Imagine you've just spent all morning writing a blog post. You've toiled away crafting beautiful sentences, wading through dense research to pick out just the right quote, and weaving it all into a story arc that flows.
Now it’s time for (what should be) the easy part—review. But after you’ve sent it off, comments start popping up in the Google doc and you feel a pit of dread starting to form in your stomach.
The PR team has littered jargon all over your carefully worded intro. They've artlessly dumped words like "business-oriented" into perfectly nice sentences.
Then the legal team pops into the Google doc and takes a chainsaw to your words. They replace vivid verbs with words like “leverage” for no reason and add bloat into otherwise crisp sentences. (Ironic that they’re called legal when they commit such heinous crimes against the written word, but I digress….)
The bottom line is: You're faced with a dilemma. On the one hand, you want to be a guardian of quality writing at your organization. You know how important it is to building your company’s brand, and creating that magical quality that dazzles buyers. But on the other hand, you don't want to seem like a pain and risk damaging important relationships by pushing back.
To insist or not to insist, that is the question
I’ve found myself in similar situations many times, and to tell you the truth, each one necessitated its own delicate dance to resolve. But there are a set of core factors that I consider each time to make the right call. Asking myself this set of questions helps guide me towards making the optimal decisions to deliver top writing quality, while also maintaining strong internal relationships.
3 tips for the brave (pushback) soldier
If you’ve determined it’s worth it to push back—godspeed, brave soldier. Here are some things to keep in mind for the best chance of success.
1. Ask thoughtful questions to uncover the reviewer's intent first
Maybe there truly are legal implications to your word choice you hadn't considered. Or maybe you’re reluctant to add more jargon, but an executive feels strongly that it will speak to buyers. Getting to the root of their concern will help you approach the conversation more thoughtfully.
2. Acknowledge their reasoning and offer yours.
If you still think it's a good idea to push back after probing, make sure to first fully acknowledge their perspective, and then gently offer reasons why you would make another choice. (Pro tip: If there's a grammar reason, don't hesitate to channel your inner Grammar Girl and name drop parts of speech or grammatical rules. Non-writers get scared off when you say things like, "I'm rearranging to avoid a dangling modifier or a comma splice.")
There's a good chance you're thinking about nuanced writing matters way more than they ever did, and they may appreciate your writerly perspective if you break it down for them in a way that makes them feel valued. After all, in many cases (such as when you're ghostwriting), your ultimate goal is to make them look good.
3. A final word of advice.
I can't stress this enough: Be kind and be humble.
Story time—a handful of real life examples
Real life is always a little messier and more complicated than a decision tree, so here are some examples of times where I’ve felt it was right to push back. The real work begins after you’ve made your decision to push back—the challenge becomes conveying your counterargument in a way that makes others feel heard and respected. You have to skillfully navigate the tension that may exist between stylistic considerations and whatever viewpoint your reviewer is representing.
It involves having the right balance of humility (after all, you’re not a subject matter expert or a lawyer) and confidence in your expertise as a writer (it’s your job to advocate for the best possible writing.) Remember, you’re all on the same team and all trying to publish something awesome.
The case of the overeager subject matter expert
My fingers had barely finished hitting “send” on an email with an interview blog post I’d written for a marketing operations manager when his Google doc edits started pouring in like a torrent.
I took a deep breath and let the comments pile up. When it was my turn to review the edits, I noticed that he’d done a number on both the intro angle in the brand’s voice and the interview questions in his voice. While I accepted all changes to the parts of his I’d ghostwritten—after all, he’s the authority on his own voice—I pushed back on the title and introduction, where he’d wanted to remove the creative flourish.
I’ve noticed that sometimes people in more left-brain dominant professions will edit out moments of humor or panache because it feels foreign to them. But these stylistic flourishes are crucial to engage readers. I emailed thanking him for his edits and confirmed that I’d integrated all changes to the body of the interview, but I was recommending that we keep the original copy for the title and intro. I explained that our team was aiming for a fun, irreverent tone and we needed to keep it consistent throughout the whole blog series. I reiterated how much I appreciated his thoughtful insights in the interview and told him I was excited to publish the piece. He was understanding and eager to publish a piece he was proud of.
