I've made a bit of a mistake.
I posted a blog saying I didn't think that writing was the most important skill that a communicator could have.
Leaving aside the obvious stupidity of saying something about writing skills and not double checking my grammar and spelling, I should have anticipated the reaction that I would provoke.
Firstly Reuben commented on his blog and made a couple of valid points about the importance of having a facility with words. Then a few other people commented accusing me of disrespecting professional writers or implying that I was advocating illiteracy as a core competency for communicators.
Next up comes David Murray.
His posting quite fairly takes me to task for sloppy writing and makes the reasonable point that if I'm going to risk offending writers I had better make sure I turned in perfect prose and proof read.
However, there follows a general outpouring of anger at my simple point that communication is more than writing. One commenter suggests that holding my particular view smacks of profiteering, someone else implies that " smiling, ...schmoozing and insincere laughter" are the alternative skill set to good writing. Another contributor suggests that bullying or lying are the natural routes to persuasion if you can't write.
I'm starting to feel a little beleagured for writing "I’m not suggesting that a communicator should be allowed to get away with bad writing. All I’m saying is that it doesn’t make sense to prioritise writing over any other skill – if a single skill is all that matters why shouldn’t it be film-making, web design or spamming twitter?"In 2007 I conducted some research which you can read in summary here. We asked senior communicators about the skills they needed in order to do their jobs. We ran a statistical analysis on the data and it told us that there was a wide range of skills that mattered - writing wasn't the sine qua non skill that people mentioned.
Admittedly we didn't ask the question "do you think writing is irrelevant?" Nor did we ask "do you agree that anyone who can't string a sentence together is clearly a weasel-faced money-grabbing schmoozer who can't be trusted?" Perhaps we might have got different results.
But I can only reflect what 700 communicators around the world told us. They said that in order to be a great internal communicator you needed to draw on a range of competencies.
So I stand by my original post and I'm happy to debate it.
But maybe I should check my copy before I post.
Liam
(Thanks Becky for proofing!)
