How to Communicate More Confidence in Your Professional Writing

What impressions is your professional writing leaving for your personal brand? To champion confidence in your writing, try these 6 tips. 

The way you communicate in your professional writing can convey your competence or appear weak or uncertain. Adopting tiny techniques in your reports, pitches, emails or social media posts can make all the difference for communicating with confidence in your career.

 1. Use an active, not passive voice 

Studies show that people who use an active over a passive voice sound more confident. An active voice is more direct and in control. With an active voice, the subject performs the action. 

e.g. 

“I streamlined the process to enhance efficiency.”

This is unlike a passive voice, where the object of the action becomes the subject.

e.g.

“The process was streamlined to enhance efficiency.”

If you’re not confident in how to write with an active versus passive voice, try the free Hemmingway App website. Copy and paste your content into the homepage. This will show where your passive “weak” voice is. 

Master an active voice to come across as a confident professional personal brand in your writing. 

2. Be concise

As Todd Rogers and Jessica Laksy-Fink remind us in their book Writing for Busy Readers, complex writing burdens the reader. Concise writing puts the onus on the writer.  As the famous maxim from Blaise Pascal captured:

 “I would have written a shorter letter if I’d had more time.”

Concise writing communicates confidence and calmness for your professional personal brand. Remove the fluff from your communication. Get to the point.

Here are some ways you can communicate more concisely: 

• Avoid over-qualifiers e.g. Say ‘“I recommend”, instead of “I strongly recommend”.

• Cut excessive words. Cut everything from the sentence that can be cut.

• Avoid unnecessary apologies: Skip “I’m sorry to bother you” or “I hope you don’t mind”.

• Remove filler words e.g. rethink words like ‘just’.

You can be clear and concise without leaving the impression of being an overbearing personal brand. For example, rethink any excessive use of ‘I’. Shift the focus from being about yourself. Instead of saying “I think a solution is….”, say “Here is a solution to address…”

3. Use action-orientated verbs

Use action-orientated verbs to communicate confidence. Include these at the start of sentences in everything from your resume highlights to your presentation slide decks. Choose verbs that elevate the confidence of your communication. For example, instead of “I suggest”, say “I recommend”. Switch “seems” to “demonstrate” or “indicate”. 

4. Organise your ideas

Confidence in your written communication isn’t just about the words you put on the page, in your emails or in your posts. Communicate confidence in your formatting. Organising your ideas communicates clarity of thought. 

For example, use:

• Headlines

• Sub headlines

• Dot points

Also, 

• Add relevant links.

• Review sentence length (and vary pacing).

Organised communication moves the reader through your argument in a systematic way. Instead of large chunks or disjointed ‘brain dumps’, communicate with clarity. Every well-organised communication adds to the impression of your personal brand.

5. Show evidence-based authority 

Don’t be all confident and have no credibility. Back up your statements with authority. Cite research, evidence, examples, facts, stats or other authorities to add substance to your communication. Nothing instils more confidence in yourself and your reader than showing you can support your claims. As marketers love to say, “People buy emotionally first, and then rationalise with logic”. While the confident tone of your personal brand might engage them, your logic will help convince them. 

6. Write smartly, don’t try to sound smart 

Writing confidently for your professional personal brand doesn’t mean you need to sound smart. It can be quite the opposite. 

In The Bezos Blueprint, Carmine Gallo highlights the importance of readability scores, which were first developed in the 1940s by Dr. Rudolf Flesch. He isolated elements that make text easy or hard to read. It took into account average sentence length, words and other variables. The higher the score out of 100, the easier it is to read.

J. Peter Kincaid, who worked with Flesch, in the 1970’s evolved this work. He converted the scores into easier metric-grade levels.

Whether you’re writing for a Board or your staff, aim to write for no higher than the 8th-grade. 

Research from the US has shown content written for eighth graders can be understood by 80 per cent of the population.  The best leaders know this. Jeff Bezos while leading Amazon instructed employees to write for eighth graders or lower. Confident communicators are secure in their ideas and avoid trying to outsmart others. They communicate to be understood.

As Einstein said:

“The definition of genius is taking the complex and making it simple.”