When times get tough, things break down over e-mail. This is a 21st-century phenomenon facilitated by mobile e-mail devices and a lack of training on how and when to use them.
A few years ago, I participated in a massive study on how e-mail is used and what impacts it has on productivity in the workplace. The study suggested that e-mail is one of the biggest causes of job stress and relationship difficulties at work, second only to organizational change. The study also revealed that when an organization is under emotional or financial pressure, negative e-mail tendencies rise—along with the raw volume of e-mail sent.
When I reviewed all the data, about a dozen rules for better e-mail living jumped out. Over the last few years, I’ve shared these rules with companies and associations, helping them improve their internal communications and reduce risk.
For meeting professionals, I’ve culled out three relevant rules that can help you preserve your relationships and protect your readership, which is an important asset at work, just like it is for any magazine or newspaper. If people stop reading your e-mails, you cannot get anything done. People that send too many irrelevant e-mails become “deletable” and lose their readership and influence as a result.
Rule One: No Bad News Over E-mail
E-mail is good for saying “yes,” “maybe” or exchanging harmless information and data (e.g., the meeting is at 3 p.m. or the requested report is attached). You should never deny a request, issue a criticism or open up an emotionally charged issue over e-mail. E-mail is the weakest of all mediums when it comes to conveying your intentions.
For decades, the University of California’s Dr. Albert Mehrabian studied how people decode other people’s intentions, especially when they’re receiving mixed signals. He found that 55 percent of intentions are derived visually, mostly in face and body language; 38 percent are derived via tone of voice; and only 7 percent are gleaned from words (on paper or on screen).
The next time you’ve got some potentially disturbing information to transmit, pick up the phone or deliver it face-to-face. The tone of your voice will communicate “I’m your coach, not a dictator.” Your facial expressions and body language can convey “I’m your partner, not just a vendor.”
Rule Two: Stamp Out Reply All
In the study, the “reply all” button was only used appropriately 12 percent of the time. The rest of its usage was mindless, unnecessary and downright irritating.
Does the following story sound familiar? An admin sends an e-mail to you and 30 of your co-workers about a proposed meeting next Friday at 11 a.m. Someone replies to all that 10:30 a.m. would work better for him. Someone else counters that 11 a.m. is the only time she can make it. Soon, a cross-post erupts, and by the end of the day you have a dozen RE: RE: RE: The Meeting e-mails cluttering your BlackBerry.
It’s a waste of time, and it can also hurt your readership by making you part of “the noise.” Be judicious when using this feature. If you feel like you need to respond to several people, hit reply all, then take the time to delete all the names of people that don’t need to be copied.
You can also encourage the rest of your co-workers to cut back on this. When I worked at Yahoo!, I added this simple request to my e-mail signature: “Please help me in my campaign to stamp out useless reply-to-alls!” The idea caught on at the company as other executives added this request to their e-mail signatures as well. Eventually, reply alls dropped significantly, making lives better.
Rule Three: Break the Thread With a Phone Call
When you were growing up, you probably played the game Rumor (also known as Telephone). Here’s how it works: I tell you something, you tell it to someone else and five people later it’s completely twisted into a different idea altogether.
Welcome to your e-mail life, where conversations are endless and eventually confusing. A thread is an exchange of e-mails on a single subject line: You send me a note, I reply, you reply and now it’s a threaded conversation. At some point, we forget how it started as we seldom scroll down to the bottom of a message before replying.
In the study, a communications breakdown is likely to occur if the thread gets too long. A simple solution is to adopt the following habit: When the thread contains a total of six or more messages, pick up the phone to talk about it live. The same research indicates that one phone call of less than 10 minutes has three times more effectiveness in resolving an issue than an e-mail that you take an hour to write.
Here is a bonus idea, closely related to this concept: the two-minute rule. You should call an upset internal or external client within two minutes of the time he or she e-mailed you. Maybe it’s a customer who’s disappointed in your management of their expectations. Maybe it’s an employee that’s undergoing tremendous fear. Freak ‘em out. Call ‘em. There is nothing more startling than hitting the send button on an e-mail and having the phone ring a minute later with someone at the company saying, “I’m really bummed out that you’re upset about this. Can we talk?” Psychologically, it produces what brand marketers call “surprise and delight.” So try it the next time you get a nasty-gram and hear the person on the other end gasp in surprise.
TIM SANDERS, a top-rated speaker on the lecture circuit, is the author of Saving the World at Work: What Companies and Individuals Can Do to Go Beyond Making a Profit to Making a Difference (Doubleday, September 2008). Check out his Web site at www.timsanders.com.
