I’m fascinated, and often annoyed, when people are too brief in communicating with me.
I provide career coaching, helping people improve how they navigate their careers and projects to achieve greater success. The first contact with me is usually by email, generated by a page on my website, and this is the first chance I get to see how they present themselves. It always surprises me when these messages lack sufficient information for me to understand the sender or give a decent response.
I get messages where the writer doesn’t tell me who they are, what they do, why they’d like to speak to me, what their goal is for our conversation, and, most importantly, why I should want to talk to them. In a few cases, the email address of the sender is not the name of the person, and the email is not signed. The result is I don’t even know their name.
Since I’ve seen so much of this type of “non-communication,” I’m finally wondering why this is so prevalent today. Is this the X and Text Effect? Do people now believe that every message should be 140 characters or fewer (often much fewer)?
Brevity is always preferred by busy business people, and technology gives us a chance to communicate critical information without taking up time in someone’s schedule.
Fortunately, in today’s business ecosystem, emails, texts, various apps, and social media platforms have created a buffet of tools that let us introduce ourselves and explain what we’d like to discuss when we connect by phone or in a meeting. It also provides a chance to gather some background info and generally set the stage for a more efficient and productive interaction when we speak or meet.
However, being too brief can leave others unsure who you are or what you want. It’s likely to cause people to simply ignore you.
If you want the people you contact to take an interest in you and your projects, be concise while still providing enough information to make your communication meaningful and productive. After all, when was the last time putting out the least effort got you the most of what you wanted?
