Business Advice: Why Most People Fail to Communicate Effectively Using Email by Michelle Rebecca

Access Business Success Secrets for Effective Productivity

Please share this post on Twitter, Facebook, or any of your favorite social media sites. We welcome all comments. Thanks!

Contributing Author: Michelle Rebecca

It’s kind of ironic that in a business world where innovators are developing more and more high-powered tools for communications, a poor communication structure is often still an Achille’s Heel for a business or project.

Individuals also struggle with adopting the right tone or collaborating with others in the right way.

In short, even though there are more communication options than ever before, we still aren’t getting it right.

Many of those who live in the virtual office have seen some of the limitations of email as a communications medium firsthand.

Email and instant messaging have done a lot to turn yesterday’s business model upside down; although it has dramatically increased productivity in many businesses, those who ignore other options for day-to-day contact do so at their own peril.

Here are some of the scenarios where it can be a good idea to have a backup communications channel in place to support an ongoing project, in addition to the easy option of simply channeling messages back and forth from one email inbox to another.

The Role of Human Emotion

One of the biggest limitations of the email is that it leaves little room for the expression of human emotion, which can be extremely important in collaboration.

It’s all too easy for a quickly written email to convey a message without the recipient understanding what emotions are behind what’s being written.

On the other hand, a telephone conversation is generally able to capture and deliver emotion as background information, through tone of voice and other factors.

One of the biggest problems where email fails to support a project is when one or more collaborators feel disrespected or otherwise devalued based on perceived communication queues that may not actually be present.

This is one of the biggest situations where having a telephone or video conferencing venue for collaborators is extremely important.

Working Out Details

Another critical situation where voice communication trumps data is when a collaborative project becomes complex enough to warrant a set of agreed-upon details.

Working out these multiple details via email would generally involve one person sending another person a pre-typed list of items, where the recipient has to rule on each of them and create a separate response for each.

This message then goes back to the original sender, who has to evaluate each response and rule on each response separately.

For obvious reasons, this can be much more efficient when done over the telephone.

As a communications medium, email does not accommodate individual real-time questions on any of the included points, nor does it enable the collaborators to change course or corrects details in real-time.

As a result, two or more people can spend hours shuffling e-mails back and forth in order to resolve a set of fairly simple discussion points.

Ignoring Emails

Emails are also extremely easy to ignore, and in a modern remote work environment, this can lead to significant time bottlenecks.

It can take hours just to confirm, for example, whether an individual has received and read an email, where audio or video contact can establish this in seconds (assuming the recipient picks up the phone or the video call.)

The time sensitive nature of some projects is what motivates managers or top-level planners at an SEO Company, virtual office, or other “distributed work” environment to suggest having a phone or video conference option available.

However, for the reasons outlined above, it should be considered a “best practice” of any remote collaboration that the individuals be linked, not just by data, but by voice, in order to prevent any number of project derailers that can destroy deadlines — as well as the ultimate result.

Image Credits: Ross Mayfield, gcoldironjr2003, Omar Parada, Horia Varlan via Compfight cc

About the Contributing Author:

Michelle Rebecca is a blogger and freelancer. She’s written about almost every topic under the sun, and loves constantly learning about new subjects and industries while she’s writing. Whenever she’s able to step away from her computer she enjoys spending time outdoors with her dogs. Make sure to follow her on Google+!

Additional posts by Michelle Rebecca on the Woman in Leadership blog: