Have you ever had an e-mail and thought “what is this all about?”

Today, people are too reliant on e-mail / instant messenger as their primary form of communication and it’s all too easy for a written message to be mis-understood and the wrong response recieved which leads to frustration on either side and wasted time.

How can you stop this happening?

- Think about what you are trying to communicate?
- Who is your audience?
- How else could you communicate it?
- Is your grammar and spelling correct?

To ensure your message is understood, the way you phrase and style your e-mail is very important. Take five minutes now to have a look at your e-mails and review the different variations. Some people write bullet points, others write long and verbose paragraphs, others can be direct whilst others vague.

Once you understand how your audience likes to be communicated, simply copy their style! I used to communicate to one of my bosses in bullet points. I thought he was busy and needed to know just the facts. However, he wrote long e-mails detailing the history of an issue, key items and appropriate actions with due dates and owners. I was getting frustrated as he would always ask for further clarification and spent a lot of time communicating with him.

I then realised that by changing my style I could achieve this with one e-mail. My style went from

Boss,

See below regarding an issue on the Unix project:

• Issue: Unix Server requires to be in DMZ zone to communicate to external clients.
• Actions: Open up firewall ports
• Owners: Network team
• Dates: End of July

Can you approve?

To:

Dear Boss,

In July, I requested the IT team to implement a Unix server into the data centre. The scope changed during the configuration of the server and it was found that it is now needed to be in the DMZ zone to allow it to communicate with external clients.  I have agreed that the firewall team will open up the appropriate ports to allow this to communicate to the clients by the end of July. Can you confirm this is OK?

Funnily enough, my boss now understands my e-mails with much better clarity and approved the e-mail with an “approved” e-mail.

Try it!