Never email a negative!
Have you ever had someone get the wrong message from a simple comment you said?
Well this is an important email standard I’d like you to adopt because people can’t help adding “stuff” to an email. This can have you (and them) even potentially your whole team off track.
It might seem plainly obvious to you, but never ever send a negative email!
If there was one exception to that rule it would be a non-delivery of service where you feel you MUST get your point across.
Let’s look at this situation… say you have an issue with a colleague or another department in your business (they may be in the same office as you or located elsewhere) as soon as you go for it on email and let your fingers take some of your stress, I can almost guarantee that if you press send, you will have a BIGGER issue on your hands.
You see, even simple comments like…
“I have a real concern about what’s happening in marketing” or
“you have taken things totally out of context” or
“that is something you don’t need to concern yourself about”
…are totally valid if we can add some tone and body language face to face, or via Skype even on the phone those same statements will “land” very differently.
I’ve recently been forwarded an email chain (9 emails firing back and forwards) between 3 people in one business. The reason I got to see these is that it had escalated so much that we now have a conflict resolution issue on our hands.
The original issue was quite small and valid. But instead of a quick call or email saying… “I’ve got a couple of ideas I’d like to run past you, when is a good time to catch up?”, one of the people fired off an email and yes, it was taken the wrong way – the rest as you guessed is history.
So don’t “hide behind” an email and fire off comments that could very easily be taken the wrong way.
Now it’s okay to get your thoughts on paper or into a doc, but don’t press send! That’s the bit that will get you in trouble and have you in clean up mode.
Have a brilliant week and please share this with as many people as you can – we’ll make the world a happier, less stressful place.
