Tuesday, December 8, 2009

communication etiquette

What are we communicating? To whom, and how? What is the imperative? What can we achieve from the action? These are just some of the questions that dictate the ground rules that we observe when we chart out a communication plan for clients. Can we please apply the same to ourselves?

What goes around, comes around! OMG, it sure does!

I am talking of emails! Especially the ones which say, "if you care for me, send this back to me too, and to this many others, and you will receive good luck in the next so many days....."

Do we have a right to send these out? To whom do we send these out? With the underlying threat of a disaster in case the recipient does not wish to forward it to those twenty others? I would not send it to anyone I love. And why should they be forwarded? Do they have a social message, apart from the usual I care and I love and I wish story? Even if they do have an underlying social message, is it fair to insist on forwarding?

I am very uncomfortable receiving such an e mail, and more uncomfortable forwarding it to my friends who may view it as an unwelcome intrusion . Unwelcome because the barrage of emails received is not funny these days, starting from personal, to promotional to head hunting to deal swapping, to broking to selling refilled cartridges, to e -marketing research tools, and so on. Intrusion because it comes into the mailbox at a time when the box owner is looking for specific information and this request to forward puts them in a 'shall i- shall i not' mode.

The worse case is when over the weekend, the blackberry gets jammed with all these forwards with heavy graphics and due to poor remote access, the recipient is unable to clear his or her mailbox and ease the jam- what happens then?What if important business details or personal information is jammed also? Can we compensate for a deal lost due to access denied, or a relationship busted due to a jammed mailbox?

Then why can't we be more focussed in our communication imperative?

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