Developing your young writers

I have just checked the time. It is 1.39. How long do you think it will take me to put together my thoughts in a way that will maintain your interest and, we hope, provide ideas that you can really use in your workplace? My guess is that, unless you have to write extended pieces on a regular basis, your estimate will be a little off the mark.

When I am training young writers I often ask them how long they need to produce 250 words of quality text – from the original brief, through to a piece of copy that is good to go. “About half an hour” is the usual cheery response. Wow, I think, I must have a pretty poor learning curve. I have been writing and teaching writing and communication skills for longer than I care to remember and still struggle to deliver half that amount. And I am writing in my ‘first language’.

As communications professionals in the UAE, we work in a unique environment, or more specifically a unique language environment. The vast majority of content produced in English in the region is written by individuals for whom English is a second, a third or even a fourth language. Many of you will manage teams of young communicators from all over the world, and there will be many different first languages: you may be involved in coaching and mentoring young UAE Nationals, you may have team members from the wider region, from the subcontinent, SE Asia, Europe or the Americas. The possibilities are endless. This diversity is one of the great joys of living here. However, building a department that writes competently and with one coherent voice can be a real challenge. The business needs decent turnaround times, content needs to measure up to international standards. Clearly your team needs help and support, but you still have the rest of your job to do. Something has to give. In my experience one very common solution is for seniors to spend a deal of time ‘fine tuning’ texts so they are suitable for publication. It’s real life, but it doesn’t solve the underlying issue: how do we develop competent young writers in such a fast moving and dynamic multicultural setting? It’s a good question, and not an easy one to answer. Let me share some practical ideas for moving individuals forward and improving the output of your team.

First, establish an understanding that writing is a necessary craft skill, not a ‘nice to have’ or something you can always delegate to an agency. Even if a team member has no desire to be a star, they need to be a good enough writer themselves to judge texts prepared by others. Here are some suggestions:

• Provide a supportive writing environment. Very few people can produce decent work in a lively, open plan office. (Just notice how many of us use our headphones as a ‘leave me alone’ signal.) Can you find a space somewhere where a writer can disappear for an hour or so and just get some peace?
• Create a language standard guide so everybody understands what your company best practice looks like.
• Establish a clear workflow that is understood by all team members. Who does the first edit? Who proof reads?
• Set realistic turnaround times. Yes, maybe we can bash out something in 45 minutes, but it is unlikely to be exactly the copy you need.
• Embed writing skills in job descriptions and appraisals. You will need a credible language hurdle (a test or assessment) to make this work but, as we said, this is a necessary
• Be circumspect about sending team members out for training. Insist on seeing real deliverables over time rather than a certificate from a four day writing course.

Get to know each of your writers as individuals. It seems obvious, but it is the first step in figuring out how best to help them.

• They basically ‘get it’ but struggle to put their ideas on paper in correct, coherent English – focus your support on language development
• They produce miles of text but not the message you need – concentrate on building their skills as a communication professional

Most young communicators need some development in both areas, but will be significantly stronger in one than the other. You can gain insight into this simply by looking at samples of their writing – even their emails. If you want to take a more formal approach, select some sample copy, video or collateral and discuss the key messages they find. I guarantee you will be surprised. Many will struggle, however fluent their English.

Recognise that building language skills takes time. It is a slow burn. Consider how long it takes us to absorb and manipulate the structures and vocabulary of our first language. It never ends. A one day “how to write a press release” course will do very little to help; weaker writers simply do not have the basic building bricks of language that they need. If they cannot sense the difference between ‘colleague’, ‘staff member’, ‘coworker’, ‘employee’ and ‘worker’ they are just not ready to write for you. Here are some things you can do instead:

• Get a vocabulary baseline. It will help you be realistic about what to expect, as well as helping them understand what they need to focus on. In my experience, many second language writers are operating with half the vocabulary resource of the average first language fresh graduate.
• Encourage them to actively read and listen to good international English. Podcasts, YouTube videos, books, newspapers. Exposure does not automatically produce fluency, but even half an hour of engaged listening or reading will produce results over time.
• Set up ongoing coaching relationships with other team members if possible. Over and above being an advisor, this could just entail the weaker writer producing 150 words of text a week and the coach returning them with tracked changes and comments. This is how most of us learned to write – by writing, getting feedback and trying again. There are no shortcuts.

Support the development of broader communication skills by extending your briefings to constantly check comprehension. We often presume junior team members truly understand a lot of the jargon we use. Why not – they often use it themselves with such confidence! In fact, if you ask many young communicators to identify key messages in text, as suggested above, you will be surprised how difficult they find it. The most common response is to list information points. But why this particular information? This is a much more challenging question. So pepper your briefings with questions. They illustrate your thinking processes and help younger writers learn these processes for themselves.

• What do we want to happen as a result of this video / speech / article?
• Are we just passing on information, or do we have other goals? To motivate? To inspire?
• Who do you think is our target audience? How do you think they feel about the topic? What and how do we need to communicate to move them forward?

Finally, be honest about your own writing experiences. I think many younger employees believe seniors can sit down and produce perfect text in half an hour. By sharing how long it takes you to write, how much you appreciate the input of colleagues, how many amends some of your texts have undergone, you can help more junior writers set clearer expectations for themselves. And be realistic. Be patient. Young communicators in the region often come from an education system that rewarded length and complexity in writing. They may have a lot to un-learn.

Of course, your motivated young writers will already have solved their writing challenges for themselves. You will probably see them routinely seeking feedback from more established writers and, more importantly, acting on that feedback. The most common response is to give these individuals even more to do. Please don’t load them down with extra work just because they are so good. Instead send these writers on extension courses, or find them a good online learning opportunity with one on one feedback. They are worth the extra investment.