Learning Narrative

Learning Narrative Final -

Introduction

My name is XXXX and I am a 41 year-old mother-of-four and currently a bank technologist. Directly after graduating high school in 1989, I joined the U.S. Army Reserves and began training as an Electronic Warfare Signals Intelligence Analyst. While in the U.S. Army Reserves, I also held various civilian positions that included switchboard operator, sales analyst, project support specialist, and part-time student. Finally, in mid 1995, I settled on the Financial Services industry. Since that time, I have worked for two multi-national banking organizations. Since starting my career in banking, I have amassed 10 years of project management experience, four years in Technology management and three years in Marketing. I have successfully navigated a career in my current organization that began as a telephone banking representative, and grew to my current role as an Executive Vice President where I have been responsible for a $340 million technology implementation. During my banking career, I have been promoted or selected for a new role with additional responsibility approximately every 2 years. This upward mobility is due, in large part, to my ability to effectively communicate with all levels of employees and to lead teams to successful execution of major projects and initiatives.

Business Writing (3) ENG - 202, Pennsylvania State University

According to the online course catalog from the Pennsylvania State University (University of Pennsylvania State, University, 2013), the English 202 course teaches writing strategies and tactics that business managers and executives will need in order to write successfully on the job. The course description considers objectives such as learning situational business writing, communicating with intercultural audiences, basic structures of business writing, producing memos, and putting this effective correspondence into practice. Each of the courses I reviewed on this subject included learning about syntax, and determining which written medium to use (situational writing). Additionally, many of the courses involved providing or completing a sample project in order to assess the students written communication skills.

Introduction

Written communication can come in many forms, both formal and informal. Some of these forms of written communication include memos, situational reports, job descriptions, status reports, employee job manuals, employee reviews, presentations, and email messages. This communication is a part of our everyday business life and can have a direct impact on a person's success in the workplace. It is important to know which form of communication is right for any given situation. Further, the form of communication and the audience dictates how formal or informal the communication needs to be.

Understanding interpersonal relations and developing strong communication techniques has become a significant part of my personal and professional growth over the years. As a Business Partner, who serves as the liaison between the technologists and the business leaders, it has been my role for many years to ensure that both groups could effectively understand and support each others' goals. In order to achieve my goals in this area, I have put a focus on learning from each and every interaction (including both written and verbal) so that I can improve further interactions. Many times in my career, I have been faced with the challenge of facilitating groups through tough situations in order to gain consensus on a controversial topic. In each case, I have navigated the challenges related to that situation and have learned or refined a technique in preparation for the next such situation.

Situational Business Writing

Early in my banking career, I was fortunate enough to be involved in the leading-edge development and deployment for Internet Banking solutions. As a result, I quickly become a subject-matter expert in the field and was often asked to visit customers and employees for the purposes of training or educating them in how online banking functioned and could benefit them.

Many of the speaking or training engagement topics included online demonstrations and were centered on security or the technical inner-workings of the application. I was a naturally strong verbal communicator, relying on body language and inflection to make points and drive home with my audience the messages I wanted to convey. In addition to working my own non-verbal cues, I learned to read that of my audience in order to know when to push deeper into a subject or when to pull back and keep the discussion at a higher level. I relied heavily on these verbal skills in order to become an effective communicator and to drive the action I needed from those interactions.

However, I soon learned that with the more technical subject matters, there were situations where verbal communication simply wasn't clear enough to ensure effective transfer of information between me and my audience. After a couple of less than successful visits with clients and employee groups reviewing the new bank technologies, I began developing my own accompanying material in the form of PowerPoint slides. The goal of the slides was a clear and concise re-enforcement of the key information I needed my audience to recall. I found that by providing both verbal information/direction and visual supporting material, the individuals I worked with were much more likely to retain the key information. This caused there to be less repeat visits to these audiences. Because of the type of events, it would not have been appropriate to provide the information in the form of email or memos.

As a project manager for a financial institution, written communication is the difference between success and failure. Many times, when mistakes are made on projects, it is not because the team member isn't capable but it is rather because he or she didn't understand what was expected. Understanding how your team needs to be communicated with is as important as knowing what you want to communicate. As Aaron Stannard points out in the web article, "Managers: Your Projects Fail Because Your Communication Stinks" (Stannard, 2009), knowing which medium or combination of to use, can make a difference in the effectiveness of meeting your goals. In this article, Stannard describes the learning and retention process and suggests that presenting the information in a more visual manner will increase the likelihood of understanding. In my experience, I have learned this to be true, especially when sharing complex information. Whether including bar graphs, tables, or charts, in most cases, the

...