It’s become very clear by the latter stages of 2015 that if you want someone to respond directly to you in some form of typed message, you better not ask more than one question. This applies to texts, emails, Facebook, LinkedIn, or any other place where you input the written word to be displayed on a screen.
If you ask more than one question, forget about a response. I don’t know why this happens, though it does seem to be tied to our incessant need to tap, communication distractions and disruptions and an inability to read a lengthy paragraph without skipping ahead.
This happens frequently in situations where I send a business email to a colleague, though it is also apparent in personal communications. You think the process is simple: You and your teammate are discussing an issue. You bat it around. Perhaps you head off on a tangent. Then, after bantering back and forth, you need to get a decision from the other person or just plain information.
So, you ask: “Let me know when and where you want to set up the meeting, Mark.” Notice, there are two questions in that short sentence, and that could be my problem for writing it that way, and not their problem for not reading the entire verbiage. It could be clearer, for example, if it was written, “Let me know what day you want to set up the meeting. Also, please remember to give me a time.”
This is no guarantee that you will get a response to both questions, but there is probably a better probability you will. If you left the message as one sentence in the earlier format, I would almost bet Jordan Spieth’s golf winnings this year that you will only get sent an answer to EITHER the “when” of the meeting or the “where.” You won’t get information on both.
Which means you then send a follow-up email: “I still need to know where you want us to meet, Mark. Oh, and BTW, should I bring donuts?” This is silly because with the second question added, you’ll be guaranteed that you’ll find out whether to bring donuts or where you’ll meet, so don’t mess Mark up with the extra question. Our brains today don’t seem to accommodate the extra demands placed on it by direct, easy-to-digest questions.
This becomes really funny when it happens repeatedly. You assume at work that people are there to support your efforts, that everyone wants to do a good job and is paying attention. It’s those last two words were we go astray.
People are not focused. What goes in one eye goes out the other. We glance. We gloss over things. We miss words. We don’t finish reading an entire transmission.
There are so many reasons we mess up responding to questions, that you could probably spend a day writing down all the ways we forget to answer. Then again, if you sent out a communication on this subject and included more than one question, you’d only get one answered anyway.
Only ask one question per electronic medium. On the text, email, Facebook, whatever, ask, wait for your response, then follow up with the next question. You have to hope and pray the person will get around to reading your second communication.
If you’re still stymied, remember that thing called a phone (even though it’s really better called a data transmission center)? Use it. Pick it up. Punch in the numbers. Speak. Listen. Resolve. Plan. Deliver. Hopefully, someone picks up on the other end when it rings.
If you ask more than one question, forget about a response. I don’t know why this happens, though it does seem to be tied to our incessant need to tap, communication distractions and disruptions and an inability to read a lengthy paragraph without skipping ahead.
This happens frequently in situations where I send a business email to a colleague, though it is also apparent in personal communications. You think the process is simple: You and your teammate are discussing an issue. You bat it around. Perhaps you head off on a tangent. Then, after bantering back and forth, you need to get a decision from the other person or just plain information.
So, you ask: “Let me know when and where you want to set up the meeting, Mark.” Notice, there are two questions in that short sentence, and that could be my problem for writing it that way, and not their problem for not reading the entire verbiage. It could be clearer, for example, if it was written, “Let me know what day you want to set up the meeting. Also, please remember to give me a time.”
This is no guarantee that you will get a response to both questions, but there is probably a better probability you will. If you left the message as one sentence in the earlier format, I would almost bet Jordan Spieth’s golf winnings this year that you will only get sent an answer to EITHER the “when” of the meeting or the “where.” You won’t get information on both.
Which means you then send a follow-up email: “I still need to know where you want us to meet, Mark. Oh, and BTW, should I bring donuts?” This is silly because with the second question added, you’ll be guaranteed that you’ll find out whether to bring donuts or where you’ll meet, so don’t mess Mark up with the extra question. Our brains today don’t seem to accommodate the extra demands placed on it by direct, easy-to-digest questions.
This becomes really funny when it happens repeatedly. You assume at work that people are there to support your efforts, that everyone wants to do a good job and is paying attention. It’s those last two words were we go astray.
People are not focused. What goes in one eye goes out the other. We glance. We gloss over things. We miss words. We don’t finish reading an entire transmission.
There are so many reasons we mess up responding to questions, that you could probably spend a day writing down all the ways we forget to answer. Then again, if you sent out a communication on this subject and included more than one question, you’d only get one answered anyway.
Only ask one question per electronic medium. On the text, email, Facebook, whatever, ask, wait for your response, then follow up with the next question. You have to hope and pray the person will get around to reading your second communication.
If you’re still stymied, remember that thing called a phone (even though it’s really better called a data transmission center)? Use it. Pick it up. Punch in the numbers. Speak. Listen. Resolve. Plan. Deliver. Hopefully, someone picks up on the other end when it rings.
