Great Time Management Goes Further Than Stephen R. Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People; It Includes Great Email Etiquette

I’m a big fan of The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey. As a leader of a team I especially relate to #3 ‘Put First Things First,’ and as a corporate trainer and habitual lifelong learner, I strongly relate to #7: ‘Sharpen the Saw’.

As much as I am a fan of Stephen’s work, I also know that Stephens 7 habits are only part of the answer when an individual or team tries to establish great time management habits. What I mean is that great time management has a lot to do with how an individual does their work as much as when they do their work. And for those familiar with Stephen Covey’s #5 habit of ‘Seek First to Understand, Then to Be Understood’, what i’m talking about goes even further. Let me explain.

More Than When… Focus On How

After I built and began facilitating my Effective Email Etiquette Training Workshop, I spent a year researching and building my Time Management Training Workshop. During the second development period (and reinforced every day since), it became clear to me that great email etiquette is also great time management – and not only for the writer; great email etiquette is also great time management for everyone who receives email.

For example, if I consistently do three simple things when I write an email message, I can almost guarantee my reader will:

1. Want to read my email – and therefore prioritize my work

2. Quickly and clearly understand what i’m saying or asking for

3. Answer all of my questions and/or do what I ask

Think how much time you would save if every one of your email were prioritized by the recipient, read, understood fully and then acted on quickly? And, how much time would you… and your readers save if you didn’t have to follow up two, three or four times to get the answer to the questions you asked in your email?

This Ability Is In Your Control

I often hear people who take time management training say, “I’d like to spend an hour in the morning concentrating on my strategic, important work but the office culture doesn’t support this.” I understand when they say that. For some aspects of time management to be effective, the team or corporate culture has to change. The beauty of writing better email is that you don’t need your corporate culture or your department culture to change - you are in control. The three email tips I share below allow you to immediately improve your writing which allows you to immediately save time, be more productive and experience less stress. Yes, using good email etiquette is in your control.

Three Email Etiquette Best Practices I Recommend

To have a great personal impact, I recommend improving your time management by practicing the following three email etiquette best practices:

1. Bottom line your messages. Say hello and then get to the point. If you want to be pleasant and say what a nice day it is… do it at the end of your email.

2. Use indented bullet points to bring attention to critical data. If you have two questions, say, Hi Bruce, I have two questions:

   • Question 1

   • Question 2

3. Write helpful Subject Lines. One or two-word subject lines like ‘Meeting’ or ‘Meeting Update’ are not great. Use 5 to 7 words. Instead, ‘July 2020 Sales Meeting Agenda Update’ lets the reader know exactly what the message is about and makes the email easily searchable 1 week or 1 year later.

None of these three Email Etiquette best practices will take you extra time to write email, but they will save you amazing amounts of time by helping you get what you need when you need it with little-to-no follow-up.

Give these three email etiquette techniques a try. They are just a few of the over dozen email writing techniques you and your team can learn that will make you more efficient, more productive and less stressed.

About Bruce and Bruce Mayhew Consulting.

Corporate trainer Bruce Mayhew (of BMC) specialize in customized Time Management Training, Email Etiquette Training, Leadership Skills, Communication and other soft skills training solutions in Toronto and across Canada. Bruce is also an Executive Coach to a few select clients.

BMC helps your greatest assets think productive and be productive.

Bruce is an experienced motivational speaker in Toronto and has inspired audiences across Canada and within the USA and the UK. Bruce works hard to always make sure your training event, conference, retreat, or annual general meeting is a success. 

Email Etiquette Rules For Leaders And Their Team

Most Canadian and USA employees write and read hundreds of business email every day. It’s estimated that business professionals spend about a quarter of our time at work using email. 

One of the most important strategic goals leaders have is how to manage expectations and help their team be in sync. An often-overlooked area is introducing a consistent set of email etiquette rules for business professionals.

