Everyone thinks they can do comms because they can string a sentence together at a party. Talking comes naturally to most people — it’s fluid, low-stakes, and forgiving. Say the wrong thing to a friend over dinner and you laugh it off. Say the wrong thing in a press statement, an internal memo, or a client email, and it can cost a deal, a reputation, or a job.
That’s the gap nobody tells you about when you’re starting out in communications: talking and communicating are not the same skill. Talking is output. Communicating is impact — did the right message land, with the right person, at the right time, in a way they’ll actually understand and act on?
Most people never learn the difference. The ones who do are the ones who get hired, promoted, and trusted with the messages that actually matter. Here are the six traits that make that difference.
1. Clarity Over Cleverness
There’s a strong pull, especially early in a career, to sound impressive. Big words, elegant phrasing, a clever turn of a sentence. It feels like proof that you’re good at this.
It’s actually the opposite. If your reader has to re-read a sentence to understand it, you’ve already lost them — and in comms, you rarely get a second chance at their attention. The best communicators write so plainly that the idea is what people remember, not the language around it. Ask yourself after every draft: would a tired person scrolling on their phone understand this in one pass? If not, cut it down until they would.
2. Judgment About What NOT to Say
Anyone can fill a page. What separates a communications professional from someone who’s just decent with words is the instinct for what to leave out.
This shows up everywhere: knowing which sentence in a press release will get pulled out of context and become the headline, which “harmless” detail in an internal email will leak and cause a mess, which throwaway line in a speech will overshadow the actual message. Good comms people read their own draft the way a hostile reporter or a skeptical customer would — looking for the line that could be weaponized — and cut it before anyone else sees it.
This is a trait you build by getting burned once or twice and paying close attention afterward. The faster you develop it, the faster people trust you with higher-stakes writing.
3. Audience Empathy
Weak communicators write what they want to say. Strong ones write what the audience needs to hear.
That means actually sitting with who’s on the other end of the message: What do they already believe? What are they anxious about? How much time and patience do they have? A message to an anxious customer base needs a completely different shape than a message to investors, even if the underlying facts are identical. This is less about talent and more about discipline — it requires you to set aside your own instincts and think from someone else’s seat before you write a word.
4. Speed Under Pressure
Comms rarely happens on a leisurely timeline. A reporter calls with a 20-minute deadline. A tweet is already spreading before anyone’s approved a response. A client needs a statement before markets open.
The ability to think clearly and write cleanly when the clock is working against you is a trainable skill, not an innate gift — and it’s the one that determines how much responsibility you get handed. People who panic under pressure get kept away from the important moments. People who can produce a clear, accurate, well-judged statement in fifteen minutes get pulled into the room when it matters most.
5. Structural Thinking
Good comms isn’t just good sentences — it’s knowing what goes first, what’s the headline, what’s buried in paragraph four, and why. This is closer to architecture than to wordsmithing.
Given a messy pile of facts, a strong communicator can quickly find the narrative thread: what’s the one thing the reader needs to walk away knowing, and what supporting details actually serve that point versus just adding noise? This is often the fastest way to spot someone who’ll be good at this job — not by how pretty their sentences are, but by how quickly they can organize chaos into a story that makes sense.
6. Thick Skin, Fast Recovery
You will get edited into oblivion. Six stakeholders will each want a different word changed. You’ll occasionally get blamed for a message you didn’t even write, or for a decision made three levels above you.
The people who last in this field aren’t the ones who never get criticized — everyone does. They’re the ones who can take the feedback, make the change, and move on to the next task without it curdling into resentment or eroding their confidence. Comms is a field where your work is, by definition, constantly being picked apart by other people’s opinions. Learning to separate your ego from your output early is what keeps you in the game long enough to get good at it.
The Bottom Line
None of these traits require natural charisma or a gift for gab. They’re built through repetition, feedback, and paying attention to your own mistakes. That’s actually good news: it means breaking into comms isn’t about being the most talkative person in the room. You have to be the person who can turn noise into a message that lands.
So the next time someone tells you, “I can talk, I really love talking” — ask them the only question that actually matters:
Can you communicate?
