Make The Message Clear, as Palm Beach Attorney Laura Anthony Examines the Use of Text and E-mail in Business Communication

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Jul 07, 2020, 06:32 ET

WEST PALM BEACH, Florida, July 7, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- In business and in personal life, attorneys and clients rely upon email and text as primary forms of communication. Phone calls are increasingly made out of necessity. Attorneys and clients have one thing in common: both are extremely busy people. In their haste, it is quite easy to shoot off or text or email that doesn't quite get their message across.

These communications are intended to be concise, but the line between succinct and choppy is very thin. Turning a communication into a miscommunication is not just counterproductive; it can negatively impact established relationships with top-tier clientele. One may say, "Ten years to build a relationship, ten words to tear it down."

Electronic and voice communication each have their merits, but knowing when to put down the keyboard and pick up the telephone can mean the difference between sustaining a long-term relationship or losing a legacy client.

All too often, attorneys and clients communicate with a different social tone when corresponding electronically. They feel detached, emboldened or desensitized and will convey the intended, correct message, but sometimes a bit more aggressively or abrupt than intended. Even if the message was not meant to be combative, it is interpreted as such. The printed word lacks intonation and inflection. Subtleties of human communication are replaced by a stark string of printed text.

During one-on-one voice communication, attorneys and clients must be aware that what they say is as important as the way they say it. In order to facilitate effective communication, each party must take extraordinary care and effort to accurately express their message in the most concise yet polite and professional manner.

Traditional one-on-one voice communication is fluid and, if one individual makes a sensitive statement or an important request, they can interpret the other party's response by their general disposition. The tone of their answer may be terse, enthusiastic, skeptical or even dismissive. In turn, the party initiating the communication can change direction, clarify their statement or inquire as to the second party's perspective on the subject matter being discussed.

Emails and Texts Lack Organic Personality

Electronic communication is not nuance-friendly. It can be stilted, disarrayed or incorrectly interpreted. In light of this, text messages and emails are most effective when conveying tangible fundamentals, not broad concepts. When emails and texts are misused, the tone of the conversation is always the first casualty; the responding party may seem adversarial when they are not and word choice and combinations can muddle their response.

According to the Entrepreneur magazine article How to Communicate Effectively Over Emails at Workplace:

The emails you send are a reflection of your professionalism. Emails at the workplace must have a formal tone to them. There is always a higher chance of miscommunication over emails because your words are not accompanied by gestures, body language and facial expressions, and your reader may easily misconstrue your words. Be polite, choose your words wisely, use proper punctuation and avoid capitalizing all your words.

A business communication devoid of inflection, nuance and facial cues can take on a completely different or entirely opposite meaning. In any context, especially in an attorney-to-client scenario, this can be disastrous.

The benefit of electronic communication is also its detriment. Texts and emails create permanent records of conversations so there exists the tendency to be rigid

Since both parties know that they may 'contradict' themselves during the course of a complex, multi-conversation scenario, the communication process becomes repressed. It must be clearly understood by all parties involved that during a series of ongoing conversations pertaining to complex transactional or developmental topics, concepts, applications and approaches are bound to evolve. Any "contradiction" is merely a previous incarnation of a more thoroughly action plan.

If the aforementioned is not kept in mind, all parties involved will remain reluctant to commit key points to writing. They know that the situation is fluid and that their future statements may seem contradictive as the action plan matures. When this occurs, emails and texts may convey messages that are vague, diluted and indirect. To further compound this communication breakdown, the client or attorney who was clear and decisive during a phone conversation will now come across as ambiguous and evasive.

Nearly everyone in business has experienced this communication phenomenon of the 'split personality'. In this scenario, the client who is cordial and professional during voice communication may come across as antagonistic during electronic communication. It must be kept in mind that the means of communication is the culprit; the client is still amicable and cooperative.

Communication Without Humanization

Since voice communication is more relaxed and humanized, it should be the primary form of communication at the incipient stage of any relationship, especially in business. After a period of comfortability and trust has been established, the use of electronic communication can be integrated and relied upon more frequently.

Even after trust has been established and a solid working relationship is in place, it is imperative not to fall into the text sand trap. Time is a precious commodity so the temptation always exists to rocket off a brief text as opposed to making voice contact. In some cases, the relationship will not be compromised; in others it will degrade over a period of time.

The trick is knowing which clients prefer the use of electronic communication and which will become distanced by it.

To make matters more complex, certain clients will become annoyed by repeated and prolonged voice contact. "Why couldn't they have just emailed that to me?" is the cry of despair echoed throughout all aspects of contemporary commerce.

Knowing when to text and email and when to make voice contact is more art than science. Text and email are intended to streamline communication, and they do. However, in the long term, relationships are either built or destroyed by their use and misuse.

