A former colleague I’ll call “Annie” confided that “90% of her communication” was via email. Annie was physically located with her HR clients at that time.
It’s a lousy strategy for Annie – trust me, she’s gotten plenty of feedback that’s been ignored, including use of a pissy, pedantic (“Anniegrams”) writing style – and for you.
Read below and you’ll see why overuse of email disables your effectiveness , under leverages the human connection and under leverages your connections with people.
Email was invented in 1978 and it was revolutionary, compressing days to minutes as digital bits replaced postal carriers shuttling hard copy for 3-5 days. But the typed word has its limits; instead of a right time, right place form of communication we’ve developed a bad habit of email as a default communication – and in some cases texting – in lieu of a real time conversation.
There are some times when email is a best form, particularly if you’re not able to catch someone in person due to time zones, travel schedules, etc. It can be helpful for memorializing something that’s already been agreed. But as Forbes notes, heavy use of email hurts, not helps your career.
Instead of solving the email problem we’re bandaging the hemorrhage with things like Yammer, Slack and their equivalents, or simply engaged in endless back and forth with long email threads. Fast Company recently wrote about taking no longer than five minutes to write an email. The real question should be whether an email is the best way to communicate at all.
Time for you to stop it. Avoid making email your default. Think instead about the best way to communicate and to make yourself most effective.
That most effective mode of communication depends on three elements; how complicated is the topic, how contentious or “hard” is the subject, and the receiver and the sender. Text in any form, even showered with emoji’s, is a “flat” medium; It’s absent much nuance or context that you get from live communication. As Forbe’s magazine noted, “Email is the weakest of all the communication modalities we have available to us. It stops us from connecting and building relationships and from keeping people aligned and accountable.”
As a general rule, communication effectiveness – see chart above – increases as the richness increases. Email and text area great for things that are straightforward (Anchovies?) and have an agreed summary (“Here’s the steps we agreed to take. . .”).
Voice, video and in-person as a method is the most effective way to communicate when things involve back and forth, are more complicated or nuanced, and not black and white. Email is only 7 percent as effective as talking, research has identified.
Research shows, for example, that a face-to-face request (an “ask”) is 35 times more effective than an email. It’s why for, for example, I have my exec coaching clients ask people in person (phone or physically in person) for participation in 360 feedback in lieu of an email. That approach gets a better response, engenders connection, and it increases that likelihood that interview participants will become stronger allies in the coaching change process.
Short story: pick up the phone or video camera and call, or in Annie’s case, get up out of your chair, walk down the hall, and talk to someone in real life. It works.
Life Back West is an occasional set of writings focused on ways people, teams and organizations can be both more effective (doing the right thing) and more efficient (doing the right thing well). More about my 30+ years of work coaching execs, start up and leadership teams can be found at the “About J. Mike Smith and Back West, Inc.” sidebar at the Back West blog. Now welcoming new and known clients.