The average professional spends close to one-third of their workweek reading and responding to emails. By keeping your messages concise and reducing back and forth threads you can reclaim some of this time and increase the likelihood that your messages will get a quick response.

Every day you likely receive some variety of the following emails: those you never read and either immediately delete or send to inbox purgatory, those you stop reading halfway through (or sooner), those you read but don’t follow through on because they are too wordy and complicated, and finally those special ones that you immediately reply to.

You want your emails to be the ones that people want to immediately reply to, so the first step is to make your message concise. A concise message is likely to bring you the best results for these three reasons:

1. People are more likely to actually read a clear and concise message.

All the necessary information can be absorbed efficiently.

2. People are more likely to respond to a concise message

A concise message gives the impression that the task you are requesting is also concise so not overly time-consuming, prompting a quick response.

3. Concise messages save the reader time.

Pretty self-explanatory.

Readers often interpret the length of a message as an indication of how difficult and time-consuming it will be to respond to.

The second step is to create an email protocol that will discipline you to identify the goal of your message and an efficient process (‘one and done’) for accomplishing the goal.

Even a short email can be a time suck if it takes multiple back and forth messages to reach the actual goal of the thread.

Example:

Kia ora _____

I would like to catch up with you this week about the project.

Here are three days and times that work for me. If any of these work for you let me know and we can meet at this zoom link:

If none of these work, reply with some days and times that work for you and I’ll choose one.

Option 1

Option 2

Option 3

Nga Manaakitanga

Your goal is to optimize your email for readability and scanability and give the recipient a simple way to give you the answer you need in one response.

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Feedback is crucial for building good relationships within an organisation. When feedback is frequently exchanged it increases engagement, productivity, effectiveness and satisfaction. So if feedback is so beneficial, what keeps some organisations from developing this practice? It may be that we underestimate how much others want to receive constructive feedback, the extent to which recipients will find the feedback helpful, and consequently whether or not they will be grateful for it.

This dilemma is demonstrated by a recent research study that found that less than 3 percent of people gave feedback when prompted,  compared to the 86 percent of people who indicated that they wanted to receive feedback. The reason so few gave feedback? They didn’t think that people truly wanted it. The study found that people consistently underestimated others’ desire for feedback. The more consequential the situation, the more people underestimated the desire for feedback.

How do you overcome this reluctance to give feedback?

Imagine how much you would want the feedback if you were the other person.

You want to know when you have something on your face or in your teeth, if you are mispronouncing or misspelling a word, if there is a flaw in your plan or if you are being offensive. Most people indicated that constructive feedback was almost always something that they would want to receive. Remembering this will help you realize how much others want to receive feedback and will make you more likely to actually give it.

Key takeaway: People want our feedback more than we realise.

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