As a leader, if your goal is team building, then you may want to let go of the computer mouse, especially when it comes to email. This is a popular topic, so I thought it would be worth revisiting.
Please understand that email is a wonderful tool but the way some leaders use it, it creates barriers between people and ultimately produces costly confusion. Also, when team members feel disconnected from you, there’s a good chance they’ll leave for greener pastures, when the opportunity presents itself.
Can you afford to let the send button drive away valuable talent? Try to have more face to face conversations in order to overcome these common email limitations:
You Over Write
Have you ever found yourself having to read a message over and over? I’m guessing it’s because it wasn’t clear. Put anyone in front of a keyboard and a simple request can become paragraphs.
If you have to use email, keep your message simple and to the point. Confusion doesn’t help your business. Get in the habit of reading your message out loud to find out if it is easily understood. An investment of a few seconds could end up saving you a lot of time.
No Tone
In email, it can be very difficult to understand the tone of a message. Imagine if your boss wrote, “Get it done.” Is that an demand, a joke, or something in between?
You can’t tell and again, you have to spend time trying to figure out the meaning. Some like to put important things in bold, italics, or all caps. These choices may have a special meaning or they may be a product of someone quickly tapping out a message on a mobile device. Do not rely on the reader to understand your intention.
People Feel They Must Respond
Ever see a simple request, from the boss, go out to everyone and then every staff member feels they need to reply? Those responses are often made with the reply all function, so everyone has to stop what they’re doing to read it.
Do you want your team spending their valuable time doing this? If you need people to reply, then tell them. Otherwise, have a policy that you don’t need message acknowledgement.
Was That Important?
How many times do you have to repeat something that you emailed a few days ago? There’s just something about seeing a message on a screen that makes it hard for people to remember. Plus, we get so many emails nowadays that it’s easy to lose one in your inbox or you forget to get back to it later.
Let Go of the Mouse
Use email only for general things that you want people to know about. Think of it like an electronic bulletin board. This could include an announcement of quarterly earnings, the score from last night’s softball game, and employee promotions.
For action items, like a new dress code, sales strategy, or news of a visit from the corporate office, resort to good old-fashioned person-to-person verbal communication. This can be done at a staff meeting or having the information communicated down through supervisors. You may think that talking will take a lot of time but in the end you’ll save time by eliminating misunderstandings that come from electronic communication.
If you must send an email, then you can have it outline the action item. In this case it’s more like a reminder or a reinforcement of a policy.
Bottom Line
Email is a valuable tool, like fire. But if you use it too much, you might get burned by wasted time and lost productivity.
