Are you having trouble getting the message out when writing an email? You might be doing it wrong.
I receive large quantities of email each day, at work, and at home. I see a lot of faulty ways to write an email. Do you want to do a better job? Learn how to write a good email. I must admit that I have not yet found a good system on how to handle emails in a good way, and oh.. I have tried. But the best system for me is that you know how to write them. In this article I will show you how I prefer to receive an email, and you will get good advice on how to make sure it’s read and that the recipient take the right action.

How do I divide emails?

• Action emails – These emails require me to take action, I need to do something in order to be able to reply.
• Read emails – FYI – For Your Information – These emails need to be read, archived or deleted. I do not need to do more with these.
• Trash emails – My favorite – Emails I can delete at once. Uninteresting, not relevant, spam that made it through my filter, hush…! Old ones I’ve forgotten all about…

Let’s start with the basics: Who do you write to?

You need to think about who you write to. Who needs to take action, who needs the information and who DON’T need the email.

TO: This is to the people that needs to take actions. If I am in the “to”-field I expect that I need to take action. There are some exceptions, I’ll get back to that.
CC:Carbon Copy, I am on the copy field. This means that the information is FYI, I am just informed about what the “to-ers” got to do.
BCC:Blind Carbon Copy, as it says, “Blind” – the recipients don’t know that I get it. This article describes how BCC can harm your career. So be careful. This is for sure a FYI, just read email.

To be clear: If you want me to respond, take action or do something, put me in the to- field.

The promised exception: If I am the only recipient, use FYI in the subject line to indicate that I just need to read.

The subject line

Please do use keywords. And start with some hints. Like these:

• URGENT: Need you to do this fast, really do consider calling instead.
• DEADLINE: mm.dd.yyyy or in whatever date format your country use.
• FYI: Just read this email please
• RESPONSE EXPECTED: I need you to answer this
• NOT URGENT: Take your time

URGENT: Catfood project – please review project plan

What the ???? do I need to do?

I fellow wise co-worker said today, if there is no response, it’s because they either don’t know the answer or they don’t know what to do with it. I have been thinking about this today and I think it makes sense. Why don’t you reply to your emails?

Here is the solution: Write what you need people to do, summarize after all the blah blah with names and tasks:

• Gina; I need you to tweet about this post.
• Geoff: I need to comment and be amazed.
• Steve: FYI – just relax, you don’t need to do anything.

This creates a clear instruction. And all recipients will know what to do, and confusion issues are solved. I have received emails to me (customer service) with carbon copy to finance department, with a question to them. They should not reply, and I don’t know the answer.

How many emails do you receive each day?

Did you answer, way too many? Well so do I, and most other people at work. This is why it is important to consider these factors before you email like a like a drunken sailor spends money.

• Who needs to take action?
• Who needs to know?
• Who really don’t need this information?
• Should I call, or walk over instead?
• Do I really want to send this at all?

You should try to reduce the amount of emails you send. A good idea is to be a bit psychic and imagine what the next question will be and respond to it in the first email (This is actually an excellent customer service advice as well) – I’ll use an example from my days in telecom. We would get customers asking if they could get an email account with us. The short answer is: Yes. – The next question is how; so answer the how at once, and where, and how much, and technical stuff like POP3 and SMTP server.

Hot tip: Don’t send important emails right away, wait for a while, read it and make sure you have followed these advices and be a bit psychic – answer the next question, saves you another email. And DON’T send if you KNOW it will generate a new question.

Emotions in emails are impossible!

No I do not know if this line is sarcastic. I do not know if you are smiling when you write. I do not know if this was supposed to be funny, unless I really know you, and it is still hard. Smileys don’t help. I often write: Please read this email in a jolly and happy manner. If I do, I know that my email might sound harsh and angry, when it’s not supposed to be. I have seen emails that would shock your socks off between people who know each other. For them it was humor, for me, I thought they were sworn enemies with a lot of hate and was preparing to solve conflicts at work. So be careful.

TO: Loyal readers; All new readers
CC: Steve; Geoff; Gina
BCC: mom
Subject: URGENT: Please share and subscribe

Hi all!
I am a bit short of twitter followers due to limitations to prevent spam, and that is good, but it is preventing me from following more amazing people.

Loyal readers: Please to share this post on Facebook, Twitter, Digg, Stumbleupon or wherever you feel fit.
New readers: Please do find a way to subscribe to my blog, and follow me on twitter. And THEN share.

CC: Steve, Geoff and Gina, there is a message for you in the middle of this post, no further action is necessary.

Have a great day, and thank you for reading.

Best regards

Frode Heimen

Do you think you influence people as a leader? Most likely you do. The first experience you will get when being promoted from co-worker to boss is that what you say is not trivial anymore. Your words are being analyzed and battered to pieces just to figure out “what you really mean” – speaking to your co-workers will unfortunately never be quite the same. Today I am going to write about building barriers and how to strengthen them.

Building your tribe

Using words like “us” and “we” will include people in your tribe. It is important to be aware of the effect these words has, as people want to belong in a group. By talking about your department or your company with “us” and “we” you are branding your tribe and making border for who is “us” and “the others”. It is like putting your arm forward and embracing the people accepted in your crowd.

