CHAPTER 9

Honor the Reader

We ought to be vigilantes for kindness and consideration.

—Letitia Baldrige

Once you have grasped the “it’s not about me” concept of good business writing, and have paid attention to the audience, structure, and details before you start to write, you’re ready to move beyond the basics.

The medium you use for sending can increase the effectiveness of your message. Framing your message in a positive manner can increase the chances that your audience will be more receptive to your message. Using the right tone can help ensure the success of your message. And thinking before you hit Send can save your professional career.

Respect the Medium

Imagine this situation: You’re sitting in a meeting and suddenly your boss starts referring to an email he sent the week before; you and the rest of the attendees are apparently supposed to not only know which email he is referring to but know the questions he asked in the email. You receive over 70 emails per day—on a light day—so this particular email would have been almost 500 emails ago (like most Americans, you’re supposed to check your work email on weekends). Try as you might, you can’t remember the email, much less the questions.

Moreover, your boss has a tendency to send lots of background emails, and you’re not always sure how the content applies to you. He also tends to ask rhetorical questions, so you aren’t sure when you are supposed to have an answer or when you are just supposed to see your boss’s thinking on the subject.

And so you sit, uncomfortable, feeling like a kid in the third grade who’s hoping the teacher won’t call on him, worried that by missing that one email you have sabotaged your career. The reality is that, even though your boss may rage and fume at you, this situation is most likely not your fault. In this time of technology so many of us—and especially those who hold positions of power and who have to juggle many responsibilities—feel that because we sent the message, we have communicated.

As we’ve noted, communication doesn’t take place until the receiver understands not only the message, but also the words and the context of the message. Communication doesn’t take place until she understands the emotions and the importance of it, as well as what he is supposed to do with the contents of the message. Only when those complex processes take place does communication take place.

Technology is a beautiful thing in many ways. But just because sending messages via email is easy for a manager to do doesn’t mean it is the right way to communicate the ideas.

Consider this true story:

On a particular day in May 2001, at 10:00 a.m., IT employees in the benefits department of a large nationally traded company found that their desktop computers suddenly locked. After the employees spent 15 minutes trying to troubleshoot the problem, the computers unlocked themselves, whereupon a banner began scrolling across all the screens. It read:

Your department has been outsourced and sold. This is your 90-day notice; individual compensation packages will be discussed in 30 days, when we have had a chance to evaluate you individually. However, you are prohibited from seeking another job during this
90-day period; otherwise the compensation package will be revoked.

Not a good way to announce layoffs. The sister of one of these employees happened to be a very high-powered lawyer, who was more than happy to write a letter that stated intent to investigate the legal damages the employees could receive from this manner of message delivery. Through her investigation, she learned that the department had been sold to a small start-up, whose two owners, while very skilled in IT and in benefits, were astonished that their medium for their message was inappropriate. They truly believed that because it was easy for them to send the message that way, it was the right way.

The lawyer sister filed a class action suit, claiming that delivering emotionally charged messages via business email is unprofessional and a form of harassment. She won. The employees all received not only large outsourcing packages, but even larger damages.

Email, instant messages, and texts are good for rapid delivery of messages. They do not, however, allow the sender to see the first impact of the message on the receiver. For this reason, impersonal technology channels aren’t typically the best medium for sending messages that affect people’s livelihoods.

The phone call medium is also tricky. In the old days, your business phone was tied to a cord that was attached in the wall in an area of a specific building that was your place of employment. You left it at 5 p.m. on Fridays and didn’t have to worry about it until Monday. And during the week, if you were out of the office, someone would answer your phone and handle the caller’s needs or take a message for you, written on a nice pink piece of paper.

But phones today are different. One executive I know carries three cell phones daily—and none of them are her personal cell phone. One is for her direct reports to use, one is for the top administration to use to reach her quickly, and one is for emergency contact in case she is using one of the other phones. With that number of devices for her work associates to reach her, no wonder she was irritated one Sunday when she was at church—and a colleague called her about work on her personal cell phone.

A call on a business line has a less personal touch than does a call on a personal line. Yet while the issue may not emotionally impact the receiver, your use of his personal line may send an unintended message that you aren’t respecting that person’s personal space.

Using the correct medium helps keep that balance. Many productivity experts recommend that we designate only certain times a day to check email. Others recommend all sorts of systems to have email sort itself automatically. The aim is to be able to actually get your work done. So if you choose email as your medium and need an instant response, chances are good you won’t get it instantaneously. Do you need a quick one-sentence answer? Try a text or instant message. Need a quick but longer answer? Text first to see if it’s a good time for a quick phone call.

