Are you READY to communicate via email?

 

Recently an anti-bullying campaign has come up with an acronym to help student decide if what they are about to say it needs to be said. This acronym is T.H.I.N.K. Is what you are about to say True, Helpful, Important, Necessary, Kind? In the workplace this makes sense for the conversations held around the water cooler- but we need something more robust when it comes to corporate emails.

Some days I feel like I am under attack by email. They come in like machine gun fire, often contradicting themselves and the quality of the writing wouldn’t pass my son’s grade 6 teacher. How can we become more thoughtful about what we send? We need to check our emails to see if they are READY to send.

Readable – As people use mobile devices more and more they seem to believe that this terse, truncated from of writing is somehow appropriate for business email. While it is true that “No.” is a complete sentence we should expect sentences to be fully developed and properly punctuated. Paragraphs should be used to separate different ideas or topics. Both spelling and grammar check should be enabled on all outgoing emails.

Engages- When writing you should always have the reader in mind. Too often the author only has themselves in mind. They need to get something out so they do it as quickly as possible with the least amount of effort possible. If you need to communicate something in writing it should engage the reader, welcome them into the topic, explore it and then have the call to action or summary.

Angle- What are you trying to achieve with this email? Show your boss how smart you are, show up your co-workers, poke fun… Email always has an angle. People forward everything they receive in an attempt to show you how busy/important they are, thus clogging up your email and making you unnecessarily busy too! People write emails to put others in their place, either subtly or not so subtly. When you begin an email you should do so fully understanding what your intention is.

Dialogue- All too often these days emails end with “email mail me if you have any questions”. The interesting thing about this statement is it really limits the possibilities. I have found myself wanting to provide feedback or discuss but questions imply that something was not understood or is unknown. What if I get it and I want this to be a two way street instead of a one way street?  Closings like “Please feel free to provide feedback.” “Does anyone have any thoughts or anything to add?”. Encourages engagement and dialogue which – before email is what we used to do, have conversations.

You sure? Ask yourself this question before you send an email.

·         Are you sure they need it?

·         Are you sure that it will have the desired impact? (Your desire should always be positive- if it isn’t reword your email. Always take the high road.)

·         Are you sure that the grammar and spelling are correct?

 

There is a joke around my office that my outgoing mail is more like dissertations than an email. However I put the same amount of effort into formulating my written ideas in any format as I would having a thoughtful conversation. The net result is not a lot of emails, but when I send them out they draw people into a discussion that they want to have.