Pretty basic, but’s it’s amazing home often people make these mistakes.  In addition to maintaining professionalism, it’s important to be friendly with email.  instead of starting your email with “STAFF:” a slight modification like “GOOD AFTERNOON TEAM:”  makes a huge difference.

Also, emotion is nearly impossible to deliver with email because of the lack of tone and nonverbal communication.  Still, we all sometimes are guilty or reading more into things than are there.  Capital or bold letters can sometimes be taken as angry.

The best bet is to consider who will be receiving the message and before you hit send, review it!  Then you can be sure you’re able to communicate in a professional, but friendly manner.  And if you must deliver an emotional message, consider other communication options to ensure clarity and prevent hurt feelings.

Keeping email factual, while maintaining professionalism, is possibly the easier of the two.  Email simply is a great way to transfer factual information, instructions, or answer questions as long as the data does not required increased security.  To be more efficient, however, one should remember to give all the necessary information.  Earlier this week, I made this mistake myself.  In asking for volunteers for an upcoming charity event, I failed to give the hours volunteers were needed, resulting in a flood of responses asking “What time?”  Giving all the data necessary seems given, but sometimes we simply forget.  If I had reviewed the email before hitting send, I would have found the mistake and could have saved myself, and everyone else, a little time.

Has this ever happened to you?  Have you ever sent an email without enough information?  Or possibly have you ever received the one-word response that doesn’t actually answer your question(s)?  Please post your thoughts and comments!

Overall, with factual information, maintaining professional standards is relatively easy.  However, keeping these emails friendly is another story.  Next week we’ll take a look at how to brighten up emails, making them more personable without sacrificing the information or professionalism.  In the meantime visit http://www.hodu.com/email-do.shtml for more email tips!

What if someone doesn’t reply to your email and it is time sensitive?

What if someone misreads your email and reacts in a way that was not expected?

Since we cannot hear the tone of the sender, what if someone applies the wrong emotion to the message?

These are all things we need to look out for when sending email and could possibly be easily prevented.

If it is time sensitive, by putting so in the subject line, the recieve will know that they need to read and respond in a timely manner.

By keeping the email factual and direct with clear expectations most misunderstandings can be prevented.

And finally, by reading your email from the recievers viewpoint before sending it out, hopefully you can prevent any emotional misunderstandings.

While doing all of these will help your email be more efficient, email can still be difficult in the workplace do to the balance of formality and informality.

On a personal level, email is generally very informal, but at work we are still expected to follow general guidelines of grammer and ettiquette.  So how do we balance this?  I have a few ideas I’m going to try this week to keep email formal, but friendly and effiecient.  I’ll post more on the tactics and results next week!

Eventually, I did have a conversation with each caller however it was a very inefficient use of everyone’s time because the need was simple enough to leave over a voice mail.

The third call, which I initiated, was a different story.  I had a very specific question that did not require any discussion for my co-worker.  When I called her, she was unavailable, so I left the question in her voice mail.  When she returned my call, this time I was unavailable.  However, the communication process was allowed to flow because she was able to leave the answer to my question in her message.

I would prefer all three calls had gone this way; unfortunately, I cannot control how others use voice mail.  Still, I did experience enough success in my hypothesis that I will continue this practice and look for more avenues to use workplace communication technology more effectively and efficiently.  Please watch for next week’s post on email in the workplace.

This brings me to my topic today – how to more effectively use voice mail.  Many of us, including myself, are sometimes guilty of the “Hello, this is John; please call me back when you’re available.”  The issue with messages like this is they can quickly become very unproductive in terms of work hours, especially when you try to return the call and are forced to leave a message like “Hi John, this is Jane.  I received your message; please call me back when you are available.”  Such messages can quickly become circular while the two of you continue to play “phone tag.”

How do we avoid this circle?  Often, we call instead of using more convenient methods because of importance, urgency, or clarity.  However, it is still important not to lose efficiency.  As I see it, instead of the standard message, why not go ahead and state the reason for your call or give the necessary direction?  For example:

“Hello Jane, this is John and it’s about 2:15 on Friday.  I would like for you to send over your new account list and projections this afternoon in preparation for next week’s one-on-one meeting.   If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to give me a call.”

As you can see, Jane now has an expectation of what John needs and understands the urgency of getting it done today so he can review the new accounts and projections before next week’s meeting.  Additionally, this avoids the “phone tag” trap where Jane doesn’t learn John’s needs until much later in the day, creating unnecessary stress in addition to the time spent calling, leaving, and returning messages.

I’m going to try this myself this week and urge you to do the same.  I’ll follow up with the results next week.  Please feel free to do the same and post your comments!