UConn’s Brent Lucia on mastering business communication

Brent Lucia has spent over a decade helping others master the art of communication. As an assistant professor in-residence at UConn’s School of Business, Lucia teaches business communication, preparing students to write and speak with clarity. His research explores how big tech shapes its messaging, especially around AI and XR and has been featured in New Media & Society, Rhetoric Review, Computers and Composition, and Business and Professional Communication Quarterly.

Beyond academia, Lucia shares insights on language and technology in his Substack, Far From Equilibrium.  Outside of work, he enjoys biking, traveling, and writing as a creative outlet.

The professor will lead Ragan’s upcoming Writing Certificate Course, helping comms pros sharpen their writing skills for the workplace.

What’s one piece of writing advice you find yourself giving others?

I teach an array of young students. I think they assume as writers that once they write a draft—whether it’s an essay or an email—that experience alone expresses their argument or voice, and they don’t stay in that moment. I am always reminding my students that when you’re writing, you’re editing; you have a different set of eyes and a different perspective.

It’s so important to go back later at a different time, whether it’s five seconds or five days, and review, edit and critique your writing. It’s so simple, but people forget it all the time. I think they rush things or don’t allow time between edits. When you come back later, you have a fresh perspective and can see different components of the piece, whether it’s grammar or audience engagement. 

Always remember, you’re a different editor during the writing stage, and you have to give yourself various sets of eyes on your piece, but that’s just you at different moments.

What’s one overused phrase in business communication that you wish we could retire for good? 

The two that come to mind are “I’m writing to inform you,” and the close second is “I hope you’re doing well.” 

What’s one ethical challenge in AI communication that keeps you up at night? 

One of the things my colleagues and I advocate for—and something we recently published a paper on—is having a localized understanding of the ethical framework you’re building around AI and how important it is to do ground-up research in your particular school, town, or region. Rather than relying on a top-down enterprise, developing ethical frameworks at a local level allows for more context-specific considerations.

Every context is different, and we’re still in the early stages of this technology. I think of it like during the internet boom in the early ’90s. What keeps me up at night is that we’re not taking the time to see what’s happening—at least in my context—when it comes to AI-related data, such as how students are using AI or how it’s being integrated into workplaces. We don’t have time to gather that bottom-up data to understand usage patterns. Instead, much of our information comes from those creating the technology or from individuals who have rapidly positioned themselves as experts.

That’s not to say there aren’t real experts, but the tech is evolving so quickly that collecting bottom-up data—seeing real user experiences—is important. Understanding this data will help us determine how to manage AI and its role in communication moving forward. 

How do you prepare students to write and communicate effectively where AI can draft their first pass? 

What I try to do a lot is model various examples—both AI-generated responses to a prompt and human responses to the same prompt—while consistently noticing the differences in real time. Every week or month is different because these chatbots are constantly being updated, and they’re becoming more and more intuitive.

But what I’m seeing a lot right now is that AI, for example, isn’t able to really analyze a quote with the type of rigor you’d expect, even in an undergraduate college student’s paper. From my perspective, it does this at a very surface level. So I show my students, like, hey, look—it’s just not managing this evidence effectively for the argument, for example. Showing them the weaknesses and limitations—and making those weaknesses really vivid—is everything. 

If you had to describe the future of business communication in one word, what would it be—and why?

Offloading. We are starting to figure out what we are offloading onto AI. Are we offloading early stages? Editing? I think we are ready to give away some of the comms process. What will still mobilize our audience? We are now offloading certain elements of that process.

What’s a book, movie, or TV show that changed the way you think about communication? 

Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss. He talks about the tools he used in the FBI that can help folks create solid interpersonal experiences via communication in the business world. He explains how we mirror emotions and try to draw our audiences out, for example, to position ourselves effectively in a negotiation or maybe get what we want in a communicative act.

He brings a lot of great real-world experiences, and it all comes from this really interesting place—negotiating with terrorists. So his stories are like, I was in Afghanistan, and he’s like, you use this in a workplace, and it all comes together interestingly.

Don’t miss Brent’s insights on writing fundamentals, storytelling and AI at Ragan’s Virtual Writing Certificate Course for Communicators on April 16, 23 & 30.  Enroll now.

Isis Simpson-Mersha is a conference producer/ reporter for Ragan. Follow her on LinkedIn.