Are these hard and fast rules? No. The reason that honoring the medium is a beyond-basics skill is that no real rules exist. Guidelines, however, do.

Is your audience made up mainly of visual learners? In other words, do they use phrases such as I see what you mean or look at what opportunities we have here? These people usually like to read, as long as the document is organized. They like graphs, but only if they say something and are simple. For these types, create a verbal picture in your message and you’re gold. They don’t like to be talked at, and they can read faster than you can talk, so don’t expect a good response when you read from your Prezi or PowerPoint.

And what if your audience is highly visual but also highly energetic? Don’t email them a PowerPoint via email that contains data that you could put in a quick bullet list or in one visual. These folks usually chafe during webinars that don’t move quickly. They see so much more on their screens than the main presentation box and want to move on, and move on now.

On the other hand, audial learners, those who use phrases such as listen to what the data is telling us or hear me” like those Powerpoints. They like the webinars; those allow them to focus on how the information is said. These people usually process more slowly than the visuals—but often they wind up picking up more details. So if your boss or client is visual and busy, put the majority of your time into a document that lets him see at one glance not only what your points are but also give him an interesting and unusual visual cue to keep in his mind. But if he’s audial, polish your words and practice your delivery. Then make sure you get one-on-one time to deliver your ideas verbally.

Tactile learners like to experience what you are talking about. Craft your message so that you put them in what the English professors call in medias res, or in the middle of the action. (That’s how the opening of this section was worded; it was intended to make you feel as if you were in the situation.)

And intuitive types are usually following their own thought patterns, no matter how structured your message. Be prepared for lots of unexpected stops in thought with these folks, and have patience with what may appear as off-topic ideas. Many non-intuitives lack that patience with intuitives, unaware that those detours often reveal the brilliance and creativity that all successful businesses need.

Remain focused on the fact that you are marketing your ideas to your audience. And doing some deep thinking about how best to market and by what medium increases your professionalism as well as success.

Framing Your Ideas

Ever heard the phrase frame of mind?

When we use an analogy, for instance, we are putting something in a frame. Saying that a conversation should be like playing a game of ping pong frames the image of two players, each perfectly matched, sending verbal balls back and forth to each other. That’s a frame.

But one big problem exists in using frames: very few of us have the same frame. Place six people at an event and have them watch, all from the same physical perspective. Then ask them what they saw. You will get six different versions of what happened, simply because each person saw the event differently.

We are all products of our environment. Those environments include subtle social and relationship cues that affect how we perceive what we are hearing or seeing. How we perceive what we are reading or hearing is also influenced by our moods at the time, our history with the material, our history with the sender of the message, comprehension of the message, and the role we are playing at the time of receiving the message.

Sounds like a lot? It is a lot, and for us to sort through all of those things in the instant we take in the message, we have to sort through all the complexities that each message carries with it. To do so, we rely on a series of shortcuts, which are reactions that come from what Malcolm Gladwell refers to as “the locked box” of our subconscious. Our shortcuts, however, are notoriously faulty. And they lead to many perceptual distortions, which in turn lead to many otherwise perfectly crafted messages to fall short of communicating. Being aware of these perceptual distortions can help you frame your message so that you’re heard.

Let’s take stereotyping, which is one of the most common perceptual distortions, and look at how being aware of it can help you communicate. Imagine that you are the head of the IT department for a large firm. You’re a well-rounded multi-faceted business professional and know your business well. But every time you send out an email, your message carries with it the stereotypical image of an IT worker: brainy, nerdy, socially clueless—and most likely a man.

In fact, people see your name in the sender’s line, and unless they have lots of personal experience with you, think, “Oh, IT message. Details I won’t understand” or other variations along the same lines. You may have worked hard to get your headline up front and to be short and reader-centered, but that message still has to break through the knee-jerk stereotype reaction. Knowing that tendency to stereotype, the frame you use to craft your message is vital. While those in the accounting or HR departments might get away with subject lines that read “important year-end information” (although I doubt it), you certainly can’t. People may read that line and think, “I don’t need anything at year end from IT’ and delete your message before it’s even been opened.

So think about the frame. Despite the incredibly hard work that IT folks do to make sure that the rest of us have effective technology in our jobs, we tend to dismiss or forget that hard work. Instead, we see only our own use of technology, and increasingly we see using that technology as our right. We see it as a tool to serve us. And the IT people are only there to see that it does.

You and I both know that is faulty perception. It’s perceptual distortion. But if you’re smart and want your message read, you acknowledge that like it or not, that’s how many see messages from IT, and you then plot to frame your message accordingly. Therefore, wording your subject line “Helpful Tech Tool Tips to make your year-end less crazy” frames your “year-end information” in a frame that other people will likely see as vital. And despite the stereotype, they read your message.

