No doubt about it. Emails can get us into trouble...even when we don't intend that outcome.
In the old days, say 20 or 30 years ago, we did not send emails. When we wanted to communicate in writing we wrote letters or memos or notes. I suppose those written communications generated some unexpected troubles for us. But, I do not recall hearing or seeing anyone misinterpret the intent of my messages. Certainly, in the old days, it was rare to witness situations where people received notes and illustrated a surprising/unexpected reaction. For example - I do not recall people showing me notes, explaining how troubled they were, and later discovering the intent of the note was misunderstood. Situations like that were not commonplace.
To be clear...in those old days, from time to time, people got really angry when I sent them notes. But, I was not surprised to observe those reactions because they were consistent with the intent behind my notes. [I am not saying this with pride...just stating a cold, hard fact of my communication history.] Similarly, I was annoyed or angered by notes I received and the annoyance or anger was justified [or, at least, not surprising] because the senders knew the notes' contents had the potential to generate that sort of reaction.
Nowadays, it is common to see or hear about people receiving emails and being 'put off' then, later, discovering the sender had no intent to generate such reaction. In fact, the sender is surprised to find the message was misunderstood and off-putting. Or, perhaps you observe an increasing number of situations like this: someone shows you an email and says, "Isn't this outrageous", then you look at the email and see little evidence of anything outrageous.
I find myself in that sort of situation regularly.
Why?
Here are some thoughts...
- People are receiving much more written communication now...perhaps, an information overload [maybe even Future Shock] is causing people to be less open-minded than they were a generation ago. Perhaps less-open minds are breeding intolerance or some other aspect of negativity that is injuring communication.
- Many people take shortcuts when they write email. For example, many people do not use an upper-case letters when they type the first letters of people's names. Perhaps, this informality deprives the reader of the pleasure of seeing his or her name properly written and that triggers an annoyance, an annoyance which escalates.
- More people are sending written messages now than ever before. Perhaps, the nuances of clarity have been lost in the masses.
- Of course, we know many people are deluding themselves into believing they are too busy. This causes them to do whatever they can to cut corners. So corners of communication are cut. Perhaps In Search of Brevity is an effectiveness-sacrificing attempt at efficiency.
The good news is we have identified the problem.
We can foresee the annoyed-by-email situations.
We can expect our emails will get us into unexpected troubles. So, we can troubleshoot. We can check our emails before we press the SEND button. And, we can take a little extra time to improve our email communications so they cause less unexpected trouble.
We can improve communication and annoy fewer people.
We can enjoy more effective communication.