Tips to improve your email communication skills
October 12th, 2007 by Sue AbbissI was running a communication training course last week and interestingly, the e mails section is always a firm favourite with the delegates. Email is a useful tool but can lead to misunderstandings and you need to remember that e-mails can be surprisingly permanent. Here are a couple of things which may be useful:
- Words make up only a small part of the communication process. With e-mail, we don’t have the luxury of being able to analyse the meaning of the words by tone of voice or the body language being used, so it’s very easy for the content of e-mail to be misunderstood. It’s a good idea to read e-mails over a few of times before sending.
- We often respond quickly to emails without really thinking about our response and its effects. It’s a good idea, especially where emotions are involved, to write your response, wait a while, and then re read before sending, this way you have a chance to respond in a calm and rational way rather than create the wrong impression or make things worse.
- Punctuation is vital to making messages clear and readily understood. All professional e-mails should be properly punctuated and spelling checked.
- It’s good to recognise when email is appropriate or when it would be better to pick up the phone or walk over to talk to someone.
February 20th, 2008 at 7:55 pm
I ran the communication course yesterday at Oldham and as you have mentioned in your post the email section was well received. One delegate raised an interesting point about how it can be used negatively. He asked how someone should deal with a situation when senders maliciously copy in a third party if the content is focussed on highlighting mistakes that the recipent has made. I suggested that the companys email policy is referred to or the sender is approached to discuss the situation. It all boils down to personal values I suppose but it is a tricky one. Has anyone had any similar situations? Does anyone have any ideas for handling an instance like this? We’d love to hear from you.