and to underline key phrases.

Podcast transcripts should be readable. “Readable” also means well edited and proofread. Yes, you can use artificial intelligence to get a transcript in minutes, but in my experience, it is not as accurate as a person. And it takes even longer to proofread and edit it.

A skilled editor/proofreader will not change the meaning of the conversational entries in a podcast. He or she will instead edit what’s said so that it’s very clear to the reader. At the same time, he or she will correct grammatical and spelling errors (and any transcription errors).

Your reading public will appreciate a transcript.

That’s not the only reason to have one. These transcripts can form the foundation for a longer piece. As a ghostwriter and editor, I often hear people who want to write books say that they don’t have time. So often, they don’t realize that blogs, position papers, and podcast transcripts are just waiting to be assembled into book form. They provide a solid foundation for that work. I’ve turned podcasts into seven books.

Still don’t have time? Hire a professional. Many authors repurposed material to create books or hired a person to do that for them.

In addition to its immediate value, a podcast may open the door to a rewarding publishing career.

Pat Iyer is a C Suite Network Contributor, one of the original 100. Executives hired Pat to help them share their expertise in non-fiction books. Pat’s site describes her editing and ghostwriting services. Connect with Pat through her website at patiyer.com.

 

 

Categories
Best Practices Growth Leadership Personal Development

How to Communicate Well When Offices Are Far Apart

On a functional level, most businesses responded quickly to the demands for isolation posed by the global pandemic. The number of people who learned how to use Zoom went off the chart, and the Internet infrastructure sometimes faltered beneath the burden of drastically increased traffic.

Although we continue to realize that no form of remote communication equals the multisensory dimension of physical contact and communication, being able to see and hear fellow workers reduced some of the strain of physical separation.

What Did You Do to Bridge the Gap?

It’s well known that when one sense, such as sight or hearing, goes away, other senses strengthen to bridge the gap.

In a similar way, we find that the loss of face-to-face, physical interaction may require us to deliberately develop another way of making our communications understood. This may be email.

Too many people don’t treat this means of communication with the respect that it deserves. Often, they don’t pay enough attention to the fact that emails don’t dissolve after they’re read. What you write to someone else has a long-life span. In addition, it can be forwarded into infinity.

For email communication to serve as a valuable tool, several standards must be set in place.

Civility: No email wars, please. I’m very familiar and have succumbed to the temptation to dash off a zinging response. I told myself I didn’t much care if the recipient of my email didn’t like what I wrote because she was wrong. I failed, however, to anticipate that she would forward my righteous and angry message to countless recipients. This story doesn’t have a happy ending.

Since that time, if I need to take a combative or even a firm stance on an issue, I first write a draft of the email as a text document. After I write it, I let it sit overnight. The following morning, when the heat of anger has faded, I look at it and often modify and soften my language.

How thoughtful were you about the emails you sent out this year? Did you read them as if you were the recipient? Did you think about whether they might cause damage, misunderstanding, or hostility?

Understandability: I would love to think that lots of people were brushing up on their grammar and punctuation this year, but I have no evidence to support that. If you were writing more emails this year, how often did you get responses with “???” or more strongly-worded statements that the individual didn’t know what you were talking about?

Again, the solution is to write a draft and read it as if you were the recipient. Yes, you know what you mean, but pretend that you don’t. Read your email objectively and ask yourself if it makes sense.

Getting to the Point: I’ve written about this before here. When you have something to say, first, announce it in your email headline. This helps another person prioritize what to open first.

Secondly, follow up directly on the headline subject. Say what you need to say in clear, simple language. Request a response.

Often, email is the most immediate way to communicate with a fellow worker, team member, or employee. If you follow the guidelines of civility, understandability, and getting to the point, it can also be the most effective.

Pat Iyer is a C Suite Network Contributor, one of the original 100. Executives hired Pat to help them share their expertise in non-fiction books. Pat’s site describes her editing and ghostwriting services. Connect with Pat through her website at patiyer.com.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Personal Development

What Makes a Blog Memorable?

Zappos.com has one of the most entertaining blogs I’ve seen on a corporate web site. Zapponians, as they call themselves, use photos, videos, and attention-attracting headlines combined with compelling stories. They’ve raised the blog to an art form.

Anyone who would like to develop a blog that appeals to customers and clients can profitably spend some time studying the Zappos model. This company highlights the power of imagination and innovation.

https://www.zappos.com/about/stories

Your Blog Checklist

 Did you vary your blog content? The relative shortness of a blog post compared to a newsletter article allows more flexibility in some ways.

