Invitation: Our 2012 kickoff program for STC-ETC is this coming Tuesday, January 17! Do come.

Topic: How individual styles of negotiation affect careers and the workplace: Controlling tone and creating a professional persona through written communication

Speaker: Mary Ryba Knepper, PhD; president, Ryba Associates, Inc.

Time: 6:30pm

Place: UTK campus, Hodges Library, Mary Greer Room, 6:30pm

Why this topic: Part of Mary's role as a technical communicator and owner of a training and documentation company has been to function as a "communications coach" for a wide spectrum of clients, e.g., CPAs, nuclear physicists, engineers, marketing specialists, lawyers, tax advisors, technicians, and IT professionals—competent people who somehow were not succeeding because of poor communication skills. Her observation about the world of work is not original: "Success takes more than technical competence; it takes people skills too." Without people skills, written and oral communication becomes a career breaker because it underscores that fact. The consequences of not controlling professional image can cost jobs and peoples' willingness to offer recommendations.

"But how do I learn?!" A manager's directive to "improve" is easily said, but how does a person improve in the "people skills" area? It seems abstract, "soft," arbitrary.

Focus on email: Tuesday's topic is one of demystification: Mary will address one small aspect of the "people skills" area, one that, in her experience, seems to provide the most immediate, specific, and broad benefit. It is part of the art of crafting a professional persona in the workplace and describes (a) how to recognize and characterize people's perception of us and (b) how to craft communication that effect that perception.

Mary will show real examples of email, which is the backbone of business communication and can cause the most havoc, identify how they did their damage, offer revisions, and provide an approach for crafting professional email. This approach also holds for oral communication.

If you want personal analysis...: As an added bonus, she is inviting anyone to bring his or her email and she will, in total confidence, identify the negotiating style as represented in that email and suggest a revision or reinforce a current approach.