The two things that happen every time you send an email

As an average office worker you probably receive 120 emails every day, according to recent Data Monitor stats. It’s called communication. And as we all know, communication, specifically poor communication, is a major cause of workplace headaches, and estimated to cost north of $37 billion in lost productivity to the global economy. We can’t live without it, but most of us could easily improve our strike rates as I will show.

Some of those 120 emails inspire you to respond quickly and fully, while others inspire delay and obfuscation on your part. How come? Why does that matter? And how can you get more done with people whose collaboration you enjoy?

Think back to the last email you sent to your work colleague, co-founder, customer, or investor. What exactly were you trying to achieve? Let’s face it, we don’t usually communicate without a goal in mind, or with the intention to progress some task or project with the help of the other person. So the content is designed to that end. For example: “Please send me a copy of your project report”. The challenge comes when the message is decoded by the recipient. Despite the advent of emojis, reading words on a screen only provides data for one of our senses — sight (unless you include hearing, for people who read emails in their heads or indeed out loud), so it’s always a less than multisensory experience, which means we have to ‘fill in the blanks’. And while the words might be crystal clear as to ‘what’ the intended response should be task-wise, communication variables (“prosody” to you) such as voice tone, volume, rhythm and intonation have to be added in at point of consumption, which generates 50 shades of confusion relationship-wise.

The two things hardwired into every email are 1) a message linked to a task and 2) a message linked to a relationship — yours, with the author. And there is no such thing as a message without both.

Sometimes the task content can lead to confusion, such as an email from a pilot to his ground maintenance staff when clocking off for the night which reads: “Aircraft handles funny”. To which the reply comes back: “Aircraft told to smarten up, behave, and take things seriously”.

But more often it’s the relationship content that does the damage. Which is why none of us buy things from people (or companies) we don’t like, and similarly none of us cooperate quickly and fully on tasks at work with people (whose emails) we don’t like. Or that leave us feeling irritated, frustrated, undervalued, ignored, criticised etc, even where that was never the intention.

I recently emailed a colleague (someone I have huge respect for, love as a friend, and have worked with for seven years). In response to my three paragraphs explaining how a good contact had invested in a company in his portfolio, which I thought was great news, and to make sure he didn’t find out about this from a third party and accuse me of failing to share this information, I received a three-word email… “clap, clap, clap”. On the face of it, words of congratulations, or perchance gratitude? Or was it sarcasm? Was I being made fun of? mocked? Truth is, I had no way of knowing. And I wasn’t about to prolong the agony by just sending another email! So you see how the “task message” and “relationship message” are intertwined.

Working remotely is an obvious added dimension, meaning emails are the majority of all our communication, as it was in my case, with the increased opportunity for good or bad that brings with it. A 2017 Harvard Business Review survey of 1100 remote workers found many felt “shunned and left out”. Slack and Mattermost are built to rescue us from this in part, and startups like Team EQ and Bunch.ai take us deeper into the murky waters of effective communication and its impact on company culture.

It could be just me, but I believe the relationship outcome takes priority over the task outcome in 99% of sent emails. Why? Because if you can maintain at least a civilised working relationship, you can always go back later and work on the task.

So how can you get more done, and consistently enjoy working with others? Here’s five easy steps.

Step 1

List the 10 relationships that you most rely on to achieve success in your role

Step 2

Score each relationship 1–10 based on how well tasks are getting completed

Step 3

Score each relationship 1–10 based on how “warm” or “cool” you feel about the relationship.

Step 4

Take the lowest score from STEP 2, and consider, “What question should I ask this person right now that will get ‘us’ back on track with our goal?”

Step 5

Take the lowest score from STEP 3 and consider, “What could I do for this person that they would appreciate as a genuinely caring act?”

For example, for someone I give a low “task” (but higher relationship) score, maybe setting up a project review call would be good. While for someone I give a low or cool “relationship” (but higher task) score, maybe an invitation to just grab a coffee together would be good.

So next time you fire up your email and start typing away, ask yourself, “How will this make my colleague or the recipient feel ?”

There are plenty of training programs to help you understand how to step into another person’s world, while the likes of Dale Carnegie have been making friends and influencing people since 1936, but that’s the subject of another blog post.

Enjoy your results!

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