Corporate e-mails hold a great part of business communication, however sometimes we are not paying enough attention to basic rules and tips and … we must pay the price ☹. On a personal level, it can affect our business relationships and goals and on a corporate level can strongly influence the culture of our organization and the growth.
Do you think that I am exaggerating? Then ask yourself how much additional time you had to consume to get all the information that you were looking for, just because the other person was not clear enough on his/ her answer, or didn’t address all the questions you asked. How did you feel when you received an e-mail, where the tone was quite aggressive or unformal? Did you reply on the same tone and the situation escalated or did you manage it successfully?
Often, my coaching clients do not believe that mastering written communication is such a powerful business tool, until they try it. They start realizing it when we work together on e-mails and observe the huge impact on their business results. I learned it during my early years in corporate – sometimes the ‘’hard’’ way 😉– and since then I never omit to highlight the importance. Although it requires a lot of practice, I am putting here few key points that can be helpful:
Check your mood before typing
You might think ‘’What are you talking about’’ but believe me, it is important. If you feel tensed, frustrated or angry with the person or the topic that you are about to type a message, or in general you feel overwhelmed and out of control, most probably you will not be able to write a ‘’productive’’ message. Take a step back, relax a bit and then do it.
Use Subject and Priority effectively
A short and specific Subject can help your recipients prioritize properly the messages. Avoid abuse of tools such as ‘’Attention flag’’ or reminders when it is not critical. Trying to get a response faster, without special reason and knowing that is not logical (eg. The recipient needs more time to collect info), step by step will limit your power of communication and will affect your credibility.
Be careful about the TO and CC
‘’To’’ is used for the person that needs to take action and ‘’CC’’ for information. Try to avoid more than one names in the ‘’To’’ section and if that is not possible, ensure that in the e-mail body, is clear who has to do what. If more than one persons are considered responsible for action, there is a high risk that that the outcome will either be poor or delayed. ☹
Always use formal language
Even if you are writing to a colleague that is very close to you, try to avoid idioms, jokes, slang etc. Remember that you are not chatting over the phone and this is something that, in future, can reach more recipients than you are currently thinking (eg. email-chain).
Business and polite tone, no matter what
A client has sent you an insulting e-mail. Your manager has just dropped you an aggressive message. You know you are right and they are wrong. What do you do? Do you reply on the same tone? The answer is : No, Never! And I cannot stress this enough! You keep a strict but polite tone no matter what. Sometimes you can use the ‘’sandwich’’ technique for difficult messages as well (ie. Start and close your message with something positive and put the challenging topic in the middle)
Keep it short
E-mails with more than two paragraphs and long texts without bullet points, most probably will fail to attract the proper attention of the recipient. Try to keep your message as limited as possible and specific. What you need, from whom, and by when? We are all busy and is important to respect everyone’s time
Extra tip: An easy way to check if your email is good to go, before you press “Send’’ ask yourself: ‘’If this message, will be red by the company CEO, 3moths later from now, will I feel comfortable or embarrassed?’’ Please rephrase if it belongs to the second category 😊
As I mentioned, this is an important skill for your professional growth as well as for the organization’s wellbeing. If you have specific cases or questions you would like to discuss I would be happy to answer.
Bridging Brains & Simplifying Processes Method is a well assessed blend of Business Coaching, Person-Centered Counseling and Consulting designed to convert challenges into opportunities and shift our ways of thinking and communicating to effective and fruitful. Do you want to explore how it can benefit you or your team? Then feel free to book a Discovery Session.
Your People in Business Expert,
Sylvia
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