Managers as Editors
Provide direction instead of red line feedback!
All too often, managers are rewriting and editing reports, proposals, presentations, and everything else that planning staff send their way for approvals. It’s a waste of time! And, it’s not good for staff, who lose an opportunity to learn and to build their writing skills.
Document review processes can be frustrating for everyone. Here’s how you can make it less painful.
Here’s what often happens:
If you manage staff, your role is to communicate expectations so they can produce the complete, top-quality, polished documents that you need to present to others. But in a management role, your job is not to do the writing work yourself!
Easier to say than do, I know. And while it may solve a short-term problem, you’re not doing yourself, or staff, any favours.
When managers do the rewriting, instead of providing guidance, staff don’t understand why certain changes were made or how these changes make their work better – they see only that it’s different. It’s not uncommon for them to receive the final version of their report and wonder, “Did I actually write that?” Well, no – they may not have!
When staff aren’t provided an opportunity to improve their own work, it’s a real motivation-killer. They start thinking, “Why should I bother writing a great first draft when it’s all going to be rewritten for me anyway?”
I don’t think managers consciously intend to alienate staff! It’s a natural impulse to jump in and fix something, especially when you’re under pressure. But the temptation to rewrite something your way, rather than sending it back to staff to fix it according to an agreed-upon standard, is one that should be resisted.
One director sent this to her staff:
“I know this was already approved before I was Director, so I also know it's annoying for me to have comments on prefab'd content. I'm just trying to improve our narrative with my fresher eyes to help us hit a home run with senior leadership and get the endorsements we need. I trust you where my feedback doesn't make sense.”
Why does this work? They show empathy, recognize work has been done to date, express trust, offer an explanation, and best of all, offer comments. They don’t rewrite it and tell them why after the fact.
A first draft serves an important function: to help the team think through the position they are putting forward. Writing is very much a thinking process. Drafting helps to uncover essential ideas, find an ideal structure for the document, and consider how to build the analysis and present it in the most effective way. Managers are looking to staff to provide much of this thinking for them.
Also keep in mind that many managers may not have had any formal training in how to write clear and effective professional documents. Luckily, there is always room to learn!
Here’s what managers can do to provide clear direction, constructive feedback, empower staff, and improve the process:
Step 1. Provide clear direction to staff
Your expectations have to be clear from the beginning.
Define what you want, as much as you can (e.g., page limits, charts and tables, templates).
Introduce the project. Have they worked on something similar before? What are the challenges? How much flexibility is there? Share what you know. If you’ve been briefed on how new leadership wants their information, or on the subject at hand, let staff know what you know.
Discuss the overall approach – who you see as the audience and what the main purpose of the document is. And, is this a one-off, a standalone document, or part of a series? Who else will be reviewing and contributing to it?
Discuss expectations. Make it clear how much time they have, and any particular style preferences you want them to adhere to. Is there an in-house style guide you can point them to? A successful template from a similar document? Do you want plain language? Do you want a lot of visual elements?
Staff need the big picture to write with clarity and precision. When you’re assigning a project, make sure you can, at minimum, answer these questions:
Who is the document for?
What’s the purpose?
How do you want the information to be organized?
What’s most important about the project? What’s most interesting?
What’s the latest you’ve heard from senior management?
Helping your subject matter experts understand why you want a report or plan to be written in a particular way, to a particular standard, is investing in them for the long run. And ultimately, you’re helping yourself be the best you can be in your role, by meeting the needs of staff, as well as of the leadership that you report to.
Step 2. Review the first draft together
Let staff walk you through their decisions. Listen to their reasoning. Explain your proposed changes and your rationale. Talk about the sticking points. Answer their questions. Often when we start writing, our thinking is clarified and new questions emerge. Don’t expect staff to get it all right the first time.
The first draft is a basis for communicating. Do not start marking it up! Use it as an opportunity to refine it together.
While they’re rewriting:
Keep them up to date on new direction, developments, and information/data.
If possible, include them in conversations about the project. Hearing it directly from more senior decision makers helps them become more attuned to the expectations and needs of the organization, and reflect this information in their writing.
