7 Steps to E-Mail like a Mack Truck

Introduction by Pat Weiland: Haven’t we all rolled our eyes when the email trail gets twisted around the leg of our desk and comes to a slow crawl?  Jody Rowland shares some tactical ways to really think through the impact of your email by following these 7 steps before pressing send.  Jody Rowland is a marketing professional from the retail end of consumer experience.  Her path has led from signage to sophisticated ecommerce messaging in the global marketplace via every medium.  Now she is responsible for consumer purchases on line.  She’s a huge fan of Weezer and can be found on Linkedin.

7 Steps to E-Mail like a Mack Truck – by Jodell Rowland

Okay, I admit I burst into tears, nay, sobs, yesterday while I was watching a rerun of Undercover Boss.  You may have seen the TV show-C-suite residents slip incognito into hourly jobs in the bowels of their company to learn more about how their workers feel.

Yesterday’s show involved the CEO of Mack trucks, and the tear jerking scene for me came when CEO guy  worked on the assembly line next to a 30-year plus veteran, who cared so much about the quality of the truck, he was a member of the Mack collectors group, and owner of over 20 ancient rigs himself. He coaxed the “new guy” to match up a bumper exactly, and even challenged the fake assembly line worker to “hit it like a Mack” when he asked him to put down the hood.

I didn’t cry because of a bad acting job—It was because a heartfelt worker honestly felt complete pride and loyalty to his company. The man reminded me of my dad, and all the hard-working Red Wing boot-wearing people who still pursue excellence in their work.  And it reminded me of probably the biggest challenge I have in my side of working in corporate America.

Much of my work-life in global marketing involves e-mails.  E-mails from different directions; clients, other departments, team members here in the Midwest, across the country, and overseas. Sure, they don’t involve a crankshaft, or a steering column, but they have the ability to convince, coerce, and sadly due to their poor quality, confound me. I’d like to think I have the same kind of intensity about excellence in writing e-mails that hopefully that same Mack veteran had about making sure every bolt is tightened right.

So it’s with that goal in mind, I’d like to offer a couple of ideas to make your own e-mail correspondence impress the secret CEOs in your midst, or at the least carry the same kind of Bulldog-tough accuracy that our Mack truck building friend does:

1. Keep it neutral stupid, I mean my fellow co-worker: I understand if clients want to send an e-mail that carries an accusatory tone.  In this contentious time, many feel that is the right they are paying for. But if you are sending a note to a co-worker, save the angry tone and opt for a more neutral voice. Consider taking a Technical writing course, and focus on language that concisely describes a situation with facts, not emotions.
2. Don’t trash your own company more than the client. It’s amazing how many times we receive e-mails from a client calling us out in the subject line (i.e., Another Company X screw-up, Missing Company X orders, etc.)  That’s bad enough, but even worse when one of us replies to THAT SAME SUBJECT LINE and in effect keeps the bad press going.  Make sure that subject lines use said professional, neutral tone, and always err on the side of rational information.  Imagine Star Trek’s Mr. Spock reading your e-mails out loud, not emotional chief engineer Scotty (self-described non-miracle worker.)
3. Please summarize a long string of e-mails if you insist on sending the whole dang lot of them.  It’s obvious you think the last three days of e-mails have been a bit of a challenge to deal with. And you are asking for my help in trying to get something resolved. Then please, summarize “the ask” in your e-mail and share the top three points. The only thing worse than carrying a discussion on through e-mail versus a phone call or live meeting, is wasting your manager’s time by having them read the whole string, too.  Or worse, them not getting your point, or taking the opposite view.
4. Phone calls disappear into vapor if you don’t recap them in a concise e-mail. This goes for getting complimented OR chastised by a client, or placing an order with a partner.  Secretaries transcribing our every move are long gone, but the need to memorialize conversations remains. Do yourself a favor and get key points into writing before the other person starts believing what they thought they heard and moving in that direction.
5. There’s a big difference between Reply and Reply All.  Don’t think so? Ask my former co-worker who told the whole company that his wife has a shellfish allergy when replying to a holiday dinner invitation.  Ask his wife how many people watched what she ate at the holiday party.  Do 54 people really need to see, read, delete the message you send telling someone thank you?
6. Know the difference between their and there, or your and you’re, and use it.  I was lucky enough to have 5th grade teacher Mrs. Nottelson, and I bet there are still lots of folks like me who want to see words used correctly. Please indulge us.
7. Save THX and LOL for the IM world. My co-worker calls those phrases lazy language.    I tell my team if their e-mails become the last written page that ends up fluttering in the air, at least make it complete sentences.

Undercover Boss ended with a reveal, and some generous donations to the Mack collectors group, along with other deserving co-workers’ causes.  That exercise in “going under cover” serves as a research project about what’s really going on in the company.  Everyone in that picture is responsible for putting their best foot forward as if there was a camera and there would be a reveal at the end of the hour.  It’s a wake-up call for the CEO who is not connected to correct some actions.  It’s a wake-up call for each member of the team to take a look at our actions and the reactions of those around us.  We’re responsible for communicating effectively and efficiently!

Set up your own “undercover boss” reveal and reread your own emails from another person perspective.   What would you change?

Harnessing the Power of Completion

Introduction by Pat Weiland: We’ve all completed big tasks after extending ourselves beyond what we originally thought to be our capacity. There is a giant sigh of relief upon completion. There can be a party or a little pomp and circumstance. I was talking about the excitement of submitting an RFP for a giant piece of strategic workforce planning business. And I was sitting in the afterglow, sort of wishing I was still in the process. There is no explaining the juicy power in the time after the submission or the party guests have gone or the sigh that has been exhaled.

