Manage the E-mail Menace

from Able Leader, October 2007

by Steve Kaye

You may receive dozens (maybe hundreds) of e-mail messages every day.

From basic to complex, here's how to make e-mail work for you:

1) Be professional.

Most unprofessional shortcuts lead to errors that waste your time fixing the problems they caused.

Use proper formatting (i.e., spacing, carriage returns). This includes a complete greeting and salutation, such as:

Pat,

[ message ]

Call if you have questions.

Much success,

Steve Kaye 714-528-1300

Avoid emoticons [ such as, :-) ], trendy abbreviations, dancing icons, and anything that might confuse or upset the recipient.

Run a spell and grammar check.

Key Point: Incomplete, sloppy, goofy messages reflect poorly on your work, which could damage your career.

2) Be careful.

Write each e-mail as if it were going to be displayed on a huge banner in your lobby, because it might.

Realize that every e-mail is saved on your company's server (perhaps forever). So, if somebody, like an HR manager or member of the promotion committee, wants to check your work, they can read it.

Avoid anger, slang, and obscenities. These will always work against you. And some special words (e.g., obscenities) will cause your e-mail to end up in a spam filter, which prevents the other person from receiving it.

3) Be calm.

E-mail arguments waste time.

Thus, you want to avoid becoming caught in one.

If you receive an e-mail that upsets you, do this: a) call the other person to talk about the message, or b) write a careful reply, and then wait at least 4 hours before sending it. If possible, ask a trusted friend to read and comment on your reply.

Key point: Avoid attacking, insulting, or threatening the sender. Avoid sarcasm and satire. Avoid mental games, manipulations, and passive aggressive maneuvers.

Instead, use neutral terms and state only facts.

If this e-mail reply fails to resolve the matter, then visit or phone. At this point, e-mail has become an ineffective means of communication.

4) Be efficient.

Reply to each e-mail as soon as you read it. This saves time compared to closing the e-mail, opening it later, rereading the message, and then writing a reply. Some people make this worse by repeating the cycle many, many times.

Of course, an exception occurs if the e-mail warrants careful consideration (see #3 above).

Set up an e-mail filing system. Create mail boxes for receiving e-mail from active clients and for storing messages related to key activities.

Then file every e-mail somewhere. Your goal is to empty your inbox at the end of each day. Otherwise, it becomes a vast swamp that wastes your time.

Simplify the amount of e-mail that you receive by telling others what to send you. For example, you probably don't need to know about the picnic at a remote office.

Prepare templates of common replies and signature files that you can customize as appropriate.

5) Be smart.

If you send an e-mail to a list of people, use the BCC field for their addresses. This prevents anyone from obtaining the entire mail list, which they could then use for their own promotions.

Avoid sending a message telling people that you are Out of the Office. Instead, inform key people that you will be out before you leave. Then check e-mail while traveling or on vacation. The reasons are: a) such an e-mail tells the world that you may not be home, and b) these messages fill up other people's inboxes with a useless note (unless they burgle homes, in which case this note is very helpful).

If you participate in a list-serv, send replies directly to the person who posted the note, instead of sending them to the entire list. It wastes people's time to read messages such as, "Me, too" or "I agree."

Make backup copies of your e-mail. Then save these in a special place (instead of on a hard drive kept next to your computer).

Remember: e-mail is a tool that is supposed to help you. Use it wisely for communications that involve simple, often factual messages.

Much success,

Steve Kaye
714-528-1300