Creating your enemy

We all know that in order to create loyal followers you need to create an enemy. By using words like “them”, “they” or “the others” you are creating a distance between your tribe and those others.
“Those guys in accounting” – You are creating bad lines of communication, when you speak about people in your own company in an alienating way.
“Us” is those inside your circle the people you are calling “them” is the others, the strangers, the people that is hard to work with, the people at the other side of the wall.

Watch out where you create your borders

If you pay no attention you might create a separated group within your company. Or a divided city within your own country, it just doesn’t work in the long run. You might want to keep the borders outside your own company? Typical inner-city borders are departments or divisions blaming each other for problems.

Our responsibility to bring down the walls.

As a leader or an employee you must remember who your tribe is. At most companies you have one chief, a group of chief advisors (chief wannabes) and a few more minor chiefs trying to do their best in middle management. Your tribe is your company. “Us” is all of the employees. There is no “them” – “them” is the competition.

1. Always use “us” and “we”
2. If disagreements between leaders, find a solution first and include and inform employees about what we found out at the pow-wow.
3. Do not involve employees by blaming “them” for problems. WE have problems, we solve them.
4. The only time to use “they” or “them” is when you are giving praise to someone. “they did a good job and we are all grateful”
5. Avoid internal blame game, identify the problem and discuss solutions. Ask questions like: What can we do to solve this? Is there anything we can do to assist?
6. Do not call upper management for “them” and leaders should not call employees “them” it is all we. If we f**k up, we will all be without a job.

“what are you going to do about the problem?” – How about using “what should we do to solve this problem?” instead?

So, how are we going to spread the word guys? How about using twitter to reach them?
And we all follow @frodeheimen don’t we? And please share with us other ways to bring down walls in the comments field below.

Thank you so much for reading my blog.



Wall demolisher and motivational gardener

- 5 Pivotal Points Often Overlooked in Hiring

The hiring process is fraught with uncertainty. Making the right hire is no sure thing, despite the increasingly large array of sophisticated tools available to managers. We see job candidates scrutinized, resumes inspected, credentials probed, and yet when all is said and done the selection process is still much more of an art than a science. Very often the moment of truth comes when a newly-hired employee undergoes his first training session to learn the intricacies
of his new job. And it is at this juncture when employers start to see things they never saw during the job interview and second thoughts sometimes begin creeping into their heads.

Training a new employee is something most companies think about independently of the hiring process. Yet the two functions are very much linked because they share the same common denominator – the person who gets hired is the same person who must later be trained. But how often do companies consider trainability as a hiring factor and rank it as highly in importance as things like experience and education? There are a number of characteristics that contribute to making an employee “trainable.” Knowing what these characteristics are and giving them their
proper weight is something that hiring managers often fail to do. Here are some pivotal points
that are often overlooked but would serve employers well when they assess job candidates:

1. Is the candidate enthusiastic? Enthusiasm can be contagious. What’s more, an eager
   employee is likely to approach training with a positive attitude. This means faster assimilation
   into the new job and fewer headaches for the manager that is responsible for training her!
   Enthusiasm is not as easily measurable as more traditional credentials but it is no less important.
2. Don’t discount the quick learners! When you think about the kind of qualities that make an
   employee trainable, one comes to mind right away – the ability to catch on to things quickly.
   Some managers already know this. A few of them like to test employees during interviews by
   introducing a series of inter-related puzzles, solving the first two, and asking the candidate to
   solve the third. However you choose to measure it, an aptitude for fast learning is something that
   employers will inevitably want to see in the person they ultimately hire, and it is a trait that they
   should seek out and value.
3. There is no substitute for perseverance and dependability. What do you call a person who
   always follow through on her commitments, is always true to her word, and always completes
   her assignments on time? Some would call that person an ideal employee. Others might call her
   an impossible dream. Either way, no conscientious employee should ever discount the value of
   perseverance and dependability when making a hiring selection. A person like this is not only
   likely to be an ideal employee but an ideal trainee as well.
4. How well does the candidate adapt to change? Nothing is as certain as change. This is
   especially true in today’s business climate. Yet some handle it better than others. A person
   who handles it well is at a big advantage when he has to learn new things and adjust to new
   circumstances. Hiring managers should check candidates’ backgrounds for situations where
   changes were required and try to ascertain how well candidates handled them. When making the
   choice for the job, they should take adaptability into serious consideration.
5. Don’t confuse confidence with arrogance. A confident person is a good learner but an
   arrogant person can’t learn because he already knows everything. It’s important for a hiring
   official to be able to tell the difference. In order to be trainable, a person needs to possess a
   large dose of humility. Real learning entails deference to others, respect for their knowledge and
   experience, and a willingness to ask for advice. True confidence and self-respect is a good thing.
   Pride and arrogance is not. It’s often hard to tell the difference when meeting someone for the
   first time. But the wise hiring manager will make sure he knows the job candidate well enough
   so that he is able to make that crucial distinction.

Hiring will never be an exact science. But maybe that’s a good thing. Some of the most
important characteristics that define a great employee are those that can’t be easily measured.
When thinking about whom they are going to hire, employers also need to think about whom
they are going to need to train. The rule of thumb they should always remember is: when making
a pivotal hiring choice, don’t overlook any pivotal points.

Kenneth McCall builds creative and innovative tools for customer seeking self storage units. Kenneth is the director of operations at storage.com which provides Washington D.C. self storage listings, and storage units in many locations across the country. In his spare time he likes to get outside, ideally with a boat and waterskis.