Until now, when my dear friend Wendy Overend, who recently completed her doctoral studies and while she is exhausted she is in the very juiciest of the stages. She writes about the stages of completion for coaches. Coaches, who usually walk people through all stages of progress, are sometimes left sitting behind. No different from any other human being, coaches are impacted by the same cycles as the rest of the world. So to that, I am being coached by my client / friend / co-conspirator / and pupil. Understanding the process is the first step to harnessing the power.

Guest writer Wendy Overend, Ph.D. writes on completion –

The idea of completion can fill anyone with dread, not least of all coaches. However, if we consider the process of completion, just the same as a process of conflict resolution, or the same as the process of grieving, we can utilize a similar simple model to apply to this natural process of endings.

In doing so, this thought process and model may help us move forward during times of change that deeply impact our livelihood; challenge our sometimes fragile egos, or our hopes and expectations.

The Handbook of Coaching by Fredric M. Hudson states that “coaching offers hope” (pg. xviii.) Hudson shares four simple new rules that can easily be mapped to the model of completion in a coach’s business life:

1. The cyclical rule, i.e. managing the art of cycling through, practicing self-renewal.
2. The continuous change rule, i.e. not being defeated by ongoing change.
3. The inside-out rule, i.e. using your inner beliefs to remain positive.
4. The learning-is-for-everyone rule, i.e. remembering that learning IS our primary activity, no matter how young or old we are.

The reality of completion can be overlapped or over layered on these above mentioned rules with the following four questions shared by life coach Chris Petrossian:

• When is it ever complete?
• What did I/we learn?
• What am I proud of? And finally…
• What does this lead to?

Step 1: The cyclical rule and the “when is it ever complete” question.

Reframing, every coach’s gift to their clients should be applied in thinking about the word “completion.” The work of a coach is never complete. The task of completion may include invoicing the final session, getting paid, requesting an evaluation, asking for a recommendation, and requesting a referral. These tasks can be developed into a sequence of tasks that would seemingly indicate completion, but in fact, are tactical maneuvers that prolong the experience and, as such, should be reframed as marketing, business development, institutional advancement, strategy, planning—all these suggest an ongoing engagement.

Add requests for LinkedIn, Facebook (Like), an e-quote for your brochure, website, business card, book jacket, and be sure to get approval for use of client name, or company name, or simply job title, for use in marketing materials, flyers, advertisements, quotes can be written, solicited, copied, but from a coaches perspective need to be tailored to suit the next market, gig, or area of outreach that could bear fruit for new coaching work. See, when is it ever complete? It is continuous… which leads us to rule two…

Step 2: The continuous change rule and the “what did I/we learn?”

Naturally, the insights from coaching are clarifying. It is after we take time retrospectively that we not only see clearly the importance of coaching, but we see what we learned about ourselves in the process, what we learned about the art of coaching, what we learned about listening, and what we learned to say. Additionally, we see in this question what we learned about our tenacity, persistence, and drive to stay the course, to develop and grow as coaches, but also how to develop and grow our business. We are educated with hindsight and reflection. We reframe our own ideas, tweak, rest, renew, rejuvenate, and then we reassess about what we learned. And, we rejoice that our clients learned too.

To that effect, we as coaches must remember our insights and journaled notes from the field. All of these become fodder for future clients, writing, insights for improving and changing our techniques, style, approach to coaching in the future.

Step 3: Inside-out and the what am I most proud of?

The easiest way to see growth is to quantify what you did – be it a six session gig, a two-hour workshop, a four-month assignment, working for two years with a company and their executives, contracting with an HR manager for ongoing trainings, working online, coaching by telephone, coaching international clients from your home office, etc. The first step is to Name It. What did you just do?

Think of all the nuances of what you did; the driving, the meetings, the invoicing, the study, the preparation. Be Proud. Then, taking Byron Katie’s simple tools from “Who Would You Be Without Your Story?,” tell that story using these four questions: Is it true? Can you be absolutely sure it is true? How do you react when you believe that thought? Who would you be without that thought?

While doing the “inside-out” work, think about what (the quantified version) you did. And think about how important was the impact of the work you did.

Step 4: Learning is for everyone and what does this lead to?

Learning, in the thought of completion, is as simple as looking at what you do differently or did differently as a result of the event that you’ve just completed. Think classic 7 Habits of Highly Effective People from the 70’s by Stephen Covey. Covey’s habit of “start with the end in mind”—ask what did you or your client seek to want to change? How will you leverage those learnings for the next step? What is the next step? How long before the next step comes my way? What would the client say they learned? What initiative and responsibility must I make to really keep learning? Stephen Covey says “response-ability” is the ability to choose our response. How will you respond to the newly found space after completion?

So, put yourself in control of a completion model. You’ve made yourself a promise. You held yourself to that promise. And now leave space after completion to create new ideas!

Go to a nearby tree, count the leaves. Go to the beach, scoop up some sand, try to count the grains. Remember your place in the Universe. Think of more clients. Think about getting new clients. Think of referrals. And think of all you have done so far.

Look backwards, but live forwards. All abundance applies to you. Your deserving heritage is abundance. Everything will come to you, and there is enough for all of us.

This abundance applies to you, your creative energy, your generative skills, your talents, and they are all part of your soul purpose to coach and share these gifts with others. Your “job” is to express this soul purpose again, and again, and again.

Yes, completion is part of the process of being and becoming a great, wise, experienced coach, but it doesn’t complete you. Today is the beginning of new learning and a new way of coping with endings. What will it lead to?

Go for it!