Common Text and Email Mishaps

There are several common communication breakdowns that occur when using text and email. Knowing what they are is the imperative in order to avoid making them.

An email is sent but the recipient claims they never received it. This one is by far the most common and completely negates the "speed" benefit of using email. This occurrence can be catastrophic during client-attorney communications. In addition to the intrinsic problems generated by this occurrence, no attorney wants to have the "But I emailed you" argument with a high-dollar-value client.

In instances when an important piece of information is transmitted by email, but the message does not require the recipient to respond, the sender is left in limbo. There is always the specter of doubt that the email was not read, never received, or was swept into the recipient's SPAM folder.

When transmitting important facts, especially where attachments are involved, it is essential that the communication be read as quickly as it was sent. It is common practice to use words such as "Priority" or "Time Sensitive" in the subject line, but this is still no guarantee that the recipient will see or read the communication.

The easiest fix to this dilemma is to end each email with a simple phrase: "Confirm When Received." As simple as this sounds, it is not common practice.

Once this confirmation command is incorporated as the closing sentence, the recipient simply responds with a one-word message: "Received." If no such response is generated, the sender merely resends the email or instructs a subordinate to confirm receipt by phone.

The Harvard Business Review recently published one of the most insightful overviews of email miscommunication: 10 Digital Miscommunications — and How to Avoid Them.

As COVID-19 spreads across the world, more and more of us are starting to work from home. In light of this global shift (and all of our heightened stress levels), it's crucial to take steps to avoid miscommunication when working as part of a virtual team.

The article written by Liz Fosslien and Mollie West Duffy included two key points well worth reiterating:

Realize typos send a message.

Typos reveal that we were in a rush or heightened emotional state when we hit send (or that we're the boss, and don't need to care about typos). Researcher Andrew Brodsky describes typos as emotional amplifiers: if Mollie sends Liz an angry email filled with typos, Liz will imagine Mollie hammering out that email in a blind rage and perceive the message as really angry. Even if you're in a rush, it's best to spend those extra two minutes proofreading your work, or better yet, read it out loud to catch any typos your eyes quickly skip over when reading it in your head.

Emotionally proofread your messages.

Typos are not the only thing you should be proofing your messages for. Brian Fetherstonhaugh, the Worldwide Chief Talent Officer at The Ogilvy Group, told us that he frequently asks employees if they have ever successfully defused an emotional issue via email. The answer is inevitably no. But when he asks the same group if they've ever inflamed an issue via email? "Everyone puts their hand up," he said. Always re-read what you've written before hitting send to make sure your message is clear and conveys the intended tone. Sending "Let's talk" when you mean "These are good suggestions, let's discuss how to work them into the draft" will make the recipient unnecessarily anxious. It's easy for one-line emails or slack messages to be perceived as passive aggressive in tone. Imagine how you'd feel if you got a message that said, "Per my last email, just following up" or "Help me understand."

Current statistics confirm that approximately 124 billion business emails are sent daily. Data regarding the use of text messaging is not as readily available, but it is reasonable to state that the two platforms constitute more than half of all business communications.

The art of conversation is still a tried-and-true contender, but the use of electronic communication in a business capacity is the champ. The moral to the story is simple: when professionalism, pragmatism and attention to detail are consistently applied, the probability of an email or text miscommunication is greatly diminished.

Attorney Laura Anthony

Laura Anthony, Esq. is the founding partner of Anthony, L.G., PLLC, a national corporate, securities and business transactions law firm. For more than two decades, Ms. Anthony has focused her law practice on small and mid-cap private and public companies, capital markets, NASDAQ, NYSE American, the OTC markets, going public transactions, mergers and acquisitions, registered public and exempt private offerings and corporate finance transactions, Regulation A/A+, securities token offerings, Exchange Act and other regulatory reporting requirements, FINRA requirements, state and federal securities laws, general corporate law and complex business transactions. The Anthony, L.G. PLLC team has represented issuers, buyers, sellers, underwriters, placement agents, investors, and shareholders in mergers, acquisitions and corporate finance transactions valued in excess of $1 billion. ALG has represented in excess of 200 companies in reverse merger, initial public offering and direct public offering transactions. Palm Beach Attorney Laura Anthony is also the creator and author of SecuritiesLawBlog.com, the host of LawCast™, Corporate Finance in Focus and a contributor to The Huffington Post and Law360.

Contact:
Laura Anthony, Esq.
Founding Partner
Anthony, L.G., PLLC
+1-561-514-0936
[email protected]
AnthonyPLLC.com
SecuritiesLawBlog.com
LawCast.com

SOURCE Anthony, L.G., PLLC