Genius loves company

Bring the lawyers to your writing workshop

I learn so much from my brilliant clients.

When CenterPoint Energy’s Eydie Pengelly brought me in for a writing workshop last month, it wasn’t just for the company’s communicators. Eydie invited her team’s clients and other reviewers to the sessions, too.

Among the benefits:

• Clients and communicators are on the same page about what makes a good story.
• Lawyers were able to clear up some misconceptions about what they feel comfortable about approving. Turns out communicators have more leeway than they thought.
• We had a great discussion about mitigating the risk of lawsuits against the risk of not being heard at all. Lawyers and communicators left feeling more like partners than adversaries.

My favorite outcome, though, was that one lawyer is considering a Chatter Monkey-esque blog for communicating legal and procurement guidelines to employees. Being hilarious is a brilliant approach for drawing attention to — forgive me — an often dry and finger-wagging topic.

Did you hear me say that the lawyers are planning to do this? I couldn’t be happier if I found out that the IT folks were creating technical manuals inspired by The Oatmeal.

The thing that really surprises me is that in 18 years of presenting in-house writing workshops, this is the first time I’ve been invited to teach writing techniques to reviewers as well as writers. Why not invite your clients, lawyers and other reviewers to a writing workshop this year? Contact me to schedule a seminar.