That S Not What I Meant!

Lesson Six

That’s not what I meant!

It starts so innocently. You send an email that you think is funny or simply ask whether someone is available to meet. Then you get an offended reply: Was that supposed to be funny? or Are you implying that I don’t take time to answer questions from my team? You stare at the screen, wondering what you did to give offense.

What you do next determines whether your email exchange stays civil or escalates into conflict. If you reply I thought you had a sense of humor, you’re likely to get an irritated reply. Annoyed or critical comments tend to come across more harshly than intended in email, so simple misunderstandings can easily spiral into full-blown conflict.

How do I keep my emails civil?

A series of studies by Nicholas Epley and Justin Kruger found that people routinely overestimate their ability to communicate by email. If you make a sarcastic comment in an email, only 56 percent of readers are likely to catch your meaning. In a palmOne survey, 23 percent of German respondents said that misunderstood emails had caused conflict with a coworker.

Given how easy it is to misunderstand email messages, how can you avoid giving offense? Remember these tips:

Some things shouldn’t be emailed. Performance feedback and sensitive topics are best handled face-to-face. If coworkers are complaining about an employee’s body odor, it’s tempting to send an email instead of having a difficult conversation. However, in face-to-face communication you might discover that the problem is not poor hygiene, but a medical issue. Had you sent an email that humiliated the employee, you’d have to apologize before you could begin to explore solutions.

If you’re angry, leave the address and subject line blank. Even if you hit Send, your message won’t be delivered until you’ve had a chance to think about it. Better yet, step away from the keyboard until your outrage cools.

Read your message from the reader’s perspective. One-word replies like Fine can be read many ways. Add some context; I approve your request for vacation time. Tone can also be ambiguous. Dr. Epley advises reading your message aloud in a way that’s the opposite of what you mean. Read sarcastic comments as if they were serious, and read serious comments with a sneer. If your message makes sense either way, readers are likely to misinterpret your tone.

Respect cultural differences. An American manager may appreciate a direct warning about a problem that could delay production. Asian team members might feel the polite way to handle the issue is to raise a question about the problem. This indirect approach calls attention to the issue without suggesting anyone is at fault. The level of formality expected in an email also varies across cultures. Europeans, for example, tend to write more formal emails than Americans do.

You’ll find more tips about avoiding email miscommunication in Write Better Emails: How to Be Short, Civil, and Savvy. Use this interactive quiz to decide How Formal Does My Email Need to Be?

Resources:

•Louise Dobson. “Avoiding Email Catastrophe”:

•Ray A. Friedman and Steven C. Currall, “Email Escalation: Dispute Exacerbating Elements of Electronic Communication” (2002):

•Stephanie A. Watts, “Evaluative Feedback: Perspectives on Media Effects,” Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (2007): http://jcmc.indiana.edu/vol12/issue2/watts.html

•Nicholas Epley and Justin Kruger, “Egocentrism Over E-Mail: Can We Communicate as Well as We Think?” (2005): http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/nicholas.epley/Krugeretal05.pdf

•“Email manners are lacking, survey claims”:

•Kristin Behfar, Mary Kern, and Jeanne Brett, “Managing Challenges in Multicultural Teams” (2006): http://web.gsm.uci.edu/~kbehfar/papers/managing.pdf