Two other common perceptual distortions are selective perception and projection.

Being aware of that distortion that results from selective perception can help you frame the message so that even if the receiver doesn’t agree with your conclusion, you can at least stop the back-and-forth “because I said so,” and “I said so in the past three emails” dance.

Imagine, for instance, that you have an employee who really wants the company to pay for her to attend a conference coming up next month. You as boss don’t have the money in the budget that it will cost to send her. If you write back,

Ashley, we don’t have the money in the budget for you to attend.

She may come back at you with

Meredith is going, and the information I will learn at the conference applies more to my job than it does to hers.

See what is going on in this reply? She ignored the contrary part, which is that the budget can’t send her. Instead she went right to singling out the information that confirms her prior belief: the material applies to her so she should go, not Meredith. Never mind that she has reverted to the level of 10-year-old whining because her sister got something and she didn’t. That’s her frame of mind, and without your being aware of it, you are primed for a very long and upsetting disagreement about the issue.

However, by framing your message so that you send the message to Ashley that you are aware that the material applies to her job, and while you would like to be able to send both employees, the present budget won’t allow it, you stop the disagreement. This wording might work better:

Ashley, the conference does indeed seem as if it would help your job. I wish you had put in a request to go back when Meredith did, before the budget for the quarter was finalized; that way I could possibly have sent you both. Keep an eye on the conference for next year and make sure that you get your request in at least three months in advance; I look forward to all that you will learn at it next year!

Such wording confirms her prior belief, that she can benefit from it, and then talks her down from resistance so she can see how she can attend, albeit next year.

Projection occurs when we take what we are feeling a certain way about an issue and automatically assume that the other person feels that way too. If the receiver is feeling negative about the message, he may automatically believe, by projection, that you feel negatively, too. Ever gotten an email and thought, “how dare she?” and automatically become angry? That’s projection. Ever sent a message, assuming the answer will be yes, because you want it to be so much? That’s projection. Ever write a message afraid of what the possible outcomes could be? That’s projection.

Many of us have our feet in today but our heads in tomorrow; this adage implies, in other words, for us to stop that and stay right in the moment. Stay focused, instead of quickly thinking, I just can’t wait until I hear back from Beverly about my idea! It’s such a good one! Stay in the moment. Really examine all the sides and aspects of your idea and make sure you delineate all the aspects of it. Doing so keeps you in the present, and it destroys projection.

Also be aware of what the receiver could be projecting on you. Acknowledging that the projection is going on will help prevent any misunderstanding. If Beverly writes back: This just isn’t feasible at this time, you’re going to be very disappointed—and most likely angry as well. The anger arises because you have projected a certain future, and that future ideal isn’t a reality. So your emotions get in the game.

However, Beverly can frame her response to deal successfully with the projection:

Wow! Sounds as if you are really excited about this idea. And it does have many great points to it. Unfortunately, some things are going on in the business that you most likely are unaware of right now, and those things will keep us from putting this idea in place right now. However, I would love to hear more about your idea so that we can keep it in mind for the future; when’s a good time for us to do coffee?

Another way Beverly can frame the idea is by emphasizing outcomes or goals rather than the certain issue at hand. Beverly could have asked you how the idea fit in with the stated yearly departmental goals; if it didn’t, you would discover that in the process of answering her. Some other common frames are people’s aspirations and sense of identities; understanding those and framing your message to work nicely with those frames is more likely to get you a desired response.

Often business people use sports or military analogies or wording to frame their messages, hoping to make the message visual. Before the 1980s or so, this use of sports and military metaphors often discriminated against many women in business. In today’s post-Title IX world, however, women aren’t the ones who may not identify with the frame. Being aware of the globally diverse composition of today’s workforce can keep you from framing your message in American baseball terms (a grand slam, for instance) that soccer-loving Europeans may have trouble translating.

In conclusion, understanding and using frames is really all about respecting your reader.

Respect the Font

So does the font matter?

Well, look at the issue this way. You may think that a fun font such as Bradley Hand or Comic Sans sets your message apart and identifies you as someone other than commonplace. However, to busy people who are scrolling and trying to read over 30 emails an hour, using these fonts can backfire on you. You could come across as self-centered or just plain old difficult to deal with.

Many of us use Times New Roman, simply out of habit, since universities and citation governing bodies such as APA and MLA require that our work be in that font. According to a Bloomberg study, however, the best fonts to use to send your message are Georgia and Verdana. Georgia ensures that the last stroke of the letter is darker and therefore more readable, while Verdana has better spacing. Verdana is also preferable for meeting accessibility standards because it is easier to read.

