Do you review your email before you send it?  If you are like most busy executives, the answer is “probably not”.

That creates a bigger problem than the vast majority of people realize.

I regularly teach a course on Effective Communication across the country, and the bulk of the course is devoted to email communication.  Why?  Because that is literally the majority of all  our communication.  If you were to create a daily log of how much time you communicate in person versus on the phone versus in writing, you would find that the writing portion of your communication is more than double the other two forms of communication combined.

Your answer to that question might be, “So what?”

The problem creeps in with the fact that we loose all sense of being the recipient of our communication when it is in  writing.  Think about it; when you are face to face with someone you can see their facial expressions and body language to determine if they got what you were saying; even in voice communication you will be able to tell with subtle changes in voice inflection and the context of their speech how effective you were at communicating your message.

However, when you send an email, a tremendous amount of communications end with a single exchange.  The reality is that we have no idea what occurred on the other end of that communication, but we expect that it was received exactly as we sent it.  Here is an important update….it is almost never received as you intended it.

Let me give you an example that I use in the course that I teach on this subject..let’s say you respond to an email from a colleague with “yeah, right”.  Did you mean that in the sarcastic form of “yeah, right” as in, “no way?”   Or did you mean that in the agreement form of “yeah, right” as in “yes, that is correct”?  In writing there is no difference.  The difference can only be judged by the context of the communication or, more commonly, can only be determined with the other two dimensions of communication (as in voice or in person).

“Big deal” you might conclude.  If that is your response, then whatever you say in a meeting or on the phone is no big deal either.  The reality is that “you” are determined by your communication and literally nothing else.  The only person who knows “you” outside of what you communicate is quite literally, you!  So what you are to the rest of the planet is what you communicate.

And since most of your communication is via email, why do we treat it so frivolously?

I just received a note from a VP of Sales today who had been through my communications course before.  He had actually forwarded a note from a person who was looking to get hired by this VP of Sales.  Without cutting and pasting the email in this post, let me summarize by saying that the person who sent the note got the name of the VP of Sales wrong; had multiple misspellings in the email; had glaring grammatical errors and had multiple sentences which had two identical words next to each other.  Bottom line; it was horrible.

Did this guy know that his email communicated to the VP of Sales that he was inept and a terrible communicator?  Nope.  Is the VP of Sales ever going to send him an email saying his communication was horrible?  Nope.   Do you think this guy will ever improve his communication skills?  Probably not.

Remember this vital point:  You are what you communicate whether you want it that way or not, or whether you intended it that way or not.  Maybe this will give everyone a reason to pause and do a quick review before they hit that Send button.