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Brush Up Your E-mails
How people cause needless conflicts: by taking
short-cuts
with E-mail. It is indeed a short-hand medium, says Maureen
Sullivan,
but short cuts get you into trouble. Sullivan is the editor/publisher
for DBM Publishing, the publishing unit of the outplacement firm Drake
Beam Morin, and she wrote “E-Speak: Everything You Need to Know
Before You Hit the Send Button” (Harcourt, July 2001, $16.95).
“People see E-mail as a memo or a Post-It note, and they give
themselves permission to be not too attentive,” she says,
“versus
a letter that they compose, key into a word-processing program, and
print on watermarked letterhead.”
Sullivan’s workshop, “Is your E-mail style helping or hurting
your career?” is scheduled for the Human Resources Management
Association on Monday, September 10, at 5:30 p.m. at the Princeton
Hyatt. The dinner price of $35 includes a copy of her book. Call
Marilyn
Mangone Stoddard at 609-883-3000.
Letter writers, Sullivan points out, often hold up their finished
product to see that it is blocked well on the paper. “When you
send a letter by snail mail, you are very concerned about your image.
Someone will open it, and it will sit on someone’s desk, displaying
the `best of you’ in that document.”
Such precautions are ignored by most E-mailers. “People `pour’
into the keyboard. They tear at it. Many people do not proofread,
and if they do, they are very forgiving of any sloppiness or
error,”
she says. E-mails sent to good friends are particularly vulnerable.
When you write to a college friend, for instance, your friend knows
that you are a smart person, and that you can spell, so you relax
your vigilance. “But your E-mail could get printed out, and the
printed version may backfire. Or it could get forwarded to
others.”
One way that forwarding can be dangerous is that most people do not
paraphrase information when they send an E-mail to someone else. They
don’t say “so and so requested this,” they merely forward
the message and put their own instructions at the top. The result:
Your haphazard effort is being read and judged by a stranger.
A 1964 graduate of Marymount College, Sullivan has taught school,
worked in advertising for BBDO and Ogilvy & Mather, and served as
executive director for DBM’s Career Care Alumni Services
The 21st century workplace will require a new set of etiquette rules
and a renewed interest in psychology, Sullivan predicts. That’s
because
much of our work will be virtual, by E-mail and telephone, and
everyone
will need to retune their antennae to get along with bosses and
cohorts
that one rarely sees.
“Words constitute only seven percent of communication,” says
Sullivan. Language — intonation and inflection — represents
30 percent, and body language is 55 percent. So telephoning someone
gives you just a 45 percent chance of conveying your feelings
accurately.
E-mail stacks the odds more. “If you E-mail me, I don’t hear the
fun in your voice, or the coziness,” says Sullivan. “We would
have less of a chance to get along.”
Sullivan’s E-speak book is based on a survey that Drake Beam Morin
has been conducting for 30 years. Based on Carl Jung’s theory of
types,
the survey classifies people into four categories: Thinkers, Feelers,
Intuitors, and Sensors. From these categories come the Myers-Briggs
tests, with four scales and 16 personality types.
At Drake Beam Morin, an outplacement company where many people take
the Myers-Briggs for the first time, jobseekers learn the “I speak
your language” course work that teaches them to identify an
interviewer’s
style and respond to it effectively. “If I were a Sensor, and
I am being interviewed by a Thinker, it would behoove me to speak
in her language and not have the appearance of haste,” says
Sullivan.
Thinkers are logical, move-in lockstep people. WhenE-mailingto a Thinker, use logic and leave nothing out. Be sure you answerall possible questions.Feelers are caring and motherly, concerned aboutsubordinates’success. Feelers are the ones sending chain letters about sickchildren.For a feeler, don’t be too breezy. Begin your E-mail with a salutation(Dear Sally) and sign it formally. “Just putting in a salutationwarms it substantially,” says Sullivan.Intuiters are creative, out of the box thinkers (alsoseen as scattered, unconventional, and fantasy bound). They may appeararrogant by getting impatient when others don’t get the big pictureas soon as they do. “No one ever said Einstein was too much ofan intuiter, but when Einstein is seen as the fuzzy-headed professor,or the guy who can’t find his car keys, that is not flattering.”Intuiters should doublecheck their E-mails to be sure they are cogent.Sensors live in the moment and want to get a job donequickly. When E-mailing a Sensor, get right to the point and usebullets.”A Sensor doesn’t want pages of research; they can shoot fromthe hip, and if you go on and on you will lose them.” These arethe people who might erase documents before they read them — ifthe document comes from a time-wasting Feeler.Sullivan’s tips for composing E-mail:Determine your personality style.Learn the good traits and the challenging aspects of yourstyle.Learn the styles of others and speak to their informationneeds.If you must issue a group E-mail, addressed to all differentpersonality types, you can stay out of trouble by observing the no-nosfor all four. Make sure your message is logical (for the thinker),imaginative (for the intuitive), succinct (for the sensory), andcaring(for the feeler). If all four are in there, you have catered toeveryonein the audience, yet you haven’t turned it into a caricature.”We get the reactions that this is ridiculous soft science,”says Sullivan. “But people need this help because the words alonehave no meaning, yet when strung together with inflection, they havemeaning.”For instance, the phrase “Where were you last night?” carriesa different meaning based on the intonation. If spoken, it wouldprobablycome across as a casual conversation starter along the lines of”What’snew?” But if written, it could make someone with a guiltyconsciencefeel accused. Says Sullivan: “People are getting fired becausethey send innocuous documents interpreted wrongly.”— Barbara FoxTop Of PageCorporate AngelsRE/MAX of New Jersey associates have raised$11,500for the Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) through a networking cruisein New York harbor. All proceeds from ticket sales and an onboardauction were donated to the charity.Hospitals affiliated with the Children’s Miracle Network provide careto children regardless of their parents’ ability to pay. The fundsraised through this event are earmarked for the Children’s SpecializedHospital in Mountainside, the Bristol-Myers Squibb Children’s Hospitalat Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, andChildren’sHospital of Philadelphia.Since 1992, RE/MAX member agencies have raised more than $27.2 millionfor the Children’s Miracle Network.The March of Dimes has selected the Central NJ Maternal& Child Health Consortium of Piscataway as the recipient of two 2001community service grants.The first grant supports the Consortium’s Smart Start program, whichdistributes preconception health information to couples throughmarriagelicense registrars in Hunterdon and Somerset counties.The second grant enables the consortium to continue an outreachprogramentitled March of Dimes Comenzando Bien, a five-week program thatreaches out to Hispanic women to inform them about the importanceof prenatal care.Johnson & Johnson has given Raritan Valley CommunityCollegea $25,000 grant to support nursing students by providing tuitionscholarships,and covering some of the cost of books, fees, and licensing fees.In a written statement, Alfred Mays, vice president, corporatecontributionsand community relations at Johnson & Johnson, says that, “withthis nursing donation, we hope to encourage motivated individualsto consider a career in nursing that is so essential to the growingdemand for skilled heath care professionals in our region.Previous StoryCorrections or additions?This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
