The Art of Email
As a leader, one of your most important jobs is to get people to listen to you so that they will take action. Maybe that’s two jobs. Either way, it’s hard to do. And it’s even harder to do when you’re remote and your team is distributed around the globe.
I've been working remotely and with distributed teams for 8 years. While I now love it (fuck, was it hard at first) the hardest part for me is still a) writing effective emails/Slack messages/DMs and b) getting others to read my shitty emails/DMs, and c) getting people to take action after reading said garbage emails/Slack messages/DMs.
When I think back to the most effective verbal emails/Slack messages/DMs I’ve sent over the years, I realize that I was following a lot of the tips mentioned in this recent article published in the NY Times.
Here are my highlights and takeaways from the article with my own thoughts added for good measure.
Oh, but first, I’m going to break my own rule: TLDR; sometimes the best email is no email. Read on or feel free to skip to the end:
Use fewer words. I mean, duh. But it’s hard to do! When in doubt, I try to follow Stephen King’s rules of thumb that he outlines in his book, On Writing, which I highly recommend: cut at least 20% of whatever you wrote. Eliminate adjectives. You can also find out how to do that by re-reading Strunk and White’s Elements of Style. Oh, and by the way, as one of my teachers told me when I was young: take my advice because I’m not. So, you know, take this all with a grain of salt. This is hard to do! And I obviously don’t take my own advice.
Put action words in your subject line. Every email subject needs a clear call to action. I wrote an entire book about calls to action, so I love this idea. But I probably forget to do it half the time. The simple version: subject + verb. You’re welcome.
Listen more, “talk” less. Honestly, I listen to people for a living and never think to do so over email. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but it just never occurred to me. And I didn’t think it was possible? I tested this out today and it’s brilliant. DO THIS. Ask and listen.
Don’t answer, ask. How do you listen more and talk less? This is how. Clarify, clarify, clarify. Let the other person do more of the “talking” and they’ll feel better and take action on whatever it is that you want them to take action. Again, I tried this today and it works!
Invert the order; lead with the need. This is kind of like how I learned to write essays when I was younger, yet I fail at doing this in emails. Here’s how I’ve remedied this: write your email, find the last sentence. Assume that there’s a CTA or your main thesis in there. Bring it back to the top. Cut, paste, send.
TLDR: I used to do this as a very last resort, but DON’T DO IT. Here’s why I stopped: if your email is too long it needs to be a phone of Zoom call. For most of my clients, this is a difficult thing to accept or admit, but it has completely changed the way they lead distributed teams. There are times when you need to communicate or find an answer to something. You’ve got an email or slack thread going. Or your impulse is to shoot off an email, Slack message, or DM. If your email or message is getting long and it’s meant for primarily one person, STOP. Text or DM that person or get on their calendar another way. And get on a call. You’ll save time that you’d otherwise spend with a back and forth. And you’ll save time that results in someone misinterpreting your email and doing the wrong things. And if there is a conflict at the core of whatever this interaction is (there often is), you’ll save time and energy by having a quick face to face conversation where you can get everything out into the open, diffuse any tension, avert any miscommunication, and get on with your work. It might feel terrible to ask for someone’s time, but it’s something that, gasp, even distributed tech teams and remote leaders need to do.
