You and I can really like email, but we can’t force anyone else to. Most people don’t, I’m sure you realize, even if in reality it’s providing an extremely valuable communication tool, which they should lean into instead of away from!
But alas.
Extracting value out of email often comes in the form of reaching out to people. Can you help them? Can they help you? Should we communicate more to figure that out? This often begins via email as it’s the main publicly accessible communication medium.
There is usually a power dynamic at play.
Maybe I really really wanna communicate with you because I really really want a certain thing to work out. They probably know that, if they are smart. And if that’s the case, and they don’t particularly love email, you should be more than willing to move to whatever communication method they like. If the power dynamic goes the other way, maybe forcing them onto email is fine.
It’s perhaps the most awkward when the power dynamic is equal. Say it’s a co-worker at the same level as you. You need to work together on something and part of it is requiring some email proficiency. If they throw up the I’m just not good at email flag, which is weirdly more socially and business acceptable than it should be, then you just gotta step up and be the email person. It’s like when you have a group report to do in sixth grade and one kid just doesn’t contribute but nobody seems to care.
I’d like to dig into this more over time.
How do you deal with people that are terrible at email but you kinda need them not to be?
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