Personal vs. Professional Voice: 5 Tips for Finding Balance between “the codes”

While writing a message to a friend can be easy, so many of us would find the same task to be agonizing when writing to a boss or within a professional context. Perhaps the challenge is sounding professional, while also authentically “you”. Striking this balance can be difficult. This is quite a common struggle for millennials and young professionals who find that their casual, everyday dialect, or way of speaking doesn’t exactly fit within their corporate or professional environment.

The first step is acknowledging that communication at work is different from casual communication. We read a lot about the importance of authenticity, while knowing simultaneously that we need to be professional. Striking this balance is important to avoid giving mixed signals. How do we communicate authentically while also being professional if our authentic voice is decidedly casual? We’re going to name this: authentic-professional

Here are Melissa James’ top 5 tips for communicating authentically while still being professional at work:

It’s important to keep the big picture in mind. In most cases, while we are friendly with the people we work with, they are not our friends. It’s important to set a boundary and not cross it here. Consider your audience.

This is made simpler by remembering the “VETA considerations”, which are: vocabulary, expectations, tone, and authority. Think about words that people in the audience understand. What is their general vocabulary level? Is it at a Grade 8 level? Is it at a Post Doc level? Tailor your message accordingly. Is there a specific jargon (i.e., superstep or EOD) that is collectively understood and embraced? Use it.

For the “ET” portion of VETA, we are speaking of expectations and tone. We need to consider who the audience expects us to be. People like it when we communicate in an expected tone. To do this, we need to depersonalize a little bit. How would I expect to be communicated with if the roles were reversed. Practice your perspective-taking skills here. For example, when I call my dentist to schedule an appointment, I expect to hear, “Hello Melissa. How are you? When would you like to come in?”. I would not expect to hear, “Hey Melissa. What’s up? When will you be stopping by?”.

Maybe the receptionist would use the latter version with her friends, but I expect something different. Having strong communication skills relies on having strong perspective-taking skills and knowing what tone your audience expects from you in that situation.

For “A”, authority, we are zooming out and thinking about our rank and authority level in the situation more generally. Depending on our authority, we need to tailor our assertiveness level accordingly. If you are the national expert on X speaking to people who don’t know much about X, it is appropriate to use a more confident tone. In contrast, if your audience knows quite a lot about X and you are amongst peers, then it is more effective to use a more conversational communication style.

Depending on where you work, you have to communicate in a way that represents the philosophy of your brand. This is especially true if you are a forward facing employee who is representing your company to customers or potential customers. Think about yourself as a flexible communicator who is an extension of that brand. What is your organization’s philosophy? What is their culture? If you work for a conservative organization with traditional values then you will need to keep that in the front of your mind while communicating. You are the representative, so your communication should match cohesively with the values of your organization.

Again – it’s about perspective-taking. Think about what a confident speaker would say. What are the words they would use, what are the mannerisms, what style of speaking is conservative? If ideas and examples don’t come to mind right away, it may be time for a people-watching or a social experiment.

Think of a company that also has a conservative brand. Call them or stop by their shop. How do they speak to you? What words do they use? Notice how other people are communicating around you or within companies whose brands are positioned similarly. Observe and then assess whether it’s a relevant example or not. If it’s a relevant example, this new perspective should allow you to identify communication techniques that align with your brand. If after these steps this still seems difficult for you, then give us a call.

In an era of instant information, companies are keeping up by publishing content at a faster rate than ever before. This affects employees who are being asked (now more than ever) to write for their company’s social media pages or blog. If you are expected to write for your company’s blog, newsletter, or publications, fret not, even if you haven’t formally written since University. I have the Coles Notes.

Here’s what you’ll need to consider:

1. Your writing must be authentic to be convincing. People like to read articles that have a human quality.

2. Your writing must also be professional. So how do we align the two? We write authentically, (Check 1) then we edit radically (Check 2) for professionalism. So how do we write authentically? We don’t hit backspace and we write whatever idea comes to mind without judgement or revision.

Version 1: Cactuses are lovely plants that don’t need much water. It’s important to decorate your dwelling with plants to keep a balance between nature and man-made materials. Having plants in your home increases the feeling of warmth and can help you to feel grounded.

I wrote the above blurb as it came into my head, without hitting backspace. It’s entirely “stream of consciousness” writing.

Version 2: Cactuses are decadent, low-maintenance additions to any dwelling. They harmonize and offset man-made materials, allowing individuals to feel more balanced within their space. Having plants in your home contributes to a warm ambiance and inspires a more grounded and tranquil mood.

As you can see, my process was to write authentically, then edit radically. This allowed me to take the raw idea and polish it into something more refined. And it doesn’t stop here. Ideally, we will come back to Version 2. Over the next few days or weeks – with fresh eyes and a fresh perspective – and continue to polish the piece by improving word-choice (vocabulary), clarity, sentence-structure, and tone in order to satisfy what the audience is expecting from the brand.

“But I still want to be myself!”. I hear this often in therapy sessions with adults who are revamping their professional communication style. You certainly can be yourself while still speaking professionally. It is tricky at first though, so I do understand the feeling and the underlying connection between communication and one’s sense of self.

Imagine a maple tree. Your organization’s brand is the “maple” quality of the tree and you are one maple leaf on a tree that has many other leaves. Since you all work for the same organization, let’s call it “MAPLE”, you are expected to communicate in a similar way in order to represent the brand consistently. All the maple leaves have the same shape. Even though you are shaped similarly to the other leaves, you also have your own idiosyncratic features. Just as no two leaves are the same, this is the same for people. You are unique!

The key here is that these unique features are present but they are not the focus of the landscape, or the company. Someone from the outside would first notice a maple tree as a whole, then the many interesting leaves. Your professional communication should represent the brand voice of your organization (MAPLE) and the idiosyncratic features of your personality-infused communication style (your unique, quirky maple leaf) are present, but are not more noticeable than the tree – or brand voice – as a whole.

This metaphor is meant to help you to be authentic while still communicating professionally. And, while doing so we are using our personality to infuse our professional communication and how it should come across is “personality-lite.” Your personal communication characteristics, style, and reverence are present but they are not the main feature. The main feature is your organization’s voice (what the audience expects from someone in your role, considering the company’s desired image).

Since this article is about acknowledging the flexibility of our communication and mastering the balance between authenticity and professionalism, it may seem strange to mention consistency when I seem to be endorsing the opposite (flexibility). Ah ha! But here’s what I mean by consistency: we can be flexible across different audiences but it’s important to be consistent within the same audiences. Your communication style may vary from person to person, but still requires consistency with each one. This brings us back to meeting the expectations of the audience.

If you speak to a client on Monday and you are using a formal vocabulary and tone, then you speak to them again on Wednesday and you are speaking with an entirely different vocabulary and tone, your client will surely feel confused by you. You would be defying their expectations and we know that people like people who meet their expectations. So, if you want that client to like you, you should be consistent in your communication with them. This does not mean that once you meet someone you can’t change your communication style at a later point within the relationship. Communication styles are known to become less formal as the relationship progresses, but for the most part your tone should be somewhat consistent with each of them.

When we frame our communication from a place of consideration for our audience it is easier to feel congruence between what you say and who you really are. You are a flexible and dynamic individual who can adapt to different situations. Your communication is also no different. You have a style of communicating with your friends and an unlimited number of other styles of communication at your disposal. Professional communication is about consistently representing broader values (of your company) while maintaining your personality as a subtext.

Let us know if you have any thoughts about this topic. It’s our favourite, and unsurprisingly, we love to talk!