Step 3. Review the next draft(s)
There are different types of editing:
structural edits deal with the organization of information;
stylistic edits deal with voice and tone;
copy edits are line by line reviews of spelling, grammar, and usage.
Proofreading comes later – this type of editing is meant to provide minor changes and ensure nothing is missing (e.g., through the design process).
Stick to the high level structural edits at this stage! Did they convey the issue(s)? Is there a compelling storyline? Is it logical and clear? Is it too informal or too technical? Send it back with comments, not line by line corrections.
If you do see a need for a lot of copy edits, highlight one or two, explain why they are problematic (in the comments) and let them use those comments as a basis for making changes in the next version. Do not start fixing them yourself! It’s demoralizing for staff and a waste of your time. If you want them to improve, let them take care of this.
Here are a few examples of comments that are specific but high level enough to give staff room to run with them:
Will committee members understand these terms?
Is there more data that can be added here to help tell the full story?
This paragraph is long and dense – please break it up with subheadings. Use bullets for the long list of items.
This section works really well – try to rework the section before it to follow this structure.
Some sentences should be flipped to be in the active voice. (Who took the action? City staff or the consultant?)
I noticed you hyphenate mid-rise sometimes, but not all the time. Please be consistent with your spelling and grammar throughout.
You may need to repeat Step 3 more than a couple of times. I’ve worked on documents that were waaaay into the double digits. It’s been much more satisfying and educational to make the changes myself.
Remember your role is to help make the work better, not just different! It may not be in your own exact style, but is that really a problem? If the information is precise, clear, and accurate, that’s probably enough. Trust your staff.
We all have our own writing styles. When giving feedback, you need to respect and maintain the lead author’s style. Doing so helps build trust, and you’ll find it easier to work with them in the future. Unless something is actually inappropriate or totally wrong, leave their style alone.
Step 4. Edit for final tweaks and polish
If the document is almost there, now is the time for you to get more hands-on – and hopefully only have to step it up a notch. Maybe you have inside information or insight about the intended reader that’s so fresh it wasn’t incorporated. Maybe there is a glaring spelling or grammar issue. At this stage, your edits should be minor. And follow the editor’s rule: Don’t introduce new problems or errors!
When editing, check yourself along the way. Are you making a change that improves the document, such as fixing or highlighting typos, making the message more clear, or shifting a few sentences into the active voice? Or are you just making the change because that’s how you would write it if you were the author?
After you provide final edits, send it back for a final check. After staff give the ok, you can give it one more look – but you shouldn’t be spending real time on it before you approve it.
Step 5. Set up tools and mechanisms that help staff improve
You’ve hired staff for their subject matter expertise, not necessarily for their communication skills (although you hope these are excellent, too)!
Here are a few things that can help your team when preparing documents of all kinds.
Create a style guide or point to one that works for you (e.g., Chicago Style, or ahem, mine)
Set up a peer review process. You can provide guidance on what you think needs to be strengthened and discuss it with the lead author. Give them a chance to edit it again and share it with a trusted colleague for editing, before it gets to you in Step 4.
Make sure staff understand your ideal process. If you only want to look at a draft three times, and have one of their colleagues review it, let them know! It helps everyone to understand where you expect the process to end, and when and how you will step in.
Create a shared folder with examples of the documents the team prepares – ones that you feel were successful in their process or in the outcome. Organize them by type and remind staff to check it and add to it.
Assign a team member to be the proofreader, especially if your document is going to a graphic designer for layout.
As part of your process, be sure to “circle back” (sorry!) to the lead writer. How was their document received? What kind of comments did you receive? Are there any next steps? Was there anything the two of you could do differently next time?
Why avoid rewriting staff documents?
Your role as the manager is to help your team’s subject matter expertise stand out. Over time, their writing skills will improve, you will spend less time rewriting and editing, and your team will build a reputation for delivering high-quality professional documents that all of you can be proud of. Be positive and patient: this takes time, but in the long run it will save you, as the manager, hours of time.
Consider this:
As a manager, what can you introduce to improve writing skills and processes within your team?
As staff, what else do you wish managers knew?
Next week:
I’m delighted to have my first guest writer step in next week, senior policy advisor Julia Taylor, with writing advice for neurodivergent professionals.