Reactions to "Chronically, Electronically Misunderstood"

Email is a monumnetal boon, but like any communication method, it takes practice, skill, and discipline to use it most effectively. Adding to the frames of mind not recommended for emailing, I suggest also refraining when intoxicated, unless your recipient will for forgive you and even enjoy your nonsensical banter.

Some emailing habits are truly annoying, like when someone dissects an email into lines and paragraphs and responds underneath a given part. I shouldn't have to re-read every point I've made. You can easily type a new paragraph above my email should I need it for reference.

And then there are people who may not get back to you right away and leave out your initial email entirely while making references to something you may not remember.

But similar shortcomings happen in everyday verbal communication. One person might respond and react in real time without understanding what you truly meant because that person may not have been listening very well. A very deliberate but effective exercise is to restate what one person has said in order to confirm true understanding, and then follow with your oral response. You can only do this with a clear and patient head.

So, should we also refrain from speaking when we are angry or hurt?


Glen

I like to think email is a convenience which allows people to keep in touch on topical things: i.e. how are things going, did you read this article, are you home later, did you get my message, etc. but from this starting block one would use direct communication.

I for one cannot conduct a serious discussion over email because I need to get the mannerisms that email omits. even in hand written letters you can see how someone’s handwriting changes with their tone.

Email I think has gone from an added convenience to a sole necessity.


kirk
mr, designer

MJ missed an important advantage of email. This medium allows you to keep in touch with friends that you may have otherwise let slip away. With our hectic world, it is easy to let communication with old friends dwindle, especially when one's only free time is late at night. Other media can be too time consuming--like sending a letter or calling a friend only to receive their answering machine, starting the never ending phone tag game.

MJ also missed the mark on chitchat. One can definitely chitchat via email. In fact, many of my email interactions with old friends contain light and fun topcs, which are a refreshing relief that I can choose to experience right when I need that pick-me-up.

Email has allowed me to keep relationships with many more friends than I ever thought possible after high school, college, marriage, and parenthood.

Bryan Showers

A very interesting article I must admit since I work in a public administation where e-mail is now 'the thing to do' (apart from the trend of organising endless series of meetings to discuss the topics to be discussed in the next meeting). The amount of information we are asked to process each day has exponentially increased since the arrival of e-mail. The problem is that it becomes virtulally impossible to filter the important from the trivial information so the risk to overlook something is very realistic. Of course for the sender of the e-mail it's convenient and very easy to put half the office in CC or worse, in BCC, in order to cover his back for a later stage: 'yes, you were aware about the problem because I mentioned it in my e-mail d.d....'. I often receive these awfull enchained e-mails where 2 people are almost chatting with each other and while replying they put systematically everybody in copy. Horrible! In my opinion a good mail-etiquette, some system-restrictions and a lot of common sence would solve a good deal of the inconvenients but nevertheless, it's too easy and appealing to use. Imagine youself doing the same thing with a fax as with an e-mail...

Christophe Peeters
Head of the 'Workplace' sector, Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market - Alicante - Spain

I have had the experience of receiving an email ending a business relationship with a friend via email and it was hurtful because I really agreed with her and was hurt that she felt too busy to talk with me in person (at least that was the reason she gave) We have salvaged the friendship because I was aware of the many stresses in her life and I am grateful that I did not overreat and still I am concerned that she would use the same method in a future situation and I have asked her repeatedly not to email me in these types of situations... I don't know what else I can do. I personally beleive many people use the excuse that it is sooooo efficient and they are soooo busy when they are just not desiring to deal with hurting someone's feeling and using email allows them to remain dosconnected.

Susan Calder
Account Executive, Officeworks Inc.

I think that some are taking this email too far, meaning that some are think that it is the 'New' form of communication. In all reality, even though it is new, it is another form of communication. I feel that if there is something important to be said, I will pick up the phone, but if I just want to keep in contact with some classmates from college I can send a quick email.

Just like a cell phone, I think back a few years ago and say 'How did I ever live without this...' I could not imagine what life would be like without the internet and email. If there is anything that I need to research, or find directions to a restaurant, and even emailing someone to find out more information about a product that I'm interested in...that is all made easier via the internet, but that is not to say that it is the only way to get this information. I have had several occasions where I had to call a friend, call a restaurant or call a manufacturing company for information. Take the best possible route for getting what you need, and as some have already said, use common sense. The internet and email are tools to help for convenience, not replacements for the phone and letters.

