Surface Ripples

Email and Etiquette

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe that there’s an art and etiquette to communicating by email.

The problem: none of us have ever been trained in the intricacies of emailing.  Some companies have “approved corporate signatures” by which I mean whether the standard sign off is “Best Regards”, “Kind Regards”, “Warm Regards” or similar.  However, this is where it ends. One of the best tips I ever received from a former boss was never to write in an email what I wouldn’t want read out in court.  Another added to this “… or what you wouldn’t want your mother to read”.

Email has been described as “asynchronous communication”.  Like a traditional letter, it isn’t read at the same time that it’s sent (I know this will come as a shock to some).

The point is an email should receive the same degree of care as a handwritten or “official” letter (and goodness knows there are a few enough of those these days!)

To add to the complexity surrounding email are the fields that we all know:

• “To”
• “CC”
• “BCC”
• “Subject“ 

Even these are potential minefields.  How many times have we seen emails with multiple recipients in the “To” field asking for action to be taken.  If one asks multiple people to do something, everyone expects someone else to do it.  Result: nothing gets done. 

Equally the “CC” Field is a prime candidate for abuse.  People are copied in on emails to add pressure to the recipient to take action or (more maliciously) to show how clever or alert the sender is. 

Given all the above, is it surprising that quite often emails are not actioned in the way the sender intended? 

To help, here are some general guidelines we can all follow: 

The people or (preferably) person in the “To” field are or is the one or ones who are expected to act. It helps if the email starts with “Dear” and the name or names of the individual or individuals concerned.

CC names should only be those who really need to be copied in. Not those whom we would like to show how clever we are (or by default how stupid someone else is).  CC parties are those who genuinely need the information or who have asked to be copied in to ensure that the email went out.

The most difficult is the “Subject” Field.  What needs to happen here is to understand that, when someone sees an email in their inbox, they often prioritise it based on the subject.  If the sender requires something to be done, it wouldn’t be unreasonable for them to start the subject Field with “Action required by” and then give a date by which said action is required.  Simply using “Urgent” has little meaning as what is “urgent” to the sender may not be “urgent” to the recipient.  I’ve seen cases of people who use “urgent” so often that its only effect is to devalue their messages.

When it comes to the text, it should fit in the space available on the average laptop screen but… nowadays, people read emails on their smartphones.  If anyone out there can compose an email that is “smartphone friendly”, good on them.  The problem is that, if an email is too long, people reading it on their smartphones will miss important points.  Keep it short and simple.  If the email is likely to be long, consider adding the details as document attachments rather than lengthy text.  In one of the organisations I worked for, the guideline was to compose messages in such a way that it could be read on and approved by a BlackBerry user (that’s dating me a bit).

No one seems sure about the “tone” to adopt in an email.  My personal belief is that it should be as professional as the tone of a letter.  However others, perhaps in the interests of brevity, tend to adopt what comes across to many as a blunt and aggressive tone.  I’ve seen many colleagues “bristle” whilst reading an email because of this.

It’s up to us to set the tone we wish to see in emails coming from our organisation.  Some may indeed encourage a “forceful” approach but if you need someone’s cooperation, a more collaborative tone is required.  This of course doesn’t apply if one has been collaborative (in one’s mind) and there has been no result.  In this case, a more forceful approach is justified.

Just to complicate things even more, our global community sees multiple cultures all using email to communicate with each other.  What seems “collaborative” to one culture may seem “forceful” to another. 

Whatever the case, we as business leaders are tasked with setting the tone of how our organisations communicate with others.  The results will speak for themselves.

I’ve spent more than half my life delivering change in different world markets from the most developed to “emerging” economies. With a wealth of international experience in international financial services around the world running different operations and lending businesses, I started my own Consultancy to provide solutions for improving performance, productivity and risk management.  I work with individuals, small businesses, charities, quoted companies and academic institutions across the world. An international speaker, trainer, author and fund-raiser, I can be contacted by email. My website  provides a full picture of my portfolio of services.  

Labels: Customer Care, Leadership, Productivity, Strategy

posted by William Martin @ 14:51