Email is efficient. You type for a few seconds, and you push the send button, and then the people who work with you or for you go off and do things and report back. Sometimes they respond back telling you who the person is that can help you. It’s like letters at light-speed without the hassle of touching pen to paper. And yet, unlike letters, you don’t have to be nice. You can just write one sentence, or practically a novel, and you’ll do fine.

Isn’t that how it works?

Not so much.

I want you to reconsider how you feel about email. Email is not necessarily your friend. Email can also be a relationship destroyer. Email has ended careers. Email is a little too efficient, and people who get bogged down in their inboxes remote controlling people with text messages are usually not the best people with whom to work.

If you have a simple question that requires a straight answer and no discussion, then email can be very efficient. Type a quick message, push send, and see your answer later. But if your message will cause any tension at all between you and the other person, email is now your enemy.

Pick up the phone. Go slumming in the cubes. Do not send email.

If you were wondering what people do to use email ineffectively, here it is:

Using Email Ineffectively

* Giving direction
* Feedback
* Delegation
* Disagreement
* Multiple people need to discuss something and make a decision
* Explaining even a mildly complex issue
* Complaining about anything ever
* Saying anything negative

Use email for communication that is not suited for that medium, and you will find yourself slapping yourself so frequently that you develop a callus on your forehead.

Before we go any further, understand that any email message, no matter how innocent, is a memo or a letter. Write too little, and you will appear unfriendly. Use any dramatic expressions such as CAPITAL LETTERS or explanation points!!!! and people will interpret it as a demonstration of anger or annoyance. Write too much, and people who are trying to slog through 300 messages will skip yours and save it for later, and later, and later, and will never really read it. Put the major point you are trying to make after a bunch of historical detail, and no one will ever find out what you were on about. Email must be taken seriously, and email messages must be crafted with care and not too hastily sent or they could end up printed out and slid across a desk back to you during sensitivity training.

Be Friendly

Take the time to sign your messages, but not with a gigantic signature or automated closer like “Thanks!” Just put your name, the one phone number that you are best reached at, and your email address. Your title is usually not helpful and in this day and age, your physical address is almost never helpful. Keep your signature short and to the point.

Also include opening salutations, such as “Hi, Frank” at the beginning of your reply or message. After that, avoid using the recipient’s name any further, as this will usually be interpreted as condescension. This will soften up your messages just a little bit if you are famous for firing off one and two line long messages with no greeting and no signature.

Control the Length of the Message

Message length is important. For email - two three sentence paragraphs should be your upper limit. Think of that as a book. If you need to say more, pick up the phone. If there is a bunch of background information, then leave it out, and pick up the phone. If there are many different options, pick up the phone. One of the best ways to use email ineffectively is to write too much message as well as too short of a message.

Put the bottom line up front (B.L.U.F.). Whatever the purpose of the message is, or whatever question you might ask in the message, giving the bottom line as the first sentence saves incredible amounts of time and self-explains the rest of the message.

Consider these examples. The first is typical:

Our company first came out with our current logo 50 years ago. Since that time, logos have changed dramatically in the industry, and ours has fallen behind. We are now sporting an ancient black and white logo in an era of colorful, three dimensional logos developed by very creative and artistic people. I’m wondering if we shouldn’t change our company logo to bring it up to date.

Joe Henderson
President
Henderson Plumbing Company
1666 London Fire Way
Squeamishburg, PA 30004-1535
work: 555-342-2343
cell: 555-343-1334

This is the same message, but with BLUF, a greeting, and a short signature.

Hey, guys.

I’m wondering if we shouldn’t change our company logo to bring it up to date.

Our company first came out with our current logo 50 years ago. Since that time, logos have changed dramatically in the industry, and ours has fallen behind. We are now sporting an ancient black and white logo in an era of colorful, three dimensional logos developed by very creative and artistic people.

-Joe

Joe Henderson | 555-343-1334 | joe@hendersonplumbing.qom

If you can learn to keep it short, but not too short, put in a short signature, include a brief greeting, and get the bottom line up front (BLUF), your email will probably vastly improve over what it is today. But you know what? There are a lot of times you use email when doing so actually causes you and other people harm of which you might not even be aware.

Giving Direction

Telling people what to do using email is really efficient. It also ticks people off. Pick up the phone and do your direction using an actual conversation where you act like a human being. Giving orders in email is rarely received well by anyone. Delegating tasks to others using email is also usually not well received. When you delegate something that you usually do to one of your employees, go to their desk and ask them for some time, and then ask them for their help. Don’t do it via email.

Feedback

When one of your people does something wrong, complaining about it in email is a great way to slap them much harder than you ever intended. Want your folks to leave their jobs and go elsewhere? Give them criticism in writing that they can print out and read again and again. This also will help them to add it to a file folder they are keeping of your misbehaviors to use against you one day. Don’t put anything negative about employee performance in email.

Group Scoldings

And, for goodness sakes, avoid the group scolding. Do not ever send an email to everyone on your team telling them that they must stop some behavior when you know darn well only one or two people are guilty. Address your issues individually, not with the team as a whole. An email blast to your entire team telling them they let you down is an insult to the team members who did not let you down.

No, they will not know that you do not mean them. No, they will not care. Yes, you ticked them off when you did that. No, they will not admit it when you ask them if you did. Just stop doing it. It burns more forest than it grows.

Arguing in Email is Forbidden

If you are writing anything that could possibly start an argument in email, do not push send. Call a meeting or pick up the phone. Arguments in email are interpreted by normal people as being evidence that two guys who watch too much Star Trek are determined to show off how smart they are to everyone else.

Never argue in email. If you disagree with something in email, do not reply to it. If you want to write a disagreement to someone else at any time, do not put it in writing.

In fact, email is next to useless for covering any sort of complex issue. If a group of people need to make a decision, you need a meeting. If you normally try to do this in email, you are just embarrassing yourself, wasting time, and ticking people off. Humans work best communicating verbally with one another in person, and next-best is over the phone. Get a conference line and use it liberally to handle this sort of thing.

Nothing Negative

Never complain about anyone or anything in email. It will be forwarded to that person - guaranteed. It will become public, I promise it will. You might never hear about it, but your negative message or complaint will be printed out and handed around. It will be shown to people as they visit the victim’s desk. “Can you believe he sent this? Of course Sharla forwarded it to me at once.” You will be none the wiser, but your reputation will take a nose-dive.

Use email to say nice things. Use the phone or in-person meetings for anything more touchy, and never, in writing or verbally, ever say anything negative about anyone. It will get back to them.

Email is so efficient and so omnipresent these days, and we all get so much of it, we tend to try to use it for too much. Some of us work in companies where email seems to be the primary method of communication, and we skip over all other methods in favor of email because of the efficiency of crafting up short text messages and simply pushing a button to make communication happen.

Unfortunately, the quality of communication is often as important as the quantity, and email has not helped us there. Where quality is concerned, email is often the enemy.