Month: October 2020

I’m old enough that I remember when email first began to be commonly used. We thought it was so exciting. You could communicate with others instantly!! You could send things electronically and people could see them in color instead of the fuzzy fax! We could archive previous emails and have a record of our correspondence. It truly was an amazing technological achievement.

Fast forward to today, and dealing with the number of emails is one of the chief complaints that I hear. How do you keep up with the volume?!

A few common-sense suggestions:

• Make it part of the culture never to send emails that just acknowledge receipt of the previous email (i.e. “Thanks!”). No one will miss them and it will go a long way in reducing the sticker shock of seeing so many emails in your inbox.
• Be far more judicious than you are with the use of “Reply All.” Before you hit send, consider if even one person could be left off your email chain.
• Schedule things in advance to avoid all the “email tag” of going back and forth with options.
• Be intentional about your subject line, including ACTION REQUIRED or FYI.
• Utilize rules, folders and flags to help you manage the volume.
• Unsubscribe from any email subscription or newsletter that you don’t read within a day of receiving it.
• Consider establishing a separate email address to use with vendors and promotions – places where you know you’ll be receiving follow-up solicitations or advertisements after giving your email – and let those go to a separate inbox that you can ignore or make a low priority.
• Pick up the phone! If the subject is complicated, it will save you time to have a two-way conversation instead of a string of emails back and forth.
• Create Quick Parts or templates to help you more easily reply to standard requests so you are able to reply and delete the original email quickly.
• Hold tight. The election is just around the corner and, if your inbox is anything like mine, the volume will decrease significantly when you are no longer bombarded with political ads.

 How have you tamed your inbox monster? Share your tips in the comments and help others learn to see email as the gift it is instead of a burden.

Too often evaluation questions are set up to provide data but not actionable information that can result in real change. We ask people to rate the quality of a session on a Likert 1-5 scale, but in the end, it doesn’t tell us much. The restaurant manager asks: “How was your meal?” but likely only hears “fine” or some other generic answer.  We ask staff “how’s it going?” while in passing, and convince ourselves that we’re asking them for real feedback.

If you want to obtain useable information to help you understand your employees or volunteers here is a sampling of questions that you may adapt toward that end:

• What do I do that is most helpful to you?
• What should I stop doing?
• What’s the hardest part of your role?
• What’s the best part of your role?
• What’s the one thing that you wish we did differently?
• What’s one thing I could do to make things better/easier for you?
• What’s one piece of advice you would give me?
• What’s one piece of advice you would give to a new member of your team?
• What’s one piece of advice you would give to someone taking your role?
• What’s one thing you wish you did better in your role?
• On a spectrum of invaluable to useless, how would you rate _______?
• On a spectrum of a micromanager to not available, how would you rate the amount of interaction you have with me?
• On a spectrum of perfect to lacking, how would you rate the amount of information you receive from me?
• On a spectrum of perfect to lacking, how would you rate the amount of interaction you have with the other staff?
• What’s one change you would make to my communication to you?
• On a spectrum of thrilled to worried, how do you feel about your team? Why?
• Give yourself some feedback. You’d be an awesome employee if only….
• Give me some feedback. I’d be an awesome supervisor if only…
• What I wish we had available to us that we don’t is…
• The one thing I probably do differently for my team than other team leaders is…
• The hardest process for me to follow to the letter is…
• On a spectrum of well prepared to faking it, how do you feel about the knowledge you have to fill your role effectively?
• What’s one thing you could do to make your team stronger/more effective/more cohesive/more XX?
• The one thing you’d like more information about is …

You get the idea. Asking about “one thing” helps narrow the focus and takes the pressure off them to believe they are naming “everything” or to avoid giving an answer at all. When you use “on a spectrum” questions, you help people see that there are extremes at both ends and they can assess where they fall which is much more helpful than a “yes or no” answer.

Play around with these prompts and see if you can actually learn something from your next opportunity to get feedback. Hopefully, on a spectrum of useful to worthless, you’ll find them on the quite useful end of the scale!

A good mantra for communication – always, but especially now that so many are remote – is to RESPOND rather than to REACT. It’s a sign of Emotional Intelligence to be able to modulate your emotions, and replying calmly to emails or messages is a great time to put that into practice.

Sharing your emotions without the buffer of time or context rarely advances the conversation in a productive way. If you respond to a message with an open mind instead of drawing conclusions, you are more likely to gain understanding instead of escalating the drama.

I used to have a supervisor who was notorious for firing off email rants late in the evening, thus starting our day on a sour note. Instead of seeking clarification, the email insinuated that we had done something wrong and we were taken to task without an opportunity to clarify. I’m not sure it helped anyone.

Make it your practice to assume a positive intent rather than ranting in your messages. A mature response can go a long way toward fostering productive dialogue and preserving your relationships.