Email is a highly effective and efficient tool for sharing information. But it is a lousy medium from which to lead others.
Leaders who depend on email to direct the team, encourage higher performance, send praise and admonishments, share feedback, and communicate strategy make a big mess of things.
Because it lacks the social, visual, and nonverbal cues essential for understanding, email is often misunderstood, misinterpreted, and overanalyzed.
People fixate on written text, searching for the clues and telltale signs that will help them understand the real message underlying the words. They often read and re-read messages or passages that bother them, drawing a different interpretation with each reading.
That’s why email is such a terrible medium through which to express anything symbolic or humanly important. It leaves way too much to chance.
To make matters worse, leaders are people and succumb to the same temptations everyone else does when it comes to composing email messages. Especially those that contain feedback.
They write things they would never say face-to-face to others. Email promotes a more inflammatory or extreme mindset because it is faceless and doesn’t require people to work through a problem.
Instead, the medium allows people to drop “bombs” and then walk away without needing to deal with the consequences.
When upset or frustrated, leaders who manage by email often send emotionally charged messages that escalate conflict and create ill will.
In fact, it is common for those leaders reliant on email to blast out negative group messages that should have targeted one or two team members. In such cases, everyone feels accused and reprimanded.
For some leaders, email allows them to avoid having tough conversations, offering the feedback others need to learn and develop, and connecting to people they don’t identify with.
In other words, it allows them not to lead or manage by sidestepping anything they find uncomfortable.
Leading people is a messy business precisely because emotions, divergent viewpoints, and competing goals come into play when team members collaborate to make decisions and execute strategy.
Leaning too heavily on technology to work through the everyday challenges of teamwork and personal development replaces the rich dialogue of human interaction with the clumsy monologue of electronic communication.
That’s an awful tradeoff.
The best leaders depend on email to disseminate information, make announcements, and outline complex viewpoints.
They eschew allowing it to replace the more direct line of communication people need to feel connected, valued, recognized, and included.
They know that nothing can replace the impact and clarity of face-to-face interaction, and they lead accordingly.
A Daily Dispatch from the Front Lines of Leadership.
