Improving E-Mail

If you’re the boss, the e-mails you send out can tell a lot about you, according to David Owens, clinical pro­fessor of management at Vanderbilt University’s Owen School of Management. Owens can analyze an e-mail and determine the sender’s rank and seniority level in a company. He says managers who are higher up in the company tend to send formal e-mails that lack detail, while managers lower on the corporate ladder will often send detailed messages and include humor in a less formal attempt to communicate. Here are a few tips for better e-mail use:

• Don’t use e-mail as your only way of communicating.
• Keep your messages short and sweet-and don’t allow your exchanges to go on too long before you change over to face-to-face.
• Make your subject line clear and only send your mes­sage to the people it really needs to go to.
• Encourage questions in response to your e-mail.
• If you’re angry, save it for a face-to-face encounter.
• A little humor is good, but too much could erode your attempts to later send serious information.
• Set a five-minute rule. Wait five minutes before you send any message out. It’ll give you time to correct a poorly written phrase or change your mind about sending the e-mail at all.
• Try to keep up with your e-mail every day.
• Use spell check. Proofread and look things up. Making silly mistakes can make you look bad.

-adapted from the Microsoft Small Business Web site