I guarantee someone in your work life has had a “How do they get paid for this?” moment because you assume you know how to communicate merely because you’ve been doing it for years. In the 12 years I spent working as the in-house communications staff, I only saw a few people outside roles like mine intentionally learn how to be a better communicator. And it showed.

Journalism school taught me to be skeptical of someone who refuses to comment in a news story. My years in communication have only cemented that skepticism.

Who's ready for a bit of a rant? Well today it's time for one of mine that is old enough to drive. In journalism school I wrote a whole essay on how journalistic objectivity is unattainable, and I stand behind that idea all these years later. (Which, having reviewed a lot of the work from those years in search of that essay, can't be said for many of my youthful stances. So much cringe.)

You can agree with the idea that you need to know your goal and still be bad at figuring out what the goal is for any given piece of communication. I'm sure of this because I see people communicate with each other in absence of a clear goal all the time, in business and in life.

Every time you communicate—big multimedia campaigns to short text messages—you have a goal and the clearer you are about the goal, the easier it becomes to hit the mark. We need to understand why we are communicating and what we are trying to achieve before we decide anything else.

Words have power, and we have a responsibility to wield them carefully. It's been nearly 200 years since Edward Bulwer-Lytton coined the phrase "The pen is mightier than the sword," but it remains painfully true. From our most intimate relationships to international diplomacy, our word choices can be the difference between peace and war.

Today's world is full of niche markets, subject matter experts, and nerds that are defined by their slavish devotion to a subject as opposed to the definition that looks for pocket protectors and social awkwardness. But being an expert in one field doesn’t make you a genius in every field. That means it’s time to join forces with complementary nerds.

No matter who you are or what you do, good communication will make your life run more smoothly. We can all be better communicators if we put in the time and effort, and especially if we learn from the right teachers.

I am obsessed with words, but I also know communication is so much more than that. There are countless elements that tell your audience something about you, your business, your choices.