Writing training and coaching

These services improve people’s confidence and skills to write well at work.

Having skilled writers in the workplace saves your organisation time. It cuts out the need to rewrite poorly written drafts, which can be disempowering for staff. Our writing training and coaching services equip people with skills, confidence and tools to write clearly and get into good writing habits.

Introductory workshop

Our Writing Skills Discovery session is a great way to introduce your team to some techniques that will improve their writing at work. This two-hour online session covers five ways that people can instantly improve their writing. At only $500 for groups of up to 10 people, this session is very cost-effective.

Advanced workshops

Capire runs specialist online or face-to-face training workshops for established teams. We tailor our workshops to the needs of your organisation, using your actual documents as our training materials and examples that are relevant to your line of business.

We currently offer training workshops on the following topics, which we find are the most effective ways for people to improve their writing quickly and easily:

• Planning writing
• Using plain English
• Using active voice
• Avoiding nominalisations
• Writing succinctly
• Getting the right tone
• Writing consistently
• Using a style guide
• Editing and proofreading.

Find out how Capire’s training and coaching helped New Zealand government staff write well at work.

Individual coaching

Coaching is useful at any stage of the writing process. For example, it can help an individual plan a new piece of writing, help them structure and revise a draft, help them edit a near final product, or help them address feedback from a peer or manager.

The nature of the support needed will vary from person to person, and product to product, but can include a mix of:

• talking about an individual’s questions or concerns about writing
• providing written or verbal comments on an individual’s draft work, including in relation to an organisation’s standards for good writing
• providing feedback on how an individual can improve their writing, with suggested resources and exercises
• using coaching questions to help an individual identify the problems with their writing, structure their writing logically and write for their audience
• working with an individual to plan a piece of writing and develop an outline for a product they can discuss with their peers or manager
• providing short training sessions on aspects of good writing that will most improve an individual’s writing (such as planning writing, using active voice, using plain language)
• editing or rewriting parts of an individual’s work to illustrate good writing techniques

We provide face-to-face or online coaching. Our clients usually book coaching for their staff members in blocks of five hours at a time. Contact us to find out more about how we can help your staff improve their writing through coaching.

 

Capire is a leading New Zealand writing consultancy for governments, NGOs and international development agencies. We help organisations transform their complexity into plain English. Find out more about how we can help your organisation or sign up for our newsletter to get more tips to improve your writing.