Powerful Communication: Lessons learned from High School Essay Writing

As part of my projecting leaders of tomorrow (PLOT) initiative, I try to introduce the concepts of project management and agility to high-school students and sometimes non-project managers. One opportunity presented itself to me when a student approached regarding preparing to write a compelling essay for the scholarship. The student had some knowledge about the essay types such as argumentative, expository, narrative and descriptive styles but was still having 'writer's block'. I viewed this problem analogous to how many professionals communicate leaving the stakeholders to wonder what is being asked of them! Any artifact, project status report or graphical widgets, like essays written in school should focus on what is the outcome desired from the report, graph, or essay delivered. 

Let us first differentiate the four essay types. An argumentative essay uses credible research to develop a factual or evidence supporting opinion. For instance, "Did remote team environment exist before the COVID-19 pandemic?"  To some extent, this argumentative essay builds on a hypothesis or a thesis statement. Instead of asking a question, one can make a statement that "Remote team environment exist before the COVID-19 pandemic" and use research from credible sources to support or refute it. In statistical circles, we call this approach null hypothesis and alternative hypothesis where we use data to support the evidence. The difference in this argumentative essay is that we are not building statistical or empirical data analysis to support but to use insights and opinions using qualitative research. 

The expository essays come from a position of knowledge or sometimes to test the understanding of your subject. These essays are more of an "an expert's take" approach. The goal here is not to evaluate whether you are using your analytical skills to support your thesis. Instead, the approach takes on bringing a delicately balanced views so that the knowledge to avoid any appearance of motivational or cognitive bias. For example, "The COVID-19 pandemic tested everyone's digital literacy to work remotely!" is a statement that you would like to test your understanding. While you may prove the plethora of tools that came up during the pandemic and how it facilitated people to maintain relationships, you can also discuss the challenges of computer literacy and security issues that made many people vulnerable to hacking. Again, this essay can leverage from both qualitative, quantitative, or a mixed research style. 

The narrative essays are built on a personal touch! This essay is more of an opinion piece! They could be emotional or factual depending upon the specific story. For instance, the "Heroes Journey" to storytelling (Rajagopalan, 2020) is a narrative essay approach. One can write "Global Warming was reduced because of the COVID-19 pandemic where people worked remotely!" Most of the moviemaking is a story telling exercise that weaves a personal message. I recall a technique (Skip Weisman, personal communication, Jun 13, 2018) from my coach. This approach here is to leverage curiosity by setting the characters in the circumstance, existence or development of conflict, definition of cure, appearance of change during the pursuit of cure, ability to callback or carryout the activities amid the challenges and finally come to the closure. 

The descriptive essay is becoming a creative artist in telling a part of the narrative essay. It frequently makes emotional connections! We all know Yoda and Dark Vader or Simba and Pumpaa. As soon as you read these character names, they appear in your mind! When you think of Spiderman, you think of his lifestyle in a busy New York downtown. You are not thinking of Simba in downtown New York or Spiderman in Pride Lands in Africa!  Such an artist's rendition of the place the story took place or the object/person that had the challenges is brought in the form of powerful words. I recall one of the best opening statements from Jeffrey Archer's book, Kane and Abel, that reads, "She only stopped screaming when she died. It was then that he started to scream" describing how a mother gave up life during childbirth. 

So, how do these four essay types compare with project level communication (or for that matter communication in professional lives)? I have mentioned in my book on organized common sense that the communication falls under persuasive, informatory, or exploratory (PIE) communication. I call this the communication PIE. 

1. The persuasive communication is required when you are recommending a decision (terminating a project, funding a program, etc.). These types of communication are therefore either argumentative or expository depending on the level of subject matter expertise you bring to the table. 
2. The informative communication is more of a status quo balancing multiple elements (scope, schedule, cost, quality, risk, procurement, stakeholders, resources, change) and so is often an expository level of communication. 
3. The exploratory communication is often taking some level of persona to try out an experiment and so I view them as narrative essays. 

The descriptive can be used in combination with the narrative essays for larger level vision and direction to motivate people! For instance, by integrating our processes around one application lifecycle management tool, we benefit from reducing the operating expenses by 30% increasing our likelihood of employees receiving annual bonus. Imagine what that extra bonus in your hands can do! Fund your children's education, make that dream vacation possible, etc. Now, you are painting a picture of what is to come and what people need to do to realize that reality.

What are your thoughts? Thoughts? 

References

Rajagopalan, S. (2020). Leaders are good story tellers. https://agilesriram.blogspot.com/2020/03/leaders-are-good-story-tellers.html