Let's use the internet and email as a tool to help stay in touch, but still use other ways of communication when important issues arise. Just as in life, use common sense, be careful what you say and get some clarification if need be.

Scott
Software Test Engineer

Hmmm...as with every form of interpersonal communication, email has unique attributes and drawbacks. It's ubiquity has helped revive the art of [letter] writing as a preferred form of executive communication. Since most of us type our own work, a letter requires very little extra effort.


Common sense and ettiquette demand, on some occasions, there is no substitute for a handwritten letter...and my hand hasn't improved with age. But communication is a use-it-or-lose-it skill and I believe most written work improves commensurate with use. For what it's worth, a periodic review of Strunk & White's "Elements of Style" never hurt anyone.

Whether one is communicating with shareholders, partners or family members, in person or by written or electronic proxy, one would do well to remember the difference between a response and a reaction. Too often, that distinction is lost in the heat of the moment.

David C Dudley
Operating Manager/CEO, Dudley & Associates, LLC

At the risk of coming off as a Luddite (and acknowledging that I'm online often, work with technology, and send scores of e-mails every day), I can't help but feel sad about the direction we're going. . . and wonder whether it will play itself out. Like cell phones and Blackberries that can interrupt you every minute, e-mail seems to me to encourage superficiality and unconsidered reaction. I heard with interest at a recent conference about companies declaring one day a week as e-mail free--so people *had* to get up and seek each other out or, at minimum, pick up the phone. Is this the pendulum swinging?

Edith Pierce

This was right on time or as the French would say: tombe juste!
I've been emailing folks for a while--happy to see folks get back to the art of writing, communicating--but it can be hard. And bad things said. And tones misread. And I lost a friend this way. And a job. But because of email and the trail, I won an unemployment appeal! I've been seduced. Had a lover break up with me. Been cursed out. Praised. Loved and supported. All via email. Some connection is better than none and I hate being dependent on the phone--but I crave that intimacy once again.
On a good note I'm making new connections thanks to online dating/mating, but I am careful to read between the lines and answer carefully. Far be it from me to be perceived as some vapid submissive vixen when all I meant was I want to be supported!

Thanks for this. I will email it to my friends!

Lila Polite
Scribble Bibble Prods.

The problem with email I believe has a lot to do with the overwhelming number of email we receive every day. As the article pointed out "When everything hits us at once, it can cause stress and blur our senses a little." This is very true. It's not as if we are electronically hooked into our email INBOX, when we look at our email we often find it has banked up and everyone expects an answer yesterday. I have two email accounts, and I know friends that have over 5 email accounts.

Once I sent a colleague an email titled "urgent". He didn't respond for nearly three days, so I called him. His response was, "email is just one form of communication, and had you called me, I could have given you the answer on the spot--three days ago..."

Lesson - Avoid Email when you can. You'll find you are more understood as a person, you're less prone to being socially incapacitated, and suprisingly, real verbal communication saves time, because email is mostly misinterpreted, misconstrued, and often this leads to frustration, and eventually, a phone call!



Andrew Bevan
IT Officer

I find email to be essential at keeping touch with my grown and distant children. Phone calls everseas are costly, but emails can be sent for free, and a slow motion conversation take place over the couse of a day or longer.

On the other hand, email was a major contibutor of my marriage breakup, too. When my ex sent me emails that drove me crazy, I fired off answers in the heat of my anger that could never be undone. It was much worse that fighting on the phone, as it was all in writing and could be re-read at will, so as to never forget the words. He remembered things that I no longer remembered emailing! And he showed them to me, too.

And you never mentioned the hate emails that can come to your desk and leave you unable to function for the rest of the day! I nearly lost my job like that. Every day my (now) ex would email me another nasty-gram, and destroy whatever calm I had built up over the evening, until I feared my boss would notice and fire me.

Then again, my best freind in Germany, and I, have had a running chat ever since I left her country. It is a joy to get her occasional emails, and her support in my life and work issues.

Email cuts both ways, but like my children, I would never give it up.

Susan Gero
Network Admin, US Air Force Reserves

This was a really good piece. We should be able to honor and respect e-mail as a fast medium to convey information. But talking to friends and family cannot be for merely exchange of information. So constantly mailing friends and family during office hours can be hazardous and should be avoided! But even then writing long mails to friends overseas after a long time gives great pleasure and so does receiving such mails :-)

Madhu