  • You can do a series of inspiring quotes illustrated by photographs or within a photograph. Unsplash.com and Pixabay.com have some of the best free photographs on the Internet.
  • You can choose one quotation and comment on it at length.
  • You can tell anecdotes about your business that give it the human touch.
  • You can highlight how your company serves its community.
  • If you have individual employees who made outstanding contributions, write about them.

Did your blog posts follow the 80-20% ratio? That ratio means 80% information and 20% sell (preferably soft). You might mix up how you follow this ratio. You might have a single blog post that builds to the announcement of a special offer or sale. It could mean several posts devoid of promotion followed by one promotional post. You may use a news item to highlight your company values and/or mission statement.

Were your blog posts brief? Three hundred to five hundred words is the ideal length; people expect blog posts to be short. If you have a topic that will take up more words, break it into parts. This tactic can also create greater readership. Link from one post to the next.

What kind of response rate did you get? As with evaluating newsletter unsubscribe rates, you need to do some detailed analysis using Google Analytics. Both subscribe rates and comment rates indicate the popularity of a blog in general, and it can also show the interest in specific subjects.

You might find that people are most interested in hot topics. That won’t give you specific topics, but you will know to focus on current news as subject matter.

If you find that your blog posts generally don’t draw comments, think about different ways to encourage responses. But don’t take It seriously, People are less likely to comment on blogs than they used to.

Do you link your blogs and newsletters? Always look for ways to make these connections, and link both newsletters and blog posts to your web site. Ideally, your blog is on your web site, but you can link to the more business-oriented sections of the site. A useful way to do this on a blog is to write brief summaries of new information on your web site with links.

If you were not the blog post writer, check in with whoever is. It’s sometimes hard work to churn out blog posts on a daily or even weekly basis. People may need help or relief. Your company should pick a reasonable schedule and stick to It.

Maybe you need a new approach. It might make sense to have a team of people contributing to the blog. A suggestion box where people can put topics they’d like to see in the blog might stimulate ideas.

Creativity needs new sources for renewal. Again, study the Zappos.com model.

Pat Iyer is a C Suite Network Contributor, one of the original 100. She started blogging in 2009 and has written thousands of blogs since. Executives hired Pat to help them share their expertise in non-fiction books. Connect with Pat through her website at patiyer.com.

 

Categories
Best Practices Culture Growth Health and Wellness Leadership

Focus on the Positive By Keeping a Journal

As human beings, we seem to be wired to focus on the negative. What fills the news – positive or negative topics? Negative news gets our attention.

We concentrate on what needs to be fixed. This habit is called “negative bias.” It is easy to get sucked into negativity right now. Our lives are dramatically changed by the pandemic.

In psychological terms, negative bias means that even when two events have equal objective value, we focus more on the more negative event—negative thoughts, emotions, or interactions. If Margaret is part of a virtual networking event where she has a positive interaction with a prospect and a negative interaction with someone else, she will brood or worry about the negative exchange instead of remembering the positive one.

Wanting to Fix What’s Broken is Normal

In some ways, this is logical. If your car is running smoothly except for a faulty air conditioner, you are going to focus on that air conditioner because you know you need to get it fixed. With a negative social interaction, you analyze it to see how you could have handled it more effectively.

However, if you focus on negative events to the exclusion of positive ones, you erode the self-confidence that allows you to say, “I want to improve my ability in this area, and I know I can do it.” Instead, you may beat yourself up for failure.

You can see how self-doubt, fed by focus on “failures,” can foster fears that you aren’t a good leader.

Keep a Record of Your Successes

It takes effort, concentration, and commitment to release the automatic focus on the negative. One way to build these psychological muscles is to record your successes.

To build this positive habit, I recommend a daily accounting. To begin, get a small notebook or use your phone. Every time you have a positive experience, make a note of it.

“Juan praised my monthly report.”

“In today’s meeting, I managed to get Shoshonna and Fernando to see each other’s viewpoint.”

When you get home, take some time during the evening to add these successes to either a physical or a computer file. Expand your notes.

“Juan said that my report did a great job of summarizing the key challenges we’ll be facing during the coming quarter. He especially liked my analysis of cost projections. I know that I worked very carefully on those figures, and I feel rewarded for that effort.”

“Shoshonna and Fernando were at each other’s throats. At first, I wanted to jump in and break it up, but I decided to sit back and try to determine the source of the conflict between them. I heard that they weren’t listening to each other, and I found a way to point that out without blaming either of them.”