The case of the CFO with the surprisingly poetic bent
I was interviewing a CFO for a blog series and he drew an analogy where he compared data quality to a farm—the idea being that if you don’t weed it, it will get unruly. When I sent him the draft of his interview blog post, he tripled the analogy in size. Suddenly the soil was part of the metaphor and there was a tractor roaming about and the fertilizer played a role.... *Record scratch.* It was way too much.
Ironically, this analogy was getting to be the unruly farm I myself needed to manage. He was the subject matter expert on data quality, but analogies fell in writer territory. I assured the CFO that his idea was most evocative in its simplest form and that readers would relate more to something pithy. I also explained that we needed to keep the quote short because we were using it for a promotional graphic with a tight word count.
He'd assumed more detail was better, but when I explained that less was more, he was happy to oblige.
The case of the CEO who didn't realize how interesting he is
Classic case of the Dunning-Kruger effect—the most interesting people have no idea how interesting they are. I was ghostwriting a newsletter for a CEO and I added in a couple quirky and personable details about his home life that he’d shared on a call. The details were endearing and helped set him apart from the average tech CEO. When he saw my draft, however, he edited them out, feeling it’d be more “relatable” to readers if we kept it generic.
I’d been working with this CEO for several months and had gained his trust. Since the relationship was a strong one, and we weren’t on a time crunch, I explained my reasoning to him. There’s an analogy I love by a Jewish writer named Cynthia Ozick. She said that writing generic stories in hopes of reaching a wider audience is like blowing into the wrong end of a shofar (an ancient type of horn). If you blow into the wide end of the horn, you make no sound. But if you blow into the narrow end of the instrument, you make a sound that resonates widely. She posited that, ironically, the more specific our stories are, the more universal they feel.
I explained to the CEO that this specificity would engage our audience more and that his personal brand was a strong part of what interests readers in our newsletter. I conceded on other edits he made, and he agreed to let his personality shine through on specific details.
You can do it, put your back(bone) into it
The truth is, it’s not always easy to push back. First, you need to distinguish which situations demand humility and which necessitate a bit of chutzpah. Then you need trust in your gut instincts, empathy for others, and above all else, a deeply held conviction in the power of evocative writing.
But as challenging as it may be to speak up, being a people-pleaser has its own downsides. For one, it’s never fun to have to shut up that little voice inside you that tells you when something’s off. And more importantly, you’ll actually be doing a disservice to your organization by publishing less-than-spectacular writing.
I learned this lesson the hard way a couple of years ago when I was writing a press release as my first task at a brand new job. Reluctant to take any firm stances as a newbie, I yielded to dozens of disparate suggestions from various reviewers, despite my better judgement. But after the piece went live and my manager and I looked it over, we both knew deep down it had become a bit of a Frankenstein’s monster. Accepting all of the suggested changes compromised the structure and flow of the piece. Lesson learned: I should have acted as a filter and only let in suggestions that truly worked.
“Pushback, accompanied by thoughtful justification—and a wealth of kindness and empathy—will help you win the trust of your partners in content creation.”
Ultimately, if you can exercise careful judgment and thoughtfully push back in the right scenarios, it will be a gift not only to your writing, but also to your relationships. Think about it, do you genuinely trust people who only ever tell you what you want to hear? While it may be gratifying in the moment, it’s hardly conducive to collaborative relationships in the long term. Pushback, accompanied by thoughtful justification—and a wealth of kindness and empathy—will help you win the trust of your partners in content creation.
With a tried-and-true framework to maintain harmonious relationships and also writing quality you’re proud of, you’ll be freed up to worry about more pressing concerns … like whether Grammar Girl will ever accept your invitation to connect on LinkedIn.
