Effective Training Associates

Writing Skills

Effective Training Associates provides instructor-led business writing training focused on improving workplace communication, business writing, email writing, and technical writing.

Our courses equip participants with practical skills to create audience-focused content, reduce misunderstandings, and improve communication efficiency in both virtual and in-person environments.

Explore Our Writing Skills Courses

Clear Business and Email Writing with AI Best Practices

OVERVIEW

This interactive workshop teaches participants how to write clear, concise, and persuasive business communications that achieve their intended purpose. Participants also learn how to use generative AI tools responsibly to streamline the writing process—creating stronger first drafts, improving clarity, refining tone, and enhancing grammar while maintaining accuracy and professionalism.

Through practical exercises, personalized feedback, and real-world examples, participants develop a repeatable writing process they can apply immediately to produce business documents and emails that are more effective, influential, and action-oriented.

PRE-WORK

Participants complete a questionnaire and submit a writing sample. The instructor reviews the sample and tailors course topics to emphasize and address the needs of each participant. The instructor provides feedback and suggestions for improvement of the writing samples.

KEY TOPICS

  • Write with your audience and business objective in mind
  • Use a conclusion-first structure to communicate key messages quickly
  • Determine the appropriate level of detail for different audiences and situations.
  • Create emails and documents that inspire action and reduce misunderstandings.
  • Apply persuasive writing techniques to influence readers and support business objectives.
  • Improve clarity, conciseness, and readability through effective editing and revision.
  • Format business documents for easy scanning and faster comprehension.
  • Use generative AI to brainstorm ideas, draft content, improve grammar, and refine tone while maintaining quality and accuracy.
  • Develop a consistent writing process that improves efficiency and communication effectiveness.
  • Create a professional, respectful, and confident tone
  • Avoid common writing mistakes and misunderstandings

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Writing Clear Policies, Processes and Procedures

OVERVIEW:
Learn an efficient and effective approach to writing organized, clear and concise policies, processes and procedures. The improved documentation will increase compliance and enable employees to produce predictable outcomes both safely and efficiently.

KEY TOPICS:
  • Target policies and procedures to project goal requirements and conditions and audience needs
  • Understand the differences in policy, process and procedure content
  • Organize content before writing
  • Cluster to cut writing time, categorize items and develop headings
  • Order your ideas for standardized policy or procedure layout
  • Use a checklist to ensure quality in documentation
  • Learn the best-practice formatting techniques for policies and procedures
  • Check for specific, concrete wording
  • Avoid evasive vocabulary, wordy phrases and corporate jargon
  • Review processes and procedures for clarity, usability and brevity
  • Use the imperative verb form for procedures to create direct, concise instructions
  • Apply 10 tips for writing easily understood policies and procedures

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Clear Technical Writing

OVERVIEW:
Clear Technical Writing will help to improve clarity and conciseness of technical documentation by product managers, developers and quality engineers. Those who are not technical writers by profession have to meet the challenge of writing quality documentation – with time constraints and topic complexities. Furthermore, non-standardized writing formats and styles can create inconsistency and confusion. When using a standardized approach and applying best-practice writing techniques, employees can produce organized, consistent, clear and concise technical documents and save time.

KEY TOPICS:
  • Plan the purpose and scope of technical documents
  • Target content to the audience and purpose
  • Ensure completeness of content
  • Draft documents with speed
  • Begin in a way that engages the reader
  • Incorporate processes and procedures
  • Hit the right style for technical documents
  • Organize sections and paragraphs in a logical format
  • Highlight the most important information
  • Revise for clarity and brevity
  • Demystify writing using plain English
  • Eliminate jargon
  • Avoid the nine most common technical writing errors
  • Proofread for error-free writing

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Communicating with Confidence for Non-Native English Speakers

Overview:

This training program is designed to promote inclusiveness and provide training and coaching to support non-native speaking team members in organizations. It will help develop confidence and communication skills, in turn enabling team members to bring their value, experience, and expertise to leading and decision-making.

Objectives:

  • Gain confidence in written and verbal communication skills
  • Contribute confidently in meetings and discussions and to provide value in decision-making
  • Influence others and show leadership on projects and initiatives

Outline:

Week 1: Introduction and Goal Setting

Week 2: Clear Writing Skills: Audience, Format, Content, and Tone

Homework: Write an action-oriented email, persuasive email, and project update email using workshop techniques.

Week 3: Clear Writing Skills: Revising and Editing

Homework: Revise an assigned piece of writing for clarity and conciseness.

Week 4: Delivering Succinct Project Updates

Homework: Deliver a status update in a meeting or one-to-one using training structure.

 Week 5: Understanding Decision-Making and How to Contribute to High Quality Decisions

Homework: Facilitate a discussion and reach a decision in a meeting.

 Week 6: Influencing Others and Proposing System, Project, or Product Changes

Homework: Write a one-page proposal suggesting a change at work. Submit to instructor for coaching and feedback. Then submit.

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Increasing Workplace Collaboration with Slack

Overview:

By attending this course, Increasing Workplace Collaboration with Slack, you can maximize the potential of Slack for collaboration within your organization. Slack breaks down communication barriers inside your organization by bringing teams and tools together around common goals, projects, and processes in channels and in Slack Connect. It removes the limits of physical walls, giving people the flexibility to do their best work where, when, and how they prefer.

This fun, hands-on workshop ensures your teams will get the most out of Slack, helping people perform at peak levels through clear communication and quality collaboration.

Key Topics: 

  • Creating and contributing to channels using prefixes, channel topics and more
  • Understanding the importance of clear and concise messages
  • Moving work (including files) out of siloed email inboxes and into Slack
  • Sharing files and conversations
  • Using search and shortcuts
  • Collaborating on projects and presentations
  • Collecting and responding to requests as a team
  • Running polls to capture ideas from teammates
  • Using screen sharing to solve problems collaboratively
  • Encouraging creativity and innovation in channel contributions

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*One of our most popular courses.

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Robert Decker

ROBERT BECKER

Management & Leadership Advisor

ROBERT BECKER brings over twenty years of experience as a facilitator, coach, and learning strategist across the technology, healthcare, and financial services industries. For more than a decade at Salesforce, he led global management development programs that reached thousands of managers each year—shaping the company’s leadership culture through initiatives like Manage the Salesforce Way, Manager Certification, and Managing at Salesforce.

Earlier in his career, Rob held leadership roles at American Express, Visa, and Blue Shield of California, where he designed and delivered programs that helped leaders elevate performance, engagement, and the employee experience.

In front of a room, Rob is part strategist, part storyteller, and part stand-up comedian—believing that learning sticks best when people are laughing and leaning in. His sessions are dynamic, grounded, and human-centered, reflecting his core values of clarity, creativity, and customer experience. As an instructional designer, he’s known for transforming complex leadership ideas into practical, actionable insights that managers can immediately apply.

A Certified Professional Co-Active Coach (CPCC) and Herrmann Brain Dominance Instrument (HBDI) practitioner, Rob brings depth in both coaching and assessment, helping leaders understand how they think, connect, and lead more effectively.

When not facilitating, Rob can often be found behind a camera lens—applying his creative eye to photography and finding new ways to see the world.

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