I’ve pulled out 8 the most important points I consider essentials within a business email etiquette style guide. As a leader you or your team may initially think my 8 email writing recommendations will take more time. To be honest, they may (not always), take a few more seconds, but ask you to consider two things:

1. The advantage you and your team will experience when your professional brand increases and you gain the reputation as being clear communicators who are also polite and not bossy or aggressive.

2. The hours of time you and your team will save by getting what you ask for the first time you asked for it and therefore, writing fewer follow-up email. When you multiply this time, cost and frustration saving across your whole team, I assure you, leading your team down the path of good email etiquette is a wise choice.

Most companies do have a global style guide that outlines the look and feel of all communication from presentation design, to advertising placement, email etiquette and business writing standards. These 8 email etiquette rules for leaders and their team will help you and your team save time, elevate your teams email communication and strengthen your professional reputation / brand.

1. As the leader, set (or reinforce), a simple style guide for the team to help reinforce that they are part of a team with a unified brand promise. The style guide should identify things like:

   • Same font, as well as size and colour

   • Same signature block structure and graphic

   • Same size and colour for bullets

   • Similar approach to how to write Subject Lines

2. If confidential email distribution need to happen to large audiences – especially to external audiences, a standard To: Cc: or even Bcc: should not be used. Instead, use an email distribution system like Constant Contact (non-sponsored reference), to guarantee audience privacy for these bulk email.

3. Double check you get everyone’s name right. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve received email addressed to Mr. Mayhem.

4. Everyone should write their email thinking, ‘What do my readers need or need to know?’ Managing expectations is done far less than you may think. For the most part, we write email as if we are writing to people with our needs, timelines and experience. But most often our readers have very different needs, timelines and experience. This creates a gap that causes challenges. Also, watch out for general words like, ‘it’ ‘that’ ‘they’. Words like these force your reader to make assumptions about who or what you mean, instead, be clear about what you mean.

5. Be careful with Reply All. Use it sparingly.

6. Everyone should write following this 9-step-by-step (and simple), process:

   1. Write a clear, relevant Subject Line 

   2. Use a professional greeting 

   3. Address your need or ask first

   4. Then add background information after you’ve stated your need or ask

   5. Re-read for clarity. Will it be clear to your reader and does it include information they need?

   6. Check for spelling and sentence structure

   7. Sign-off, respectfully

   8. Make sure your signature block is used

   9. Only when you are done writing and editing, insert email addresses or your distribution list

7. If you think someone will "react" badly to your email content, I recommend you call them. This is the right thing to do for many reasons I’d be happy to discuss.

8. Avoid humour except in very special cases and with people you know well. Humour doesn’t translate well in a one-dimensional email environment [note, in order to be clear I edited this last sentence, replacing the word ‘it’ with the word ‘humour’ as suggested in step #4].

As a professional, you are expected to follow proper email etiquette and your personal and professional brand are always a reflection of your writing. Effective written communication is essential in any position and often a major factor towards achieving professional success.

If you would like information about email etiquette training, please click here.

Bonus Reference: Poor email etiquette costs time, money and frustration if:

• Email you’ve spent writing don’t get read because they are too long and/or confusing.

• People only answer one question when you’ve asked 3 or 4. It then costs even more in time and frustration as you have to follow up.

• Important dates are missed because of email that are high priority to you are interpreted as low priority to your reader.

• People misunderstand your email and do things you didn’t ask for, and then this costs more in time and frustration as you have to follow up and they have to re-do the work.

 I hope you’ve enjoyed my list of 8 email etiquette rules for leaders and their team.

Bruce

About Bruce and Bruce Mayhew Consulting.

Corporate trainer Bruce Mayhew (of BMC) delivers customized Email Etiquette training in Toronto and across Canada. We specialize in Leadership, Communication and other soft skills training solutions.

BMC helps your greatest assets think productive and be productive.

Bruce is an experienced motivational speaker in Toronto and has inspired audiences across Canada and within the USA and the UK. Bruce works hard to always make sure your training event, conference, retreat, or annual general meeting is a success.