8
The Venial Sins of Electronic Mail
8.1. Information overload
On one of my missions in a company, I met a manager who shared with me some of the difficulties he had in using e-mail. At my request, he started up his computer and e-mail. Though modern, his system took a long time to get started. When his inbox was finally displayed, I could see he had over 15,000 messages in it, out of which 2,000 were unread and a pop up window indicated approximately 1,600 notifications!
This example illustrates an extreme possible reaction when confronted with the growing problem of information overload. The number of received (and to be processed) messages has become one of the main factors of professional overload. E-mail is simultaneously a stress factor in itself and a channel for stress-transmission, because of the efforts that users are required to invest to reduce the amount of superfluous information to acceptable and manageable levels, and also because overload usually induces a feeling of urgency.
The more the user will “dig up” unmanageable numbers of messages, the stronger his feeling of urgency and the weaker his ability to work in a calm, reasonable and thoughtful manner, and the higher the stress. This will negatively impact his well being, levels of stress and productivity.
8.2. Anonymous disrespect
The sense of anonymity sometimes associated with virtual environments and stemming from impersonal man-machine interface is often conducive to a loss of the mutual respect usually prevailing in our societies.
E-mails offer few social context elements, and those who edit them are rather preoccupied with themselves than with their interlocutors, so empathy fades away and may even disappear.
Furthermore, as they have no awareness of an audience, the message editors may feel more confident in their anonymity and less constrained by social norms. For example, when engaging in electronic communications with the hierarchy, employees/subordinates would tend to adopt a less formal and respectful tone than during face-to-face meetings.
It is, therefore, not unusual to receive disrespectful messages, critical, for example, of the professional performance of a recipient under attack, while this latter’s peers, colleagues and supervisors are conspicuously carbon copied by the disdainful editor of the critical message.
This decline in respect is also manifest in the message editing quality, grammatical errors, ambiguity, truncated or altered quotes, but also in the dissemination of jokes, sarcastic remarks, rumors and gossip.
8.3. Communication poverty
In the professional world, traditional forms of communication (face-to-face discussions, meetings, informal discussions during coffee break, etc.) are being gradually replaced by electronic communications, such as e-mail, chat or micro-messages. This transition is accompanied by a decrease in the volume of global communication (including face-to-face conversations).
Colleagues communicate less, and when they do, they use communication channels that expose them to high levels of misunderstanding. The most affected area of communication includes informal exchanges, as well as courteous and respectful salutations. Furthermore, conversations are equally less frequent.
Electronic, asynchronous, remote communications conducted through man-machine interfaces separate us more and more from our interlocutors, these “absent others”. As a consequence, they isolate the individuals more and more, leaving them disconnected, and lost in their virtual environments, while the other’s presence would help them make a first step towards acknowledging the other’s existence.
8.4. Misunderstanding
8.4.1. Poorly written messages
Being caught in their self-centered anonymous environment, message editors are less aware of the other’s reality, and this lowers the probability of communication being truly based on empathy. Moreover, anonymity may confer a sense of security (and even impunity) and editors have a tendency to consider themselves less constrained by social norms than they would be in direct communications.
The (sometimes unconscious) decline in respect is equally reflected in a lower level of attention to the editing of messages, grammar and clarity (messages are sometimes ambiguous), use of approximate quotes, etc. The first consequence is that messages are generally less well written than their editors think: they are more aggressive, less respectful, less clear, etc.
8.4.2. Misread messages
While messages may be poorly written, they are also misperceived because, among others, they are misread. In effect, while the message editor communicates with an absent other, he or she is, in their turn, absent when the recipient reads their message. And this latter may be inclined to perceive (often bad) intentions, when the editor never had any. As a means of communication, electronic mail is not appropriate for transmitting context, emotions, social norms or other non-verbal elements that enrich direct communications.
Furthermore, when reading the message, the recipient is as anonymous and protected as the editor was during editing. This may explain excessive reactions and the eventual editing of impassioned replies. In fact, experience shows that messages are in most cases perceived as being more negative than they really are.
8.4.3. When faced with misunderstanding, is empathy a solution?
Though difficult to implement in a professional environment that is more and more corrosive, a solution may be envisaged through empathy. This consists in trying to take into account, when writing a message, the recipient’s possible perception. Taking into account the editor’s context and his real intentions, when reading a message and avoiding to project onto the other a preconceived image, and adopting a truly cooperative strategy in the professional environment.
8.5. Culpable ambiguity
As noted above, one of the main pitfalls of e-mail communication is misunderstanding. Certain users exploit this weakness, either by willingly writing ambiguous messages or by pretending they do not understand the meaning of a message, that is, however, clear to its editor. The first behavior is called ambiguity, and the second confusion.
These behaviors are generally characteristics of users constrained by tight deadlines, who try to gain time by disruptions and setbacks in communication and by shifting delays and overload onto the others.
8.6. Humor, love, rumors, and all the rest
Is there anyone who has not received a message asking for peace and solidarity in the digital world? Anyone, who has not received those endless slideshows accompanied by sweetish music, and praising the virtues of friendship and even universal love?
And what more could be said about those dubious jokes that have been rehashed a thousand times and are travelling through the network since the dawn of time, as if interplanetary connection required that we kept on sending the same old funny stories that made us laugh when we were in school?
And what should we think about those rumors that the Web is so fond of, letting us know the death of so-and-so, the latest love escapades of another, or the latest professional difficulties of some unpopular or envied colleague?