Tips For Professional Communication At Work
Looking to develop yourself with the fundamental tools for professional communication? Want to learn the skills to communicate better within your workplace, assert yourself in ways you once feared, and structurally layer your conversations instead of every conversation being one big brain dump?
It can be tricky when you’re working within an environment where asserting yourself is absolutely essential. It’s difficult to be assertive with colleagues and teammates, let alone senior management. How to come across as confident, professional and assertive without the fear of overstepping or sounding arrogant can be a tricky balance to navigate.
But it’s an essential skill to learn early on in your career, so you can speak up without the fear of saying something in the wrong context.
What is professional communication?
Professional communication isn’t just simply speaking. It’s listening, writing, and responding to a conversation in a manner suitable to the topic and environment you are in. Little things like sitting with your arms crossed in a meeting gives off the impression that ‘you don’t really want to be there’. We’re all guilty of doing this without even realising.
It’s also the bigger things, like knowing how to talk to different levels of management and stakeholders, advocate for your needs and assert yourself with directness and transparency. Ultimately, the art of professional communication is empowering.
Why is it important to develop this as a skill?
Developing this skill has made me much more confident and productive in the work I do, eliminating unintended consequences that may arise through miscommunication both in and out of work. Without developing professional communication as a skill, breaking that miscommunication cycle wouldn’t have happened so easily.
Simplifying that office jargon and work talk leaves me feeling like I understand my own work better, and I can communicate that to my colleagues and management. Something as simple as knowing how to ask for help or clarity saves so much time going over and over in my head trying to figure it out myself - a waste of my time and the companies!
When you have a disability, or a chronic or mental health illness, it is even more vital to be able to communicate your needs, adjustments, capacity and boundaries in a professional way.
Examples from the guide:
Hi, Thank you for talking me through the task. I wrote some notes but to make sure I’ve got it all down correctly, please can you send me a summary of the tasks and any further notes on priority or specific protocols/ methods you would like me to use?
Hi (manager), The deadline for (task/project) is X, and my workload is currently (what are you working on, time it takes to complete.) How would you like me to prioritise the following tasks? (List all tasks with upcoming deadlines or expectations.)
Hi, I really appreciate your time and openness to having a discussion about the disability adjustments I have requested, however, so there is a paper trail, would you be open to continuing this conversation over email? That way there can be no misunderstandings, and we can make sure everything is documented.
Having the ability to communicate professionally won’t just improve your career. It’s also going to help you with any communication in your personal life too, handling those sometimes difficult and awkward conversations. If you have career goals, targets, and milestones and don’t feel like you’re getting anywhere, upskilling your professional language means you’ll have the confidence to communicate effectively - a core soft skill that employers truly value.
If you want more example copy paste conversations you can use in your day to day career, check out our Professional Communication at Work Guide here. Created by disabled people, successful in their own careers, for disabled people - as too often career advice and guides miss the points we really need support on. From how to talk to your manager about your access needs, to requesting more support and clarity - you’ll find the starting points for all the main and major conversations you need to be having.