Writing Clearly is the New Empathy

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Misunderstandings are rampant in today’s virtual workplaces. And while poor communication habits may feel inevitable with colleagues, it can often come at the cost of a team’s potential to succeed. We should always strive to engage with clarity and empathy, especially as we come to rely more on remote work and digital communication. A good first step to improving our habits and becoming better team members? Re-learning what it means to read carefully and write clearly.

Digital reading and writing skills are critical for anyone who wants to develop and maintain strong relationships with their colleagues, both current and prospective. Truly listening to people’s thoughts and concerns and responding accordingly is what makes for a cohesive workplace. Since most of us communicate most of the time with our thumbs, we need new rules of thumb to help us become better readers and communicators.

Brevity: Don’t Rush to Provide an Answer!

When we slip into sending thoughtless responses to our colleagues, our teams suffer from it.

Brevity from the upper echelons of power isn’t exactly uncommon. Sloppy texts and sloppier emails, poor sentences, bad grammar, atrocious spelling — we don’t have time to care!

But while brevity can make a person appear important, it can also hurt your business. Getting a slapdash email means that the recipient has to spend time deciphering what it means, causing delays and potentially leading to costly mistakes. It can also make us come across as insincere, resulting in a loss of trust in the reliability of our teams.

You don’t have to respond to every message, but if it’s required, your communications should at least be clear. Your organization will be better for it.

Be Tone-Deft, not Tone-Deaf

Tone — the overall attitude, or character, of a message — is another key skill for any successful communicator. Perhaps more than anything else, it’s the greatest tool for communicating empathy. So when you’re addressing a former, current, or prospective employee, ask yourself: Who is the recipient? Who is the audience?

Don’t respond for the sake of responding if you don’t have something substantive to offer. If you are having one of those days where you can’t give thoughtful attention to an email, send a quick reply acknowledging you received it, and let them know that you plan to respond to it at greater length as soon as possible.

Responding Clearly Conveys Empathy and Respect

One of the more obvious reasons our reading skills decline at work is that we’re often moving at lightning speed, which makes detail easy to brush over. It costs us our speed and erodes our commitment to accuracy, clarity, and respect.

Always reference details in your communications. If an employee sends you a longer email with a list of questions, respond to specific components of the email rather than sending back a blanket response. It shows that you put in the time to really read through the other person’s time and thinking.

A lot of the time, misinterpreting an email is a question of not understanding a dropped word or punctuation that’s misleading. The solution is simple: proofread your emails before sending them. Take advantage of spell check and other proofreading programs. Proofreading is both a habit and a skill: making it a point of pride to send clean, unambiguous copy will help people take what you write more seriously.

Lacking cues like eye contact, tone of voice or body language to clarify what another person means makes digital communication challenging. Slowing down for the sake of stronger digital communication is crucial for anyone who wants to maintain sturdy relationships with their colleagues. By reading and writing carefully, employees will have greater confidence in their teams and the organization they serve.

Erica Dhawan is a leading expert on 21st century teamwork and communication. She is an award winning keynote speaker and the author of the new book Digital Body Language. Download her free guide to End Digital Burnout.

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