Work With Me
Writing for Organisations
Good documents take time that busy leaders rarely have. I help public and charitable sector organisations produce the written work that matters to stakeholders and regulators alike: policies, strategies, business cases, annual reports, funding bids, board papers, and formal correspondence.
With a career spanning the NHS, local government, the civil service, and the voluntary sector, I bring both the sector knowledge and the writing skills to make sure the words you use convey the impact you need in a respectful and confident way. I understand the governance frameworks, the regulatory context, and the audiences these documents are written for, and how to ensure that the golden thread of your messaging is clear throughout.
As a pracademic with a research background in self-aware leadership, I have experience of academic and professional writing. Writing a doctoral thesis helps you develop a different writing skill to complement professional, business writing. As well as being busy on LinkedIn, and being a published author, I have an appreciation of the different voices in which you need to express your purpose, impact and success.
Whether you need something drafted from scratch, a document that has stalled edited and completed, or existing material updated and strengthened, I can work quickly and independently to deliver something that will enhance accessibility and messaging.
From the Blog
From Boardroom to Blog: The Many Writing Styles of Leadership
The First Word
I’ve always loved reading and writing. I owe this in part to my English teacher, who taught me about literature and language, and to my brilliant history teacher, who taught me how to write a well structured essay, how to dissect exam questions and explore each element to time, to a word count, with an intro and concluding paragraph neatly topping and tailing the composition.
Over the years I’ve realised that there are different writing voices in which we write. This came into sharp focus when I started writing my doctoral thesis: the standard business voice I’d been writing in for the previous 17 years was not the same as what academia needed from me now.
Academic Writing
Academia expects your writing to have a full, story-like quality, punctuated by the neon signs of continuity and connection. Academic writing is full of professional, niche and jargonistic terms which evidence your expertise, but I decided that my academic writing would be as accessible as possible. After all, you don’t make your candle shine brighter by dimming someone else’s.
Academic sentences are full and unabridged, and the structure is determined by your literature review, methodological choices, findings and evaluation. That means, that the details you discover, shape the structure. For someone who likes to write from the structure to the detail, that’s a different discipline to business reports.
Business Writing
Business reports generally start from the outside and work in: they have a clear structure and you gradually build up the detail.
If you’ve grown up in organisations where corporate governance is a huge factor in effective operating, you’ll have learnt the art of being succinct and to the point: a report with a beginning, middle and end, written in the third voice, keeping closely to facts. The aim is to remain neutral and present the best argument based on qualitative and quantitative information.
Over the years, business writing has definitely become more accessible, with less in-speak and more plain English. Its purpose is to tell you the specific things the author wants you to know without bias or option, setting out the preferred options and the best ideas based on the facts, figures and qualitative information available..
Social Writing
Social writing, the stuff we put out on Substack, LinkedIn and other social media, is more personal, with the purpose of connecting us with other people. This was the style in which I wrote The Self-Awareness Superhighway.. As a leader, it’s probably the riskiest form of writing: you have to show just enough of your own personality to build human connection whilst still retaining a professional stance. People want to know the person behind the job title.
In social writing, I generally write as I would speak. I find that reading social writing out loud is a very good way to determine whether it’s the right tone and vocabulary. I do this with business reports too, and I read my whole doctoral thesis aloud, recording myself and listening back in the car for weeks!
Write for Readers
Something I did to prepare for my doctoral oral exam was to blog about my thesis and research findings: my way of translating academic writing into discussion-ready phrases, sentences and vocabulary. Blogging helped me work out how to have conversations with people about things I’d only ever written down in an academic style.
About a year ago I came across the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level readability test while reviewing some brochures and social media copy. It’s an excellent tool to help you understand the kind of writing you need to achieve if you want individuals and communities from all background to read something and understand it.
Learning & Development
Five ways to find your writing voice
To bring all of that together in a way that is helpful to you, here are five ways that you can find your writing voice to suit the right writing occasion:
1
Read the Right Stuff: if you want to sound academic, spend time reading journal articles, dissertations and theses. If it’s a board paper, read other good board papers. Immersing yourself in the right examples scaffolds your learning and helps you be paper-ready.
2
Say It Out Loud: reading your work out loud is one of the best tricks. You can’t hide from clunky sentences when you hear them in your own voice.
3
Turn It Into a Conversation: if your writing sounds too stiff, imagine explaining it to a friend over coffee. Blogging or journaling can help translate academic concepts into everyday conversation.
4
Check Your Readability: tools like the Flesch-Kincaid readability test give you a quick reality check on whether your words are too dense or overly simple. I
5
Play With Different Voices: when you’re drafting, try writing the same idea in two or three different ways: once as if it were an academic piece, once as a business report, and once like you’d tell the story in a social post. Lining them up side by side shows you what fits best. Over time, this exercise makes switching between writing voices feel much more natural.
The Last Word
Finding your writing voice isn’t about picking one style and sticking with it forever, it’s about knowing which one to call on for the occasion. Academic, business, social, or something in between: each has its own rhythm and purpose.
Let’s write well, let’s write engagingly, and let’s write so that people of all backgrounds know what we’re trying to say. As a leader, my recommendation is to learn to diversify your writing style and be the self-aware, adaptable leader that organisations and the people in them need.
Does your written communication need an upgrade?
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