If you like, you can go even further into the details of what made your strategies work so well.

Let Your Records Serve as a Resource and Morale Booster

You have a day at work that seems to wipe out your morale. You’re not a leader, you tell yourself; you’ll never get the hang of this.

Read through your journal. Take in each success. You’ve proven yourself a leader before. You have that ability. One day is ONE DAY; it’s not the rest of your life.

Then you may want to look objectively at the supposed failures of this one day. Note, without blaming yourself, how you could have done something differently. Write down what you’ll do the next time such a situation arises. You may find that reading about your successes can provide valuable clues to these problems.

The beauty of keeping such a record/journal is that it takes you out of your internalized gloom and allows you to analyze events without self-judgment.

That’s what good leaders do.

If you have doubts about your ability to be a good leader, keep a record of your successes. You can also record your mistakes in a thoughtful way, analyzing them so as to avoid future errors. These entries will provide a record to which you can refer to reinforce your confidence.

Pat Iyer’s father taught her to focus on the negativity. She’s learned to see the positive in life. Pat works with business leaders as an editor, ghostwriter, and book coach. Reach her through patiyer.com.

Categories
Best Practices Growth Personal Development

When You Can’t Hold Your Reader’s Attention

I’m sure you’ve had the experience of listening to someone give a speech or presentation and found yourself losing interest. The subject may interest you; it may be one you want to know more about, but you can’t keep your attention on the speaker.

You don’t enjoy this when you’re the listener, but it’s far worse when you’re the one speaking and you sense the audience’s attention drifting. This may be people’s deepest fear about speaking—that they will bore their audience to tears or sleep.

Similar problems can plague your writing. When you write a report, a blog, or other documents related to your company, you may get negative feedback. Those who read it may say you didn’t make your points clearly. They may point out multiple areas where they didn’t understand what you saying. Or, possibly worst of all, you hear only the sound of crickets. You may fear that as a leader.

Would-be authors have a similar fear. They imagine someone picking up their book, reading a few pages, and then closing it—forever. The writers don’t see people doing this, but harsh critiques, poor reviews, and flagging sales can damage their tender egos just as thoroughly.

Lack of favorable feedback for verbal and written communications make people think that they’re not strong leaders—especially if they can’t even hold people’s attention. Maybe they don’t know what they’re talking about. They almost feel that they’d rather retreat into obscurity than suffer the humiliation of people not paying attention to what they speak or write.

So often, both speaker and writer have made the same error: They say too much.

Too Many Words—and the Wrong Ones

Although many speakers and writers make the mistake of taking on too many topics for the allotted time or pages, I’m not addressing that issue here. The problem I’ve seen defeat so many efforts at communication is loading verbal or written text with filler phrases.

I cover this subject in detail in my book, 52 Writing Tips: Fast and Easy Ways to Polish Your Writing. In this post, I describe some of the main offenders to give you an idea of how easily, with a little knowledge, you can make your speaking and writing interesting and even compelling.

Examples

“So, I kind of just stumbled across this effective solution to absenteeism.”

Any manager would like to know about this solution, but many listeners tune out after “So, I kind of just stumbled.” These words convey uncertainty and insecurity, and the phrase, “effective solution,” gets buried.

Replace that phrase with “I discovered an effective solution to absenteeism,” and people will listen or read on.

“Actually,” “really,” and “definitely” are other words that induce skepticism and boredom. They’re intended to reinforce that something is true, but having to reinforce this truth has the opposite effect. It falls under the category of protesting too much.

Deadly Adverbs

52 Writing Tips goes into detail about this tricky word form. Some examples include:

“She was really smart.” (Many adverbs end with “ly.” Look for that.) Say or write instead, “She was brilliant.”

“They moved quickly to meet the deadline.” Say or write instead, “They rushed.”

“Moved” and “rushed” are both verbs, but “rush” has much more power. You have an image of someone moving with speed and purpose, pushing him- or herself to make it first across the finish line. Whenever possible, replace an adverb/verb combination with a more powerful verb.

Read Your Transcripts

When they are available, read transcripts of your speeches and podcasts. You might find this embarrassing, but you will learn to spot the fillers on which you rely. So often these drift into your writing because they’ve become part of how you speak.

Everyone has bad speaking and writing habits, but you can correct them easily. All it takes is a little awareness and the desire to have your speech and writing reflect your abilities. You are a leader, and effective communication can express that to your world.

 

Pat Iyer is one of the original 100 C Suite Network Contributors. Connect with her as an editor, ghostwriter, and book coach at patiyer.com.