Professionals write a lot at work. In fact, the average professional sends and receives over 124 emails a day. And in between time reading and responding to emails, professionals are in meetings, using the chat, creating documents and sending them out, making phone calls, hopefully talking to some people face to face, and generally communicating. Nearly every aspect of a professional’s work involves communication–moving ideas from one brain to another brain.

Sometimes the communication that we are doing at work has less of an immediate purpose: brainstorming, potentially the side chat during a Zoom meeting, complaining/whining/gossiping, or even just socializing. These things are all important in that they have real social and functional value, but they are not directly related to work-related outcomes and results.

But most of the communication we do at work *is* directly tied to outcomes and results. We are spending most of our workday communicating, but we get paid for what happens as a result of those messages: how many people sign up, whether the contract gets signed or the proposal gets accepted, if the machine can produce so many widgets.

The majority of the communication we do at work is purposeful. It has an intended goal or outcome.

And to make our communication effective, we want that expected outcome to be understood by the reader so that they can follow through.

To achieve that, we have to start by thinking about the two big categories of outcomes: informational messages and persuasive messages.

The best way to think about them is to decide whether or not you need the other person to respond to you.

If you don’t need the other person to respond, you are creating an informational message. A message which has the purpose of informing or telling the other person some information. For example, a newsletter is informational: it tells people announcements, priorities, upcoming events. Sure, it might contain things that you want people to do–come to the fall picnic! Donate to a charity! But the message’s purpose is to invite people to do those things. If any one person doesn’t respond or follow through, the picnic will still happen, the charity will still accept donations (and hopefully get them). It’s nice if people write you and say things like “This is such a great newsletter!” but if they don’t, nothing happens. You move on to the next thing you are working on.

If you do need the other person to respond, you are writing a persuasive message. Persuade means to convince, which is that no one can read your mind and do what you want them to do unless you can explain it to them in a way that motivates them to actually do the thing. Persuasive messages mean that you are writing to ask someone a question, ask or tell them to do a task, and big picture, you need them to write you back in order for you to continue to work on whatever it is you are doing. If they don’t write you back, you can’t move forward.

Both of these types of messages should start with a statement (or a question) that explains the central purpose of the message to the reader–and not with an “I”:

April News!

Quick update

Announcements

Client x needs the revisions by Friday.

The powerpoint is ready for the meeting on Tuesday.

Where are you on the Smith loan?

____

When you are writing an email at work, try to use the first sentence to capture the subject of the whole email. What is the message about? Why are you writing? How can you frame the central idea in a way that serves the reader?

Often, I read messages that start with “I”: I wanted to check up on, I was thinking about the proposal, I have a few things to tell you, etc. “I” focused messages tend to be ignored by the reader because it isn’t clear how the message is relevant to them. The more the opening sentence (that’s the sentence below the greeting) talks to the reader, the better the engagement.

Once you have a sense of why you are writing, whether to inform or persuade, you have a better sense of how your professional email will end.

The goal of informational messages is for people to have the information. Those messages typically end with a sentence like “Let me know if you have any questions.” That sentence invites the reader to write you back, but doesn’t require it. It says, “I’m here for you if you need something, but I don’t need anything from you.” This is a useful shorthand in our professional spaces. We are getting inundated by so many messages; we have to decide which to read, which to act on, and which to reply to.

When we use a sentence like “Let me know if you have any questions,” we are sending a signal to the reader that they don’t have to write us back. Remember, people are skimming our messages, not reading them. So, if they are skimming and see that sentence, they aren’t going to go back and read the content of our message in depth.

On the other hand, when we write persuasive messages, we should end with a suggestion or request about what the other person should do: Please do [x] by [date] so that [y]. This kind of sentence provides clarity about the expectation, the timeline, and the result. You are reiterating the request, which is helpful for people who are skimming. You are setting a deadline, which helps other people prioritize their responsibilities. And you are connecting the request to an outcome or result, which psychologically helps convince people to take the action you want them to take.

The “Please do [x] by [date] so that [y]” template works, but you can also change that to ask a question. “Would you be able to do [x] by [date] so that [y]?” Or even ask the other person to set their own deadline: “When would you be able to do [x] so that [y]?”

The key to successful professional messages, then, is not to put the “Let me know if you have questions” sentence on the persuasive message. Which I know sounds strange. You want to say “Let me know if you have questions” because you are nice and you want people to come to you if they need help. The thing is that sentence creates a shortcut in the reader’s brain that prevents them from really reading your whole message. Because they don’t have to.

And if you need the person to act, you need them to read more of the message. And that’s related to how people read: top, bottom, middle. People look at the top to see what the message is about. They look at the bottom to see what they have to do. And then they read the middle.

So putting in that last sentence tells the person that they have to do something by a date to get a particular outcome, which will encourage them to go back and read the middle of your message. The middle will help them understand how and what and why and all the other details.

What do you need to know as a result of this blog post? That there are two main reasons to write at work: to tell people something or to get them to do something. And each of those motivations results in a different ending sentence. Here’s what it looks like:

Purpose: Do you need the other person to write you back?

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