Use This Five-Part Checklist To Tell If You're Overcommunicating
In emails as well
as speech, there's such a thing as too much information.
There’s definitely some truth in the wisdom that it’s better to
overcommunicate than undercommunicate. Ideally, every manager gives their team
members just enough direction to get on course and the leeway to do their thing
free of micromanagement.
The reality is often different, though. No good boss wants to
leave their teams feeling empty-handed or unsupported, so they sometimes veer
off too far in the opposite direction. I’ve learned the hard way that
overcommunication is easier to fall into than you might think, and it winds up
obfuscating my message and wasting everyone’s time.
Fortunately, I’ve managed to get better at figuring out when my
communication is more distracting than useful. Here are some of the key
criteria I use in order to tell whether I'm overcommunicating.
Here are some of the key
criteria I use in order to tell whovercommunicating.
Timing my message is one of the most important things I've learned
to do. Determining the urgency of your message and the medium for it isn't
easy, but a good first step is simply being deliberate about it.
Ask yourself if the message
you're about to send will require additional clarification—but also whether
you've covered its main point already.
For example, when I needed to let
my employees know about an emergency, there’s no "wrong" time to send
out a mass text message or phone recording.
Email, on the other hand, is more often a check-when-you-can medium,
so it's arguably the least disruptive. But texts, phone calls, and group chat
messages on platforms like Slack or HipChat usually draw someone's attention
away from something else. So before you send it, ask yourself whether that's
essential.
By some estimates, around 205 billion emails get sent every day. How many
of them repeat the same message, perhaps just reworded or with a greater sense
of urgency? If an employee doesn’t fully understand the scope of a new project,
it might make sense to redefine that scope in new terms—otherwise, you're just
wasting time.
Instead, ask yourself if the message you're about to send will
require additional clarification—but also whether you've covered its main point
already.
There’s some evidence to suggest
there’s an upper limit to the number of emails an employee can reasonably
handle in a day. Some estimate that after more than 50 emails,
most people struggle to keep up.
I’ve found that I really need to ponder just how much the messages
matter. Sometimes, employees have forgotten about certain tasks or neglected
things on a deadline, so I know that persistence in these cases is beneficial.
The axiom "trust but verify" applies here. I try to keep those
follow-ups to a minimum and only trade notes when there's new information.
There are a number of ways to
define "value" when it comes to how you communicate. For example,
your message could be valuable because it gives new instructions or because
it acknowledges receipt of a different message; the latter isn't necessarily
frivolous. Before I send anything, I ask myself:
·
Is this person going to be grateful to have this information?
·
What’s the worst that happens if I don’t send this message?
Plus, over time, my team members have learned that I only
communicate when I really need to. So they pay more attention when I do.
An incoherent email—no less than an incoherent pep talk during a
meeting—is like a puzzle that people have to solve before they can take any
significant action or walk away with new knowledge.
An incoherent email . . . is like
a puzzle that people have to solve before they can take any significant action.
No matter how quickly I need to get
things done, I often take my time to craft clear messages for the team,
including proofreading my emails before sending them. It’s a good step to make
sure my messages are being received and digested efficiently. The University of Wisconsin has an excellent guide on writing
clearer, more coherent sentences, and Purdue's online
style guide is a great resource that's helped me be more concise.
This is my checklist when I want to talk to my team about anything
noteworthy. As long as my messages are timed properly, original, persistent but
not nagging, valuable, and clear, then I know I've minimized the risk of
overcommunicating to them.
Still, while overcommunication is bad, undercommunicating can be
even worse. It's all about striking a balance, then maintaining it.
JOHN RAMPTON
https://www.fastcompany.com/3065725/work-smart/use-this-five-part-checklist-to-tell-if-youre-overcommunicating
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