Communication | What the Health

I am certain that I am not the only person on LinkedIn who has received a random connection request from a complete stranger. Over the past few years, I have received several hundreds of such requests and, yet, at each request, I can’t help but wonder why anybody should send me a blank connection request.

In the initial days that I noticed a sizeable number of random requests in my mailbox, I would ignore them. If I came across a profile that resonated with my own interests, then I would write them a note not unlike the one here. Most times, I would never hear back from the sender of the request. But every once in a while I would receive an answer.

The senders could be classified in three major categories:

People who ran networks of experts on specific business areas and wanted to expand them
People who wanted some help, usually some consulting advice, career advice, connection with somebody I knew, a new job in an industry that I was familiar with and such
People who were ‘impressed’ by my profile OR thought this was an alternative to Facebook and Twitter where random people called each other ‘friends’ or ‘followers’ OR ‘just wanted to add connections to their network’ OR believed that LinkedIn is meant for ‘getting to know people’

Let me first talk about ‘MY side’ of this story – how it began and how it evolved.

As one can imagine, the last category was reminiscent of the times in lower secondary school when schoolmates would run up to one and say, “I want to make friendship with you!” I usually politely diverted requests from this category or simply ignored them.

With the first two categories, however, there seemed to be merit is considering the requests with more than nonchalance. The first one was easy to deal with – I’d check out the authenticity of the sender with a visit to their website, understand more from them about their model, and, after a couple of exchanges, ‘Add’ the connection…or not.

With the second, however, I often had a mixed bag to handle. The requests seemed carefully thought out at best (“I run a VC fund and often require the help of consultants with the companies in my portfolio.”) And immature and naïve at worst (“I am a graduate of instrumentation engineering – could you help me find a suitable job?”) Err…What?!

The interesting statistic here is the split of requests across the three categories: 15% | 60% | 25%. While my eventual interactions with these ‘random connections’ drove to their respective logical conclusions, I learnt something very important from the analysis – There are a LOT of genuine people out there that I CAN help.

From then on, I made a simple but significant tweak in my first-response strategy. Instead of asking these random connectors, “How do I/you know you/me?” I began to ask, “How can I help you?” And that tiny change in perspective and tone has made a HUGE difference to the quality of my network.

At the most trivial of times, it has led me to a lost connection from my past life or exposed me to a whole new cohort of potential clients. At the most significant of times, it has set off a series of conversations that converted into a business relationship or helped me hone my skills in an area from the level of a practitioner to an expert. Talk about seeing the world differently…

Despite the richness in the quality of network that I’ve been able to derive from random connections, I do have a tip or two that I think the other side – ‘THEIR side’ – should use. When you do feel the need to connect with a complete stranger via LinkedIn, PLEASE follow these steps, and follow ALL of them:

Add a brief note to your request (yes, LinkedIn does allow you to do that even in its Basic version)
Say something meaningful in that note (‘hi, can we connect on LinkedIn?’ does not cut it!). Explain who you are and what (help) you are looking for. Even if you went to the same University as that person, don’t assume that (s)he would want to add you to their network for that reason alone.
Mention briefly why you would like to connect with this person in particular.

If your need is genuine and the person you write to is even remotely concerned with the area in which you need help, you are far more likely to get a cogent response to such a request than to a blank one.

Call it a boon, call it a bane, but emails have become an integral part of modern work life. Even so, I am often surprised at how little training one receives at the workplace on how to write an email. One cause for this neglect is perhaps the way that the email first came into our lives – as a medium for social connection. It did not start out as a replacement for formal letters.

I recall vividly the section on ‘letter writing’ at every language exam while in high school, where points/ marks would get added or deducted depending on whether certain elements of letter-writing were in place or not. Now that emails have largely replaced office mail, it behooves the question, ‘what should be the critical elements of an email?’ That’s the science…

Then there’s the question of what function an email must serve. What does one want as a result of an email? Communication, of course, but to what effect? If an email has not had a desired effect, it has essentially failed as a piece of communication. Writing an email must achieve the desired result. That’s the art…

The Science of Email Writing

To, CC, BCC

The first field, ‘To’, is a no-brainer, isn’t it? Not really…because it often overpowers the ‘CC’ field, when really the latter needs to be used. Add people to the ‘To’ list when they are the specific persons who need to respond to your email.

Anybody else that you might think of should be in the CC field because they probably fall into one of the following categories:

to be kept informed because of common goals, such as a team member;
to be kept informed because of hierarchical relevance to the subject, such as an immediate boss, yours and/ or the addressee’s; or
to be kept in the loop because of the potential for influencing the outcome of the email, such as a super-boss or a critical senior executive. ‘Influence’ is a big catalyst in achieving the desired response to corporate email.

Learn to curb the temptation to add people to the CC list – not everybody needs to be in on each email. Similarly, don’t hit Reply All unless it is necessary.

The BCC field, unfortunately, is just a bad idea for corporate email because it has ‘sneaky’ written all over it. It is best reserved for social/ unofficial email or mass ‘forwards’ where it doesn’t matter to the addressees what the identity of the other addressees is.

Subject

Despite the number of times that each of us has probably had points deducted for not having included a subject for our letter-writing assignment while at school, many people don’t realize that they MUST have a subject line in an email. It makes it easier for the reader to read, prioritise and act upon your email if (s)he knows what the topic of discussion is. Use the Subject field to your advantage by making it as relevant to the communication as possible.

Greeting/ Sign-off

Choose your greeting based on the following criteria:

The rapport/ relationship that you share with the addressee(s)
The frequency of interaction with the addressee(s)
Whether the interaction on the current subject is an ongoing one or an initial one
Whether the email is likely to be sent forward to other persons, internal or external to the organisation

The Art of Email Writing

No, I didn’t forget to include the Body of the email. That is actually where the ‘art’ comes in.

Human beings tend to see the world in terms of calendars and clocks, i.e. in a chronological sequence. This is a great tool, psychologically, to keep track of things. However, it is rather antithetical to corporate prioritization (Is this email important?) and decision-making (How should I respond?) The email writer has a huge opportunity to make these two processes more efficient.

Conventional wisdom tells us to follow these steps:

Provide the ‘Background’ for the email;
List the steps that have already happened in the sequence of events since the background, often accompanied by the evidence to prove that they happened;
Put forward the current situation and circumstances, and, finally,
Raise the request/ question or state the directive, etc.

Very common sensical, isn’t it? But here’s the catch. Depending on the context, such an email could be four lines (at least) to one and a half pages (or more) long. Who wants to read page-long emails before they are told what is expected of them? For all the time-saving hacks that corporate productivity gurus talk about, shouldn’t shorter emails be on top of the list? I signed up to the email charter five years ago and it has saved me a lot of work and I’m sure it has saved the recipients of my emails a lot of time.

Alternative wisdom would use the same elements but in a different flow:

State the main reason for writing the email – raising the request/ question or stating the directive, etc. This is the main response desired/ action you want taken as a result of the email.
Provide the rationale (at most five points) for the reason above
List the attachments, if any, that you’ve provided to be read for anybody who needs more details, with a short description of what’s in each attachment. These attachments could include the ‘Background’ and the sequence of relevant events, among other things.
Plug in the attachments.

Voila! Your email is now two brief lines with, perhaps, a small set of bullet points for support. The best part about a short email that states the desired outcome at the top is that is it has a higher chance of actually being read and, hence, responded to.

Get more from less with your next email.