Randy Dean, an Email Sanity Expert, identifies five red flags that make emails fail: difficult, contentious, emotional, confusing, or critically urgent. Email works best for simple information and clear tasks that aren't time-sensitive. If you must send something urgent, follow up with a phone call.
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Hi everybody, Randy Dean here, Email Sanity Expert. Today I'd like to actually talk about what I believe makes a lousy email. Since, you know, we've been doing the series on email etiquette, I think there's certain key characteristics that can basically tell you an email probably isn't going to work terribly well. And let's talk about the key characteristics. Here's Here's the topics or items that I recommend you don't try to cover in an email: anything that is difficult, contentious, emotional, or confusing. Those four—difficult, contentious, emotional, confusing—not a good email. And I would also add to that list anything that is critically urgent. And here's why. There's just better communication tools for all of those things. I mean, if something is difficult or confusing, you probably should hold a meeting or maybe make a video explainer or do something in a different manner or form. Have a live one-on-one conversation. Uh, contentious and emotional? Um, you're just asking for a crazy set of of replies going back and forth and people getting upset. So, you know, it's probably better once again to have an in-person conversation or possibly a small group meeting. And when something is critically urgent, here's one of the reasons that I just don't like email for that. What if the other person isn't there? You send them something critically urgent. They need to respond in the next 5 to 10 minutes. And they're stuck in traffic, they're at home with a sick kid, they're homesick themselves, they just don't check their email every 5 to 7 minutes like you do. And any and all of those things, when that occurs, you really can't sort of blame the recipient. It's sort of the sender's fault. And so what I would like you to do is when you're starting to craft an email, if you sense that the email you're writing has become difficult or contentious or emotional or complex and confusing. Ask yourself, is this really the best way to get this information out? And if you're going to send a critically urgent email, do yourself this favor: when you hit send, immediately pick up the phone or go find the person and let them know it's there. Because if you can do that for the person, you've just made it that much more likely that it's not going to create a major problem for both you and this other party. Utilize the appropriate communication tool for the situation, and email is not, in my opinion, the appropriate tool for any of these situations. You want to know what email is really good for though? Simple information, task, and text. Simple information, task, and text. Easy to understand. Oh, and let's add not critically time-sensitive. Simple information task and text that's not critically time-sensitive. That makes a great email. And so let's start using it the right way and stop clogging up people's inboxes with stuff that's going to create more work than it's worth. Hope you like this one. If you do, share it and please sign up for my YouTube channel. I'm making a whole series of these. Thanks. Bye now.
