Leadership and Life Essentials: Stop Hiding Behind Your Inbox - Three Ways Leaders Misuse Email

Jackie Surgeon Ergaleoni: Foreign. M welcome to Leadership and Life Essentials with Jackie, where I cut through the noise and deliver concise, actionable insights on effective leadership. I'm your host, Jackie Surgeon Ergaleoni from Leadership in Life by K Rec. In a world overflowing with information, this show offers short, focused episodes packed with tangible advice and tools to help you lead and live better. Let's dive in.

Speaker B: Welcome to Leadership and Life Essentials. This is episode 90 stop hiding behind your inbox. 3 ways leaders misuse Email how many emails are in your inbox right now just waiting for your attention, screaming out to you? What are you thinking or feeling as you look at that number? Now, I want you to think back to when you first started using email. So yeah, that AOL account. For a lot of us, it felt like a genuine breakthrough. No, uh, more phone tag, no more waiting for somebody to be at their desk. I can send a message at 10pm the other's going to have it first

Jackie Surgeon Ergaleoni: thing in the morning.

Speaker B: It was faster, cleaner, it created a record of what was said and we thought it was going to save us time. And in a lot of ways it did. It revolutionized communication in so many ways. The challenge is that companies never developed communication protocols as these communication tools such as emails emerged. And then we started using these things for everything and without consistency. Questions that needed a conversation, email them. Feedback that needs a human voice. We'll just email them. Conflict that needs to be worked through. I'll just fire off an email. Nuanced conversations, announcements that were meant for one person but got sent to 20 and somewhere in there email stopped being the time saver and started to become a problem. Most leaders I talk to feel buried in their inbox. They're spending hours on email every day, and a good chunk of that time is being created by the way they and some of their teams are using it. So today I want to talk about three ways that people misuse email and what to do instead. Email is often the wrong tool for the job. Email is genuinely good at a few sharing information that doesn't require a response, confirming something you've already discussed, sending a document somebody needs. These are email sweet spots. Asynchronous, low stakes, no back and forth required. Where it falls apart, though, is when the situation needs something more. Feedback, a sensitive conversation, anything where tone matters. Situations where you need to read how the other person's actually receiving what you're saying. When you put those conversations in writing, you lose the nuance of nonverbal communication. You can't hear hesitation. You can't adjust when you see someone's expression shift, you can't course correct in real time. What you can do is spend 45 minutes carefully crafting your wording so it lands the right way and it still lands badly because the other person read it in a completely different tone than the one that you intended. Anyone recognize that? If you've ever sat there rereading an email three times to make sure it doesn't sound harsh, that's your signal. The message should probably be a conversation. The 45 minutes you spent writing and rewriting could have been a 10 minute call and you'd both have walked away clear. And it's not that email's bad, it's that we reach for it out of habit or convenience when the situation might call for something different. So start asking yourself, does this need a back and forth? Does it involve emotion or nuance? Could it be misread? If you answer yes to any of those, book a meeting or make a phone call instead? An email has a version of inviting everyone to the meeting, and you've probably sat in one of those meetings at some point and thought, I don't even know why I'm here. Half the people in this room aren't needed for this decision or this discussion. We do the same thing with email, just with less awareness that we're doing it. The unnecessary cc, the reply, all that. Just looping you in that no one asked for. It feels like good communication, and it's quite often the opposite. There's an important distinction between involving someone in a conversation and keeping them informed of the outcome. They require two different approaches. Not everyone needs to be part of the discussion from the start. Some people just need a summary when it's done. When you CC people who don't need to be there, a few things happen. Inboxes get clogged with threads that aren't relevant. People start skimming instead of reading carefully because so much of what arrives doesn't actually require their attention. And then over time it creates a quiet signal that you don't fully trust people to do their jobs without oversight, even if it's not your intention at all. And then there's the reply all disaster when several people start responding to different messages and including everyone. And then that email chain turns into an unmitigated disaster quickly. There isn't a coherent flow to the conversation and the email chain isn't even linear. The fix is having a simple process. Who needs to be part of this conversation? Who just needs to know the outcome? Those are separate Groups and they need separate communications, so get clear on that difference before you start that next email. Sometimes that, uh, email is just meant for one person, and this is often used as a technique to avoid a hard or uncomfortable conversation. And sadly, it's quite common. You send a friendly reminder to everyone to submit their timesheets by the end of day Friday. Except everyone always does. There's always two people who consistently don't, though, and everyone on your team knows who you're talking about. They're annoyed at being called out or reprimanded for something that they aren't even doing wrong. Maybe you create a new policy because one person isn't meeting an expectation, or you send a note about professional communication standards because of a specific incident involving one person. The team reads it and they roll their eyes. The person that was meant for it either feels called out in front of everyone or. Which creates resentment. Or they figured they got away with it because you didn't come to them directly, which means nothing changes, or they don't even see themselves in it and nothing changes anyway. And none of these outcomes are what you were going for. I talked about this a bit in episode 86. When you manage the group to avoid one person, you're not managing anyone. You're just creating noise and hoping the right person picks up on it. They usually don't. At least not in the way that you need them to. If it's about one person, it needs to be a conversation with that one person. Not a group email. Not a new policy, not a passive reminder to the whole team. Uh, a direct, private conversation. That's the only version that actually works. I know that conversation feels harder, but. But a group email that doesn't change anything isn't easier. It's just more comfortable in the moment and your team is watching how you handle it. And we've come to the part of the show where we talk about what you can do. I have blog posts and radio shows, and I'll link them on my show page. The next time you write an email, before you hit send, pause for five seconds and ask. Is email actually the right tool here, or am I reaching it for out of habit? Look at who's on your next email chain, who genuinely needs to be a part of the conversation and who just needs a summary after make that distinction, before you start typing, before you hit that initial send. If you're about to send something to your whole team that's really meant for one or two people, close the email and go have a conversation directly for resources related to this episode, you can visit my show page at LeadershipInLife CA Show 90. And remember, your inbox didn't create the problem, but how you're using it might have.

Jackie Surgeon Ergaleoni: You've reached the end of another episode of Leadership and Life Essentials. If you want to learn more about today's topics, please visit leadershipandlife Ca, where you'll find episode show notes and free bonus resources. I'm Jackie Surginer Galeoni, founder of Leadership and Life by K Rec, where I strive to empower leaders with the skills no one taught them to create teams

Speaker B: who want to work together.

Jackie Surgeon Ergaleoni: Thanks for joining me.