Bloomberg’s study also advises against using Arial and Helvetica. The letters in Arial are too similar; the b and the d are exactly the same character, only reversed. And to someone scanning quickly, these characters can become confusing. Helvetica is cramped and just plain old hard to read.

Respect the Send Button

Ever got one of those “someone wishes to recall the last message” emails?

If you have, and you are like most people, instead of saying, “Yes, So-and-So does not want me to read that email” and deleting it, you read that email anyway just to see what that person did not want you to read. And then you begin to wonder why the person wanted to recall it.

People frequently fall victim to the trigger-happy send syndrome. They are so intent on getting the message off their plates that they fail to consider whether the message says what they meant. Throughout this book we have considered the importance of about taking your time. Being in the moment allows you to produce quality work, which in turn saves you time.

Being in the moment means thinking with 100 percent of your concentration on the task at hand, not completing it while you’re thinking about what you’re going to do next or what you will have for dinner when you get home from work. But we have already discussed taking your time. The question is How?

Several techniques exist to help you avoid the trigger-happy send syndrome. You can use any number of apps that will temporarily shut down your access to the Internet; if you use Gmail or Outlook, these will prohibit you from being able to send the email. You can even set up Outlook to delay delivery of messages. But you still have to go back and proofread what you wrote.

Another simple but very helpful technique is to make good use of your drafts box. While you may be in a hurry to get the email off and to get on with the rest of your life, and while you may have every good intention of focusing in a Zen-like manner on the message in front of you, human nature usually takes control of the steering mechanism. It drives you forward, taking you away from your sense of clarity and moves you quietly into thinking about the next task. That’s where the drafts box becomes helpful. You use your best Zen-like approach to writing your email. But before you hit Send, first look a little further left on your options menu. Instead of sending the email, move it into your drafts box.

Then proceed to put 100 percent of your concentration on the next email. Focus on it, use the WIFM and the 5 W’s approach, with your headline upfront, and write. But don’t hit Send on this one either; move it into the drafts box. Once you’re in the drafts box, go back to the first email that you moved there. Read it. Chances are very good you will find something to change, add, or tweak; very few things are ever perfect in the first incarnation. Fix those errors, add the extra information or cut the unnecessary junk. Doing so should take you no more than 60 seconds. But by reviewing before you hit Send, you have a better message and a clearer document. Only when you have given the email this drafts-box cool-and-correct editing minute do you then hit Send.

Why does this technique work? Because when we write, we are so intent on living in the middle of our own thoughts and messages that the self gets in the way. That sense of ego, that sense of self, often keeps us from doing our most effective work. By moving into another message and putting all of your concentration into that new message and into another topic, you move out of the self-absorption of the first message.

As a result, when you go back to read the second message, you see it in its entirety, not as a message in creation. You see it as the reader would see it. You don’t see it as a product of your mind; you see it as a separate being from your own identity and self. Therefore, you can see things to fix, even if all you do is put your cursor at the end of one line, enter, and separate a long block of prose.

You may be saying at this point “But I don’t have that kind of time!” Ironically, you don’t have the kind of time not to do this. Moving that email into the drafts box takes the same amount of time is hitting Send; going back and rereading it takes less than a minute. You may be investing less than 60 seconds at the most. Yet by investing 60 seconds, you add to the value of your email by adding clarity, conciseness, and readability. That in turn makes your readers feel more favorable when they receive your message; they are aware on some level that you have done your best to help them understand the message, which often means you have helped them do their work in an easier and more efficient manner.

By this simple investment of a matter of seconds, you have strengthened the relationship between you and your reader, and you have moved it into a positive zone. You have invested in creating a network, a team, or a partnership. You gain allies, not frustrated readers who wonder where in the world you got your degree, and why you are still employed by the company. Instead of staking out a small self-absorbed zone of your own little world, you connect; you become one with your greater organization and your greater consciousness. If that is not the definition of an effective team player, I do not know what it is.

You also gain time by not having to recall messages, answer follow-up emails, or clear up details. You will be surprised to know what investing those few seconds can do for your writing and your professional image. Just avoid trying to hit that send button as quickly as possible.

A Non-Zen Observation

Honoring the reader does indeed accept the reality of the reader and meets him on his own terms. However, understanding how to use the medium, the frames, and the delayed send button benefits us as the writer as well. As the infamous (and definitely not Zen) writer Machiavelli noted, the end justifies the means. And if the end is a message that is received and a work environment where people feel respected and heard, I’d say the means were justified.