In this unit we went through two major tasks, our formal report draft, and learning and using the you attitude to communicate effectively.
The lesson with the you attitude communication paper is one of the most informative papers I have ever read through. After reading through the paper, I came to recognize when it was and wasn’t used in communication in work emails. Using you attitude to write to colleagues comes off much more affable. Placing the work I in an email or other writing comes off as self-centered and may even sound confrontational, even when the writer does not mean to be. Formal emails which are distributed company wide and from higher up in the organization seem to always have a you attitude in the tone. I will definitely incorporate this technique in my future communication, and in all the emails I have sent after reading the paper, I have tried to reword it in order to have more of a you attitude.
Reviewing my group’s papers where they wrote with a you attitude to a student writing to the professor in order to get into a class made me realize how well my classmates write. It is difficult not to be dismissive of a person with such significant flaws in their writing, but all the group members in Mystic Minds, including my writing partner, who I reviewed, wrote very well and professionally. It seems that we all learned a valuable lesson from reading the you attitude paper – we have become more professional and positive when writing.
The draft for the formal report was very challenging to write because there is so much content. The most challenging aspect was the difficulty in communicating a technical topic without rushing through it with too much jargon. Reading through the review of my report, I agree with many of the points. I still would like to collect more data and information in order to have a more developed paper. Otherwise, it was a satisfying experience to have so much information in the draft. The polish seems like it will be much easier since the basis is done.