Try creating small moments of workplace delight

As a communicator, you can often feel like an overworked diner cook.

A messaging request comes in, you scramble something together, and away it goes. Order up.

How do you get beyond “order taker” status? How can you become an irreplaceable, revered advisor, rather than an interchangeable information conveyor belt?

Proving the worth of your work with quantitative data is a great start. However, you shouldn’t neglect the more qualitative aspects of your output. Take, for instance, the power of delighting an audience.

Before rolling your eyes and griping about how boring your job is, let’s concede that, indeed, hardly anyone cares that open enrollment ends Thursday. The “important security alert” that IT is nagging you to send is also unsexy, but even within the dullest message lies an opportunity to create small moments of delight—joy, even—for your colleagues.

Try these three approaches:

1. Create anticipation of entertainment.

If you’re saddled with a stinker of a message to blast out, why not add a bit of spice to make it more palatable?