I recently had a great opportunity to present a four-hour business communications session to a group of accounting/finance professionals. When I started planning the outline with my client, I questioned whether I’d be able to fill the four hours — and more importantly, would those four hours be valuable?
In a room of 70-plus professionals whose knowledge of grammar, punctuation and business writing varies, it’s impossible to think that the entire four hours was useful to every single attendee. There were probably some attendees who knew everything as well as I did (maybe better); some who gobbled up every morsel of information; and the biggest contingent … those who picked up one or two new things and considered the rest a refresher.
The experience was a good reminder for me: As communicators, we need to keep up on the latest trends to be sure, but there’s also something to be said for taking the time for refresher courses.
I often attend casual lunchtime seminars or half-day workshops with a focus on wanting to learn a new approach or new technology or a new way to think about communications challenges. But attending professional development sessions that reinforce your strengths is also well worth the time.
You know you should be thinking of your audience before you start writing, but you also know you don’t always do it. Or you know it’s wise to break up text with lists and charts, yet you just churned out pages and pages of narrative copy. Those reminders you get in a short workshop can help reinvigorate your approach to writing and editing. (And you just might learn some brand-new information too.) Plus, you’re likely to walk away re-inspired about your work!