Communicating by email

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Stephen Carrick-Davis, former CEO of children's internet charity Childnet, looks at five key problem areas of email communication.

When emails go wrong

We’ve all done it: sent that email to the rest of the management group at 11pm, hoping that your carefully written epistle on a particularly thorny subject will convince other colleagues that your way is the right way to proceed. It’s only when you re-read it the next morning that you realise it might have been better to have slept on it.

Email, online social networking groups, text messaging, they’re all great tools to help us communicate. However, communicating screen to screen is not the same as face to face. While there are some tremendous advantages to discussing issues by email and in online groups, it can often hinder proper consultation and decision making.

Five pieces of advice for emailing

Here are five areas to consider as you make decisions by email, along with some practical ways to make sure technology works for you:

1. Avoid email overload

It’s easy to presume that just because you send out a group email everyone reads it. Remember that many members of your committee may not be able to access private emails during the day.And it’s just not professional to assume that volunteers will respond immediately to an email in the evening when there is so much else going on in a busy household.

Last week I received 19 emails from fellow members of a management committee in just one day. Apart from the presumption that I was available to read and respond, it was enough to make me stop volunteering for the project!

Tips to avoid email overload:

• If it’s an important email, consider adding a ‘request delivery’ receipt or even a ‘request read’ receipt’ (see the ‘Options’ tab on the top of the email message you are sending to activate). This way you know who has and who has not been able to read it.
• It can be hard to remember which email addresses to send an important message to. Are there new group members you have forgotten? Are there former group members who are still being sent emails? Why not create a distribution list of contacts in a particular group. As long as you keep the list up to date, you just need to put the distribution list name into the ‘To’ field, and you won’t need to worry whether the right people are receiving your message.
• There’s a brilliant free application that groups can use called Doodle, which lists people’s availability to attend a meeting or conference calls. I use it all the time to help schedule meetings and calls with a group.

2. Distinguish between quantity and quality in email writing

One mistake that we can all make is thinking that those who write an epistle and have a beautifully written argument are necessarily correct. The thing about email is that those who have time to respond, or are good at writing, can have a disproportionate influence.

Of course, this can take place in a face-to-face meeting with those who are confident and articulate, but in this case a good chair can encourage dialogue from all and make sure those who may not be heard can find ways to feedback their views.

With email it may not be so easy to see. Some members of a group can be intimidated when they use information technology – especially when they are not sure where the written communication will end up.

Tips for distinguishing between quality and quantity:

• Encourage members to respond briefly to your points and ask a specific question with options. Sometimes a poll is easier to respond to than asking for written opinion. For example: “We decided that there were three options we could pursue at the end of the last meeting. Having had a chance to consider these we now need a decision. Can you let me know whether you are in favour of A, B or C, by the end of the week?” 

3. Beware of lost inhibition when you can’t be seen

The way people use email can say a lot about them. People can lose their inhibitions when using non-face-to-face communication and this can lead to problems. Remember that we derive alot of our understanding from visual cues and body language. Without these (unless you are using a webcam) you need real wisdom and maturity when handling an online decision-making process.

For example, some members of a group can become self-centred and impatient and demonstrate this in their email replies. This doesn’t happen so easily in a properly chaired, face-to-face meeting. Make sure that email discussion doesn’t descend into flame wars with individuals quoting other people (something very easy to do once you have a transcript of what they’ve said). Remember this type of 'cut and paste' diplomacy can be problematic when sentences are quoted back out of context or misread in an emotional context.

I believe that empathetic characteristics can shine through in emails – for example, construct your messages anticipating what it will be like for the recipient to read it and don’t use jargon. Write in an engaging, concise style that is readily understood and doesn’t detract from the decision-making process. Some of the most helpful responses are short and pithy.

Tips on avoiding misunderstanding:

• When someone uses email to get critical feedback it’s important for them to appreciate the different styles people have and their characteristics. Consider following up an email with a private telephone call: “What did you really mean by that email response?”   
• Encourage those who haven’t responded via email by ringing them up instead and making sure they know that their views, while not circulated for all to see, are nevertheless important.

4. Is that comment for private or public viewing?

When communicating by email remember that it can serve both as an excellent audit trail (you have evidence in writing of people’s views, decisions, concerns, etc) but also a sensitive record of subjective opinions.

Like all communication, remember not to write anything that you wouldn’t say to someone’s face or would be happy for other colleagues, staff of an organisation or the wider public to read. Remember you might not know who has seen your message if someone has added them to the bcc list (‘blind carbon copy’). Emails can be forwarded, posted online or printed out and circulated very quickly.

Then there is the issue of ‘reply all’. Let’s admit it, we’ve all done it at some stage: hit the ‘reply all’ and sent a sensitive email to lots of people when we meant to send it to just one! Of course, there are tremendous advantages of using ‘reply all’ if you are wanting to get and receive feedback from all members to a question or proposal, but one of the downsides is that they contribute to email overload, so use sparingly.

It can be a good idea for the chair or person sending out a group email to indicate what they require by way of response. For example: “Can everyone come back to me individually – no need to hit ‘reply all’ as I will then collate all the replies and make sure everyone has seen the comments before we agree at the next meeting.” Or: “Can I suggest on this occasion everyone ‘replies all’ to this message so we can all get a good idea as to how the discussion is going.”    

Tips on inclusion:

• I have used BT conference calls as a helpful tool to make important decisions in between face-to-face meetings. It is usually very easy to set up and you provide a 'bridge' line for all members to ring in and conference at the same time. With an experienced chair you can ensure that everyone has a say, and people tend to listen more carefully to what is being said on such a call.

5. Be clear about the status of decisions made by email

When you are using email there is the question of whether decisions made by email are legally binding. Check whether your organisation’s articles or constitution explicitly permit decisions by email, or if a previous meeting authorised a particular decision to be made by email (usually because of urgency).Otherwise a majority by email needs to be confirmed in the next meeting.

If you are part of a charity board, email views are, strictly speaking, just guidance for the chair taking urgent chair’s action between meetings (assuming that there are standing procedures that permit this). This is particularly important if you are using email to ratify or confirm a choice between two or three options (see example above).

Tips on making decisions via email:

• Don’t forget that one of the most helpful uses of email is not simply in communicating but sending documents that members can review and comment on between meetings. Why not run a short 30-minute training session at your next trustees meeting on how to use ‘ track changes’ features in most word processing packages? While sometimes this 'design by committee' can be tortuous, it can help limit the email ping-pong of comments on a document. Circulating a draft that combines all comments received and giving a warning that this is the last round for comments before ratification at the next meeting can help focus attention.

And finally...

Remember that, although there are particular challenges in using new technology such as email, social networking sites and even Twitter, many of the issues come down to the basics of communication, not the technology. How do we listen? How do we respect each other’s points of view? How well do we really communicate using the wonderful building blocks of words? As George Bernard Shaw said many years before the invention of email: “The problem with communication...is the illusion that it has been accomplished.”

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