There is lots of information out there on the do’s and don’ts of email usage, but if you are in a leadership role here are some extra tips to consider:
1. Be careful assigning new and critical tasks through email.
When possible, you always want to kick off a new initiative in person. The second best case would be video conference, and the last choice would be a phone conversation. Trying to explain all the details in a large initiative is just not a recipe for success. When a subordinate receives an email with marching orders, it can go down two paths; It will either come across as you being “pushy” and throwing out orders over the wall, or it will confuse the recipient since a reasonable size email will lose all the finer points that could be grasped in a quick conversation.
2. Never scold a coworker via email.
If someone writes their opinion or you hear through the grapevine that John thinks your idea that you presented this morning was terrible, email is not the way to handle your beef. In fact it almost always flames up the problem even more. On top of that you have now just put your scold in email to be archived forever. You have to go talk to the person you have issues with in person. If they are not in your office, then call them.
3. Don’t retaliate via email.
Have you ever written an email to a group of people and then someone’s reply to the whole group makes you look bad? As your blood begins to boil you might be tempted to redeem yourself by correcting your mistake, correcting the replier, or even worse attempt to embarrass the sender in retaliation. If you made an honest mistake, then fess up to it and move on. If the senders email was just in plain bad taste and was an obvious attempt to make you look bad, resist all temptation to reply at all. In the rare case where a reply is absolutely needed, you might want to consider using a little humor to try and bring the intensity level down a bit.
4. Don’t “Reply All” when you want to disagree with someone’s point.
This is the flip side of point #3 above. In this case someone sends out their opinion on something and you want to let the whole list know how smart you are that you are going to add a counter-point not considered by the original sender. The polite thing to do in this case is to consider replying only to the sender. This is a courtesy to allow them to correct their email without someone making them look bad. The added benefit is that you gain some trust with that sender.
5. When thanking someone, consider doing it publicly.
If your support team saved the day and really turned around a bad customer situation over the weekend and you want to give them an at-a-boy that’s great. But the best compliment you can give is when it is visible to their peers and managers too. Just be careful to check your facts and thank the right people and not leave out someone.
6. When a list of recipients includes different levels of the organization, be extra respectful to the managers.
In reality you should be respectful to everyone on the list. The point here is that when you are sending emails between peers, you might have a slightly different tone and formality then when you have a mixed audience. You never want to make a manager look bad in front of the subordinates or their boss. If you do, you will surely alienate this otherwise valuable resource of yours.
7. Recognize what your email relationships are.
If you have someone that you don’t see eye to eye with, you have to be even more careful with email wording to this person. Emails will be read wrong, inflections put on the wrong areas, and in general emails sent to these people will have much higher odds of being misinterpreted. Play it safer with your language with these relationships. On the flip side, if your going to lunch two times a week or have had a recipient over for a cookout recently you generally can get away with a little less formality.
8. Test your emails out in popular formats.
A lot of company use a signature template for all emails. If your default email format is HTML and you send frequent emails to people outside the company, insure that you test what the format looks like in text format. The common items that mess up in text format are links, images embedded in the signature, and the big one is when a table is used to line up items in a signature. Consider pushing for a less complex signature that looks decent in both HTML and text formats.
9. If an email conversation drifts off topic, change the subject line.
I get emails all the time from conversations that have been bubbled up through different approval chains. By the time I see it the subject is completely different and the chain of emails is huge and sometimes barely readable. You can break the chain when you reply by getting rid of all the irrelevant emails and correcting the subject line if needed.
10. Use caution with mobile device emails.
It’s great to stay connected and take care of a few emails while standing in line at the airport from your blackberry. Just be sure to consider what the recipient might think if the end of your message says, “Sent from my Blackberry”. Some people like to leave this default trailing message to help the recipient understand why the message might be short and to the point, but if responding to a question from potential customer, it may not be a good idea to have this informal type of email sent. Also consider that the spell checker on mobile devices is rarely used and without it can lead to some embarracing messages being sent.
In summary to all these points, consider this, “When in doubt, don’t.” If you find yourself rereading a point over and over that you’re about to send, asking someone else’s opinion on a point before sending, or feeling uneasy about how a comment will be interpreted, assume it’s bad and reword it. Email is not the medium for a technology leader to air out their laundry.
