knowing what to get (and keep) in writing
The seventh in a series of posts elaborating on my list of skills to use when dealing with difficult personalities.
It takes some experience to know what to get and keep in writing - what white-collar crime doesn’t involve the shredding of documents? Still, some things need to get out of your head and into a format other people can look at. Contracts of course are the most obvious. Any time people work together all the parties involved need to clearly understand what’s expected.
Personally, I love bullet points. One of my bosses loved spreadsheets more than anything in the world. Nothing made sense to this boss unless it was in formatted cells, preferably with charts and graphs. Numbers were optional. I learned a lot about communicating in new ways when I learned how to put things on paper in ways this boss understood and respected.
Even if you don’t consider yourself much of a writer, it can be important to learn how to communicate effectively with words. In some cases, people you can’t work with effectively in person will respond beautifully to a carefully written email.
You can also move up through the ranks a little faster if you prove you can walk out of a meeting and accurately summarize what just happened. It may sound like work someone’s secretary should do, but remember - you’ll be the one controling the message if you take on that responsibility. Definitely don’t lie about what happened in a meeting, but feel free to put more emphasis on the items you feel strongly about. As long as all the important items are included, no one can really complain.
Real life example of how this principle saved my job:
As a manager, I handled a team distributed over a couple of cities. Some of them worked in the same location I did, but we all used instant messenger to stay in touch and keep projects moving. Lots of personalities come and go over the years and as a hiring manager, sometimes you’re responsible for bringing those personalities into the company in the first place.
One person in particular was not happy with her job after doing it for a while. The way she chose to handle the situation is not one I would recommend. I worked with her as best I could, but her complaints turned into accusations which were kind of wild. Fairly early on I started documenting all my efforts and what the results were. I also saved all the IM logs of our conversations.
When this person went to our HR department with outrageous allegations, I had a paper trail to show my side of the story. I wasn’t giving one of my staff special attention at work because we were having an affair. He got rewards because he was meeting deadlines and turning in superior work. Rewards available to all my staff if they earned it. I wasn’t asking her to lie to customers, I was asking her to abide by nondisclosure agreements. You get the idea.
In the end, we parted ways without anyone getting hurt. But only because I got important things in writing and held onto them.