On Email and relationships

Much of my writing energy has gone into speeches of late, but I've been motivated to start blogging again by EvilHRLady.

She had posted a comment on AskaManager's blog that "I wish people would stop calling me and just use e-mail". I responded to her post, and she's since posted my response on her blog, so I thought I'd expand on that here.

When working in a large organisation as a lawyer I often wished people would just talk to each other more. I found myself picking up the phone to cut through the e-mail tennis and resolve all the issues in one go. Or walking three doors down and having a face to face conversation.

Yes, sure e-mail can be fine for a simple factual question where you need to keep a record of the discussion, and you don’t want to be misinterpreted (or to have evidence on your side if you are.) It can be convenient, because you can read it when you wish, and interruptions by phone are a pain. It can also be good if you want to be super-careful you are complying with policy.

But, it requires a high-trust environment, and acts as a magnifier of divisions where there is low trust and suspicion.

For many, many things I found it much better to cut off the e-mail exchange and have a proper conversation rather than e-mail tennis. It enabled any false assumptions to be ironed out and to build relationships. And hearing someone’s voice means you have a chance of a relationship.
A bit of chit-chat, and there is every chance you'll find something out which could help you provide better information, or that you could use to do a better job with that piece of work or the next one.

I found people would revert to e-mail in low-trust situations, which then amplified mutual suspicion. Apparently innocent statements would be mined for deeper meaning.

“aha I have evidence he said x”
" he’s saying x can you believe it...”,
“listen to how he put this, he obviously.....”

Devoid of a human relationship, people would read in the worst.

Or, they would sense the truth: that the reason their manager was communicating in writing was because the manager was afraid that the person was going to be"difficult" . They sense that what’s being written is being done to “cover the back” of the manager. And no-one likes to be treated in a way which assumes you’ll be on the other side in litigation.

The use of e-mail also provides as a way of distancing a manager from staff. I’ve seen managers refer to non-committal, weasel-worded replies which are compliant with policy, but which are a way of avoiding an honest and personal relationship.

The (literally) unspoken message they are communicating is that the person is not an equal, not trusted, not respected, a potential problem. The recipient feels “He’s toeing the party line”, or "she’s treating me like a statistic." It's disengaged and disengaging.

That said, E mail is handy if you are going to have to make a diary note of the call anyway, if there’s a high trust environment with relationships built away from the e-mail, or if it’s a factual request (how many days annual leave do I have?) which the recipient is likely to want to work on in a batch, or need to research.

Reverting to e-mail in a situation where the employment relationship is already bad, can help provide evidence for the subsequent employment/industrial tribunal/litigation.

But it can waste time with minor points bouncing back and forth. Good relationships are better built by speaking to people.