Email makes it easy to respond to someone else without actually confronting them face-to-face. This can prove a problem when you’re trying to respond to something negative. You don’t see the other person, so you’re more likely to say something negative, insulting or unprofessional because all you’re doing is typing words to get emotions off your chest. You sometimes forget in the heat of the moment that someone else will be reading your words and if he or she is offended, your business may lose an important client, a responsive vendor, or a valued colleague.
If you feel the anger or other strong emotion welling up inside you when you read a negative email, the advice in this computer tip of the day should help you formulate a good response.
- Do something else. Spend at least half an hour doing something else, preferably away from your desk. Perhaps you need to file that stack of documents that’s been building up, inventory some supplies, or take a walk outside the office. Any activity can break the stewing of emotions that leads to overly dramatic responses.
- Put yourself in the other person’s shoes. Is the other person behaving normally? In that case, you can respond normally as well. Is the other person uncharacteristically negative? Then put yourself in his or her shoes to uncover the actual reason behind the negative email.
- Get a second opinion. Go ahead and type your responding email but do not fill in the To field, so you don’t accidentally send it. Then have a trusted co-worker look at the text. A dispassionate set of eyes can tell you if your words are unprofessional and emotional and offer ways to clean it up. If you’re a one-person shop, set the response aside and look at it again the next day. Most people allow at least a day for any responses to come back.
Any unprofessional email that you send can come back to haunt you and your business when it becomes part of the Internet. So it’s worthwhile to judge anything thoroughly you send out, especially email.
