Among Peers and Clients: Professional Communication

The final module is deceptively simple: we all know how to write letters and emails, and nothing could be simpler than putting together the various pieces of our work we have come up with, to be able to show them to someone else. 

And yet, have you ever been around people who fascinate you with their ability to find just the right thing to say in the right conversation, write a message or an email in just the right words, making it easy for everyone they engage with to understand and take an interest in what they are talking about? A lot of what we do by way of professional communication requires that kind of attention to detail and awareness of what is needed in what context in order to make it work well. 

The final module asks us to learn to think about these choices that we sometimes make intuitively, and sometimes not at all. It is about understanding the value of that final step of reaching out to another person, whether it be a client or a colleague, a mentor for an internship or a possible guide for a project or a thesis, and being able to step out of our own shoes and into an understanding of how they are likely to engage with what we are interested in. 

Between Clients and Peers also brings us to a more practical culmination of our journey and asks us to look at the words we have strung together: from initial descriptions of objects, to essays; from the briefest of texts to oral presentations; from skimming to really drawing out connections between texts we read. It asks us to go through the overarching process once again, to remember what we have played with and reflect on where we are likely to draw on these abilities going forward, as we collect all our work between the covers of a book able to show where we have reached.