Some Active Advice About Passive Mistakes

mistakes
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As a fiduciary to your clients’ and their personal wealth, the last thing you want to do is reveal when (not if) you’ve made a mistake. News flash: Your clients already know that you are human. And humans make mistakes. Of course we want to avoid errors to begin with, but when they happen despite our best intentions, don’t compound them by going passive in communicating them. By “passive,” I’m referring to sentence structure:

“Mistakes were made.”

In case your high school English teacher failed to drill it into you, this is a passively constructed sentence. Instead of the subject performing the verb, the verb is performed on the subject. Why does that matter? With no “I,” “he/she” or “they” in sight, there’s no telling who owns the problem, intends to fix it, is sorry it happened and will ensure that it never happens again. The buck has NOT stopped here; it’s still roaming around planning its next attack. Continue reading “Some Active Advice About Passive Mistakes”

Garbage In, Food for Thought Out

flowers
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In a monumental “Do as I say, not as I do,” I confess: I’ve been an underwhelming blog mentor lately. In one-on-one conversations, I regularly remind advisers how important it is to maintain a blog and spread the word about it through social media. In all kinds of big ways, this helps build relationships between you and your would-be and existing clients and alliances.

But I’ve been remiss lately in following my own advice. Maybe that’s a good thing. It shows that even I, a professional writer, could use a professional writer to help me translate my best intentions into communication action. Continue reading “Garbage In, Food for Thought Out”