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Easy Email Tips Pt. 3 - Never Send an Angry Message · The Daily Writer

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Smart Business Writing Podcast, the show that helps you share your message, increase your impact, and grow your business through the power of writing.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_00: This is the third part of a four-part mini-series on easy email tips.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And if you didn't have a chance to listen to parts one and two, I'd really encourage you to go back and do that because there's some great stuff there.
• 0:24
  SPEAKER_00: But just as a quick refresher, the main idea here is that email is all about relationships.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: And because we send so much email in the modern world, it's a really great chance to build relationships and to communicate well through small actions.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_00: These are literally very easy things that we can do.
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_00: They don't really take any more time, but if we put a little bit of intention into it, they can produce huge results in terms of building our relationships with people.
• 0:52
  SPEAKER_00: So here's tip number three.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Never send an angry message.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_00: One day, a number of years ago, I was sitting at my desk at work.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: It was about a half an hour before lunch, and I was feeling really satisfied.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_00: Why was I feeling satisfied?
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Because I had just hit send on an email where I had given somebody a real piece of my mind.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Now I don't remember what the exact situation was, but I was really angry about something.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: I do remember that.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_00: And in response to an email that had ticked me off, I wrote back an email that was even more ticked off.
• 1:28
  SPEAKER_00: I was satisfied because I had spoken my mind very directly with a lot of force and in a way that definitely made my point.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I knew it would be really obvious to the recipient that I was ticked off.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: But as the moments went by, I had the slightest bit of doubt about whether I should have sent it.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: After all, the staff person I had sent the email to was normally very sweet and not known for conflict.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_00: So was it possible that I had overblown the situation in my mind?
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: So as I sat there in my office, I started to get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach, and eventually I realized I had violated a major rule of email and of relationships in general, which is don't send a message when you're angry.
• 2:14
  SPEAKER_00: But it's so easy to do, isn't it?
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: When you're upset about something, when you're mad about something, when you're feeling very emotional, it's just so easy to shoot off a message and give somebody a piece of your mind.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_00: And it feels good in the moment, doesn't it?
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: It feels good to speak your mind and to make your point and to kind of yell back at that person in the passive aggressive way that we sometimes do through technology these days.
• 2:39
  SPEAKER_00: Well, we have a saying here in Missouri, and I don't know if you have this saying wherever you live, but here in Missouri we have a saying that is someone will get all up in a dither about something.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Now that being said, I don't actually know what dither means, D-A-T-H-E-R.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_00: But whenever somebody is all up in a dither about something, it means they're really upset and they're really emotionally compromised and they will do almost anything as an expression of that anger.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now we have a saying here in Missouri, which is people get all up in a dither about something.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: So whenever you're upset, whenever you're very emotional about something, whenever you're irritated, that means you're all up in a dither.
• 3:23
  SPEAKER_00: And whenever you get all up in a dither about something, you tend to do things that you later regret.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_00: You say things, you do things, or things take place that later you wish would not have happened.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I would recommend when you're all up in a dither, when you're upset, when you're emotionally compromised, as Spock would say on Star Trek, when you're in those situations and you want to vent, open up a Word document or grab your journal, say whatever it is you want to say in those things and get your feelings out, get your anger out.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_00: But wait until you've cooled off before you hit send on an angry email to someone because it can do a lot of damage.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: And I have had to go apologize to people to their face, which is always the best way to apologize, of course.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: But numerous times over the years, I've sent an angry email to somebody and immediately thought, wow, that probably wasn't a good idea.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: And much less, you know, I work at a Christian college, so that's even worse.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: You know, here I am a Christian college professor.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: I'm supposed to be an example, and then here I go sending off these emails to people where I'm just sort of venting about something.
• 4:31
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I've had to go apologize to people numerous times over the years because I've just said something in the moment I was agitated about something, and I had to go say, hey, I'm really, really sorry, I I shouldn't have done that.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: And that's kind of humbling to have to do that.
• 4:45
  SPEAKER_00: But that's the right thing to do.
• 4:47
  SPEAKER_00: And if you find yourself in a situation where you have sent an angry email and you know you shouldn't have, I want to encourage you to go make it right with that person.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: To do the right thing, to humble yourself and go ask for forgiveness and and try to work it out.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Because if you don't do that, the situation's only going to get worse.
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: We've all done it.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, my goodness, we're all human and sometimes we just let things slip out of our mouths or out of our fingers whenever we're typing an email or even a social media message or a text message or something.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: But then the question is, what do we do if we've done that?
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the answer is we need to go make it right with that person if we've messed up.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_00: It's just a simple thing to do, to apologize, to be honest, and to make things right.
• 5:33
  SPEAKER_00: Again, this goes back to the main principle that we're talking about here.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_00: We value people, we value relationships, and we want to honor other people in our communication.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: Now, everything I've just said is true.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: Relationships are really important.
• 5:48
  SPEAKER_00: We always want to honor people.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: But there's also another reason why we shouldn't send an angry email, and that is because in our digital age, anything that you send to somebody can wind up on the internet or can wind up somewhere where we don't want it to appear.
• 6:02
  SPEAKER_00: We may think that email is private, but the fact of the matter is that anybody can take any email that they've received.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_00: They can take a screenshot, they can post it online, they can do whatever they want with it.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if we say something that's incendiary or that's hurtful or that's irritable or we've come across in the wrong way, that can come back to haunt us.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm not saying that we shouldn't trust people, but I am saying that we all have a human nature, and that is when we when people feel offended by something, if they feel offended enough, they may show somebody else that message.
• 6:37
  SPEAKER_00: So I just want to encourage you to be careful about what you say in your written communication because things can come back to haunt you.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_00: I've seen it happen and it it's not pretty.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: So a good question to ask when you're about ready to send that angry email is what would my children think if they saw this message?
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: What would my future employer think of this if I'm in the interview process?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: What would my clients think of this?
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: What would my spouse think of this?
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_00: What would the world think of this if this were posted on social media?
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think that's a good rule of thumb to follow in all of our digital communication, whether it's emails, text messages, social media posts, whatever it is that we're writing out there that other people can take a screenshot of, make sure we're saying it in a way that's not going to come back to haunt us.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Well, hey, I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_00: This is a hot topic and one that in our age of uh high emotions and division in society today, this is a topic we need to talk about a lot more.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_00: So I'd love to hear your thoughts.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_00: You can shoot me a message on Twitter at Kent Sanders or also on Facebook at Kent Sanders.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_00: And of course, you can always email me, but don't say anything angry.
• 7:47
  SPEAKER_00: You can email me at Kent at KentSanders.net, and I promise not to say anything angry to you as well.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, thanks so much for listening.
• 7:55
  SPEAKER_00: Until next time, remember that your writing has the power to change people's lives.
• 8:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'll see you in the next episode.