CHAPTER 10
by Andrew Brodsky
IMAGINE SENDING A DETAILED QUESTION to your boss and getting a one-word response: “No.” Is she angry? Offended by your email? Or just very busy? When I conduct research with organizations on the topic of communication, one of the most common themes raised by both employees and managers is the challenge of trying to communicate emotional or sensitive issues over email. Email, of course, lacks most normal cues for relaying emotion, such as tone of voice and facial expressions.
But in many cases, using email is simply unavoidable. So how can you balance the need to communicate with avoiding the potential pitfalls of using emotion in email? Here are three concrete, research-based recommendations:
It is clear that people often misinterpret emotion in email, but what drives the direction of the misinterpretation? For one, people infuse their emotional expectations into how they read messages, regardless of the sender’s actual intent.1 Consider the email, “Good job on the current draft, but I think we can continue to improve it.” Coming from a peer, this email will seem very collaborative; coming from a supervisor, it may seem critical.
In addition to relative position (emails from people high in power tend to be perceived as more negative), there are other contextual factors to consider: the length of a relationship (emails from people we know well tend to be perceived as less negative), the emotional history of the relationship, and the individual’s personality (negative people tend to perceive messages as more negative).
The first step in avoiding miscommunication is to try to stand in the recipient’s shoes, and imagine how they are likely to interpret your message. Doing so can help you to prevent misunderstandings before they ever occur.
What is the best way to convey emotions via email? Emoticons? Word choice? Exclamation points? There is no single correct answer; the proper cues will vary based on the context. For instance, you likely wouldn’t want to send a smiley face emoticon to a client organization that is known for having a very formal culture. Alternatively, you wouldn’t want to send an overly formal email to a very close colleague.
One strategy that has been found to be very effective across settings is to engage in behavioral mimicry—using emoticons, word-choice, and slang/jargon in a similar manner to the person with whom you are communicating. In a set of studies of American, Dutch, and Thai negotiators, using behavioral mimicry in the early stages of text-based chat negotiations increased individual outcomes by 30%. This process of mimicry increases trust because people tend to feel an affinity toward those who act similarly to them.2
While mimicking behaviors can be effective, it is still a rather subtle strategy that leaves the potential for emotional ambiguity. The simplest solution to avoid any confusion is to just explicitly state the emotion that you want to relay in your email.
One excellent example of how this works comes from a media organization I recently worked with. I asked employees for an email that they felt was written very poorly, and one employee provided me with the following message from a manager:
The intro of the commercial needs to be redone. I’m sure that’s the client’s doing and you will handle it :). Warm Regards, [Manager’s Name].
To me as an outsider (and I’m guessing to the manager as well), this email seemed well crafted to avoid offending the employee. However, the employee felt differently and explained: “She knows perfectly well that I made the terrible intro, and she was saying, ‘Well, I’m sure the client made that segment and that you will tackle it,’ and then she put a little smiley face at the end. So overall, a condescendingly nasty tone.”
If the manager had avoided subtlety and stated her meaning directly, there might have been less room for interpretation. For example, what if she had written:
I am very happy with your work so far. I think the intro could be improved, though; would you mind giving it another shot?
The employee would have had far less ambiguity to fill in with her own emotional expectations.
Yet people rarely state their intended emotions, even when the stakes are high. Research from NYU has shown that many people are overconfident in their ability to accurately relay emotions when it comes to email.3 It may seem obvious to the message sender that a coworker who never takes sick days will realize a comment about them leaving early is humorous rather than serious. However, that coworker might be particularly concerned about being seen as lazy and will feel hurt or offended.
Given the constantly evolving nature of organizational communication, there is still a lot to learn about effective email use. However, there are some clear areas where we can improve. In reality, we all have the same flaw: We tend to be overly focused on ourselves and our own goals, while failing to amply account for other people’s perspectives. Using these methods for bridging your and your email recipient’s perspectives, by both increasing message clarity and building trust, will help you to ensure effective communication.
Andrew Brodsky is a PhD candidate in organizational behavior at Harvard Business School.
Adapted from content posted on hbr.org on April 23, 2013, as “The Do’s and Don’ts of Work Email” (product #H020WK)
Notes
1. Kristin Byron, “Carrying Too Heavy a Load? The Communication and Miscommunication of Emotion by Email,” Academy of Management Review 33, no. 2 (April 2008): 309–327.
2. William W. Maddux et al., “Chameleons Bake Bigger Pies and Take Bigger Pieces: Strategy Behavioral Mimicry Facilitates Negotiation Outcomes,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 44, no. 2 (March 2008): 461–468; and Roderick I. Swaab et al., “Early Words That Work: When and How Virtual Linguistic Mimicry Facilitates Negotiation Outcomes,” Journal of Experimental Psychology 47, no. 3 (May 2011): 616–621.
3. Justin Kruger et al., “Egocentrism Over E-mail: Can We Communicate as Well as We Think?” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 89, no. 6 (December 2005): 925–936.