Emails: Be compassionate to your audience.

During this time of change, uncertainty and (for many) remote working, one of the frequently stated pieces of advice to leaders in the corporate world is to “over communicate”. Unfortunately, oftentimes this is misunderstood to mean “communicate a lot”. As a result, we receive (and send!) unnecessary emails and unnecessarily long emails.

I propose a better leadership mantra is “Focus the communication; communicate the focus”. 

Here are some thoughts on email etiquette that may help to improve communication by being more compassionate to the recipients.

Be concise. Have you made your point with the fewest paragraphs, sentences and words possible? To expect our recipients to take the time to read our email, they should expect that we taken the time to remove unnecessary clutter from the email.

Trim your audience. Is this email really relevant to everyone on a distribution list? Taking the time to remove people seems fairer than taking time from those who read the irrelevant email.

State the purpose upfront. What is the purpose of the email (to inform, to ask for input, to ask for approval)? State 'the ask' upfront before providing the information. Don't smuggle it away it the middle or wait until the end like it's a punchline.

Proofread. I have never regretted proofreading an email. Many times I have regretted not proofreading an email. (Rhetorical question:) how about you?

Feeling emotional? Don’t press send. No one thinks clearly when feeling emotional. Go for a walk, talk to someone, sleep on it... you can always rewrite an email, you often can't recall an email.

Timing. Is this the right time to send this email? If it's urgent and/or important then probably. If not, then consider if there is anything happening which could make this message seem like an unwelcome distraction or even insensitive.

The mythical Bcc function. Use it! Let's help rid the world of unnecessary "Reply All's".

Adding someone? Summarise. Do them the courtesy of summarising the email chain,

Don’t overuse bold or highlighting. It's not a college textbook. Too much visual noise can mean key points get lost.

Make a phone call instead. Tone and intent can be picked up wrong on text. Particularly for bad news or difficult messages it's much better to have richer forms of communication, be that in-person, on video chat or on the phone.

What else can we add to this list?