Course information

Business Writing. Communicate with clarity and impact.

This business writing masterclass is a practical workshop designed for senior professionals who are moving into leadership roles and want to sharpen their persuasive communication skills. The course explains how to combine modern artificial intelligence (AI) tools with timeless writing craft to deliver their messages clearly and concisely.

As expectations grow to lead with clarity, inspire teams and influence decision-makers, the ability to write persuasively is critical. This course equips participants to craft high-impact stakeholder emails, compelling proposals and thought leadership content that reflects authority and vision.

The workshop starts with an introduction of best-practice AI prompting and other tips, before covering powerful planning techniques and structures designed to hone clear thinking before you start to write. We also cover various topics exploring the finer points of business communications, including the secret to writing persuasively, tools for simplifying complexity, and grammar and style that reinforces clarity.

Through real-world examples and hands-on exercises, you'll learn to balance precision with persuasion, ensuring your written voice matches your leadership intent.

This course can be taken independently or in conjunction with the Business Writing Essentials Course: From Core Skills to AI Tools, focusing on more everyday business writing scenarios such as emails, short documents and editing essentials.

Aims

This course aims to give you the tools to present logical yet sophisticated arguments, and to support your proposals with a range of evidence. It also provides you with clear frameworks to critically review your own work and that of your team.

Outcomes

By the end of this course, you should have greater confidence and skill in writing business documents that persuade a demanding and highly informed reader. You should be able to:

• understand the benefits of AI writing tools, as well as ethical, security and creative limitations
• consider audience needs and adjust tones
• plan persuasive documents based on a clear framework of points
• structure documents effectively for navigation and focus
• simplify complex concepts using a clear and approachable style
• review written work following a four-step process.

Content

This course involves reading a number of long-format texts, analysing them for effectiveness, and using the suggested tools to improve them.

AI writing overview

An introduction to writing with AI, from tool settings to ethics, AI work modes and some of the main prompts and modifiers to use.

Planning

Hands-on and AI-supported planning techniques that ensure your document is fit for purpose.

Master structures

Structuring principles to apply to any document, even when using templates.

Strategic application

Combining the master structures with typical document templates and outputs.

Influencing upwards

Principles of persuasive writing, from the persuasion rollout to compelling audience-focused evidence and language do’s and don’ts.

Advanced editing

Essential steps to take for reviewing your own or someone else’s text, and how to refine your writing for focus and impact.

Intended audience

The course is aimed at senior professionals and team leaders who deal with a range of stakeholders, often with the aim of shaping business outcomes. It is also useful for professionals who need to guide their team members’ writing.

Participants will generally have a good grasp of clear and correct grammar writing style. They can explain the nuances of terms unique to their sector, or why the active voice is generally preferable to passive. Their challenge is in how to communicate the complexities of their sector or proposal without overwhelming the reader, questions that this course seeks to address.

Prerequisites

You do not need to attend Business Writing Essentials Course: From Core Skills to AI Tools first, but you should understand some principles of good writing to get the most out of this course. If you already start your writing with a message statement, have a system for organising information, understand sentence grammar, and know why active verbs are generally better than passive, you should be able to follow the workshop content comfortably.

Delivery modes

• Face-to-face, presenter-taught training
• Online training via the platform Zoom

Delivery style

You will learn through a variety of methods including open discussions, group exercises and individual written responses throughout the day.

Materials

A course workbook containing instructions, and best practice examples and exercises is provided electronically.

Additional information

You will have the opportunity to develop a piece of writing from your organisation. Please bring along some simple notes or an outline of this work. If you do not have any work in progress, you may work on our fictional classroom scenario instead.

Please bring your laptop, with logins ready to access your preferred AI platform (we suggest Copilot, ChatGPT or Claude.ai). You may use a phone or tablet if you do not have a laptop.

You will be working on at least two scenarios from your own workplace, and we suggest you arrive with a draft of these scenarios ready to use.

Recommended reading

Australian Government 2002, Style Manual, John Wiley & Sons, Australia.

James, N 2007, Writing at Work: how to write clearly, effectively and professionally, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest, NSW.

Seely, J 2005, Oxford Guide to Effective Writing and Speaking, Oxford University Press.

Strunk, W & White, E B 1918, The Elements of Style, Harcourt, USA.