Free communication skill tips for great emails and meetings

Many people scan their inboxes to pick the important emails to read first. With so many emails every day it’s almost impossible to read them all. If the topic isn’t clear in the subject line of your email, people might not even open it. 

If you want someone to do something you need to make it 100% clear as soon as possible. The fastest way to do this is to put what you need in the subject line. People scanning their inboxes will see a request and be more likely to read it than if the subject line is vague.

This is part of the communication skills tip series.

After opening an email most people read the first line and then scan the rest of the email. If you don’t make it clear what you need from them in the first line the reader might not see the request. You also shouldn’t bury the request in the middle or at the end of the email. Distractions, lack of patience, and many other reasons may stop someone reading a message before they get to the end. If your request is at the end they might not see it. So put it at the start.

If you don’t make it clear when you need a response, the person reading your email has to guess. What are the chances of them guessing correctly? Instead of leaving it to chance, state exactly when you need a response. That way the person reading your email knows what is expected. This doesn’t mean they will deliver on time, but at least they know what you want.

Important messages and information need to be at the top of the email. We tend to write information in time-order – that is, the order in which events happened. This put the outcome, the most important part, at the end. If the important information is at the end you are hoping the reader goes through everything and gets to the end. If there isn’t anything obviously important early in the email they might stop reading. Put the key information early in the email to make sure the reader sees it.

Short emails are better emails. Also, people read short emails and they often leave longer ones until later when they think they’ll have more time. If you put a lot of information in an email it reduces the chance of people reading it. It also makes it harder for the reader to find the valuable info. Instead of sharing a lot, write a summary. People read summaries, and they can always ask questions IF they want more detail later.

Long blocks of text take effort to read. It is difficult to scan a large block of text for important information. If your emails are long paragraphs there is a good chance the recipient isn’t reading it. Break up the information into paragraphs. Use bullet points, headings, and bold text to highlight key information. And leave white space on the page to make it easier to read.

If your email includes an action for someone, make it really obvious. If people can’t see the actions they are much less likely to do them. Don’t have actions inside paragraphs. Don’t have actions as sentences without any identifier. Instead, label the actions as “Actions”. Write the word Action, put it in bold, CAPITALS, or a different colour. This makes it stand out. Anyone reading the email will immediately see there is an action.

A lot of emails are requests. We ask people to do things, answer questions, give us information, and more. Anytime we ask for something it must be clear who is being asked to do what, and by when. If an email goes to more than one person with a request, each person could think the other person will do it. If the timeframe isn’t clear you may not get what you need when you need it. Make sure your requests clearly say who is being asked to what and by when.

If you ask someone a questions don’t put it in the middle of a paragraph. Questions hidden in paragraphs are harder to see and they don’t get answered. Instead, put the question on it’s own line or in a bullet point. Label the question with the word “Question”, or highlight it in bold of a different colour. Whatever you do, make sure the question stands out and the reader can’t miss it.

Group email chains are conversations with lots of people. If you add someone to that conversation it is polite to introduce them to the group. When you add someone to an email chain include a line saying why they’ve been added. This helps the person who’s joining understand why they are there. It also helps the group understand why a new person is being brought in.

Group email chains are a conversation. If you remove a person form the email chain you need to explain why. You should explain to the person you remove and to the rest of the group. The group might not notice a person being removed and they could assume the person is still involved. And the removed person might wonder why they’re no longer getting the messages.

No one wants to scroll through 20 emails to work out why they’ve been sent an email chain. When you forward an email chain, include a short summary of the conversation up to that point. Also say why you’ve forwarded the email chain and what you want to them to do. Don’t make people dig for information, that’s a quick way to have your email ignored.

URLs are often long and complicated. If you share a link in an email make it a hyperlink and don’t just paste a long URL. Text URLs are visually off-putting and there is a risk of them being incorrectly copied and pasted by the recipient. Plus, everyone expects links to be clickable. Make things easier for your reader and use clickable hyperlinks.

Meetings without a clear purpose cannot be successful. If you have a clear purpose, people will show up to your meeting. They will also be engaged and feel like they contributed to something valuable.

A meeting without an output is just a conversation. Meetings should produce something useful. The output might be a decision, a list of ideas, or a group of people who learned something new. Whatever you need from the meeting, makes sure you know the output you want.

If someone isn't contributing to the output you need, the meeting is wasting their time. When creating a participants list, only include people who contribute to the output. If someone need the output, but they aren't part of creating it, don't invite them. Just send them the output afterwards.

The format of the meeting must help achieve the purpose. The wrong format makes it harder to get the output you want from the meeting. Make sure you think about the best activities to support the creation of the output you want.

This quick pair of activities will show you if you're inviting the right people to your meetings and if you are using the best activities to achieve the output you want.

Download the activity sheets and answer the questions. It'll only take a few minutes and you'll get immediate feedback on how you could make future meetings better.

The meeting invitation sets up your meeting for success. It tells people why you are asking them to give their time. It shows what a successful meeting looks like because the output is defined. It also helps people compare the meeting against other things happening at the same time.

Having written a great meeting invitation you can use it to start the meeting. If your invitation includes a clear purpose and output you can read this as the introduction. It'll help get people on the same page and all focused on what they need to do in the meeting.

Some people will only contribute to part of the meeting but they need to attend for the whole time. This isn't efficient, but it can't always be avoided. When introducing a meeting, thank the people who are there the whole time but only involved in part of the meeting. This improves their engagement and lessens frustration at the inefficient use of time.

At any point in your meeting you should know how much progress you've made towards the desired output. For example, if you need a list of 10 ideas and you don’t have 5 by the midpoint of the meeting you know you are not on track. Tracking progress to the output helps you adjust the approach in the meeting to get what you need on time.

Ending a meeting well is just as important as starting it well. People need to leave knowing they have accomplished something valuable. The easiest way to do this is to close the meeting with a summary of what you all did. The summary should focus on the desired output, if it was achieved, and what will happen next.

Meeting minutes don't have to be long. Minutes shouldn't be a complete transcript of the meeting. The simplest way to have effective minutes is to use the output. The output IS what you set out to create, so that is the minutes. In addition you can add any actions and decisions.

Meetings are usually part of something bigger. they are part of a project, a series of tasks, or something else. When you end a meeting you should let people know what happens next. Say what the meeting output will enable, or what will happen to it now. Say what actions will be taken and who has tasks to do. A meeting is rarely the end of the work. And when attendees know what happens next it is easier to see the value of the time spent in the meeting.