This has always been my advice when writing an email/blogpost/sms/slack…. basically any form of communication that isn’t direct when the message you are delivering is negative, verbalises criticism, is questioning someone’s judgement, or is accusatatory.
Emails to the boss
That nasty email you’ve written your boss because you think they’ve over stepped the mark, or have passed you over for a promotion, or have denied your leave request or what ever it might be.
Write it, get it off your chest, then save it for later. Ideally you don’t even write it in an email client just incase you accidently do send it (I’ve seen someone accidently click Send instead of Save as Draft when closing an email without sending…. brutal consequences). Instead, fire up a simple text file and do it there.
Email reply to a client
Oh wow, we’ve all had that client! They’ve probably just sent you an email that is completely wrong, placing blame at your feet, distorting the truth, and generally pissing you off.
Again, don’t do anything in your email client! One of my colleagues once forwarded a client email to our boss and went through a fairly hefty list of things that the client was wrong about, and then went on to cover more issues they had with the client.
Except they didn’t forward the email.
They replied.
Emailling a service provider
My wife really doesn’t like servivce providers and I’ve enjoyed reading some of her emails and letters over the years.
For me it takes a lot longer to wind me up, but when it happens…. look out.
The long wind up
The issue with a long wind up is that over time you get more and more annoyed. This is a good indication that they are actually in the wrong rather than you. I often find that I react poorly to something, bite my tongue, and then find that I’m nowhere near as
It’s a temporary frustration that seems like the worse thing in the world at the time, but given some rationale thought and some time to calm down it’s actually not that bad. By waiting, it gives your Higher Brain a chance to look at the situation from more than your Primal Brain’s point of view.
So when things have gone on for months…… I won’t just email them with my disappointment, I will also publically tweet about the issues that have occurred.
And Facebook them.
Probably Instagram them too.
I’ll look to find as many of the channels that they operate on and express my displeasure with their services and cover the full story of that experience.
I’ll even write a blog post… which I will title in a way that hopefully gains further SEO traction so that when other people are considering using the product they will most likely not after reading. But, I will save that as a draft and will re-read again next week.
When you get it all off your chest it can make you feel better about the situation. Also, by re-reading the words you’ve written you can begin to identify where you’re being factually correct and where you’re being overly passionate.
I’ve written this today because my first post was a scathing review of a service provider. I’m giving them four weeks to come good and wil refine the post over time to be factually accurate, and at the end of the 4 weeks I hope I can post how everything finished so everyone got what they wanted.
*saves as draft*