Brevity creates confusion

- The average office worker receives 121 emails and responds to over 61 emails every day. In this new culture of communicating quickly, sometimes we take shortcuts or completely leave out context altogether in our messages. And a lot of times these brief messages cause confusion, misunderstanding, or could easily tarnish a coworker or client relationship. I want to share a story from my client Adriel, a team leader at an advertising agency. One evening Adriel needed information about a particularly difficult customer. She sent a late night calendar invitation to the account manager Brian for a meeting the next morning. The meeting invite said, new event, 30 minute meeting, eight a.m. Friday. Brian arrived at that scheduled time, tense and anxious. Once the discussion began, she could see he felt a relief in his body language. She asked Brian, what's changed? Brian immediately said, when I got the invite last night I couldn't sleep, I thought I was about to get fired. How she sent the brief message, lacked the content of the discussion, and created confusion. A key skill when using digital body language is to never confuse a brief message with a clear message. Receiving an email from your boss that simply reads "we should talk" could have multiple interpretations. One word responses like fine, sure, OK can also cause uncertainty. Even sending multiple question marks instead of actually asking your team a question doesn't make the information clearer to either party. The recipient could jump to negative conclusions just like Brian did. But in fact, your boss may just want to discuss a proposal they turned in last week. If you're a manager, here are three questions to ask yourself to create a culture of clarity instead of brevity with your teammates. Number one, am I being clear enough about what I need? Always take a moment to provide important background needed for the recipient. Number two, did I include the right people in my email? Is it clear why this message is meaningful to the person or the group of people? It's sometimes easy to be so brief that others don't understand why they even need to respond. And finally, am I intentional about when and what I expect in a response? Make sure you're getting your team an appropriate and clear time when you expect an email back. One of my favorite ways to avoid brevity creating confusion is to create clear acronyms on your team. For example, NNTR means no need to respond in emails. 4H in subject lines means I need this in four hours, or 2D means I need this in two days. Even if it takes you a few extra minutes, spend the time to communicate with the intention of being ultra clear. Brevity can cause anxiety when there may not be a need to worry. While a brief email may be convenient for you, it can have a negative impact on the person receiving it. And it can cause your team to waste time interpreting messages instead of focusing on the task at hand.