Management Training – Page 44 – STL

The flexible back-and-forth pattern of text conversations is at odds with the literal, efficient and measured approach most professionals have come to expect from business writing in the workplace. Email writing requires a bottom line, results oriented approach. Here are 4 Tips for Powerful Emails which will turbo-charge your productivity and write emails for results.

Effective Subject Lines

The first thing your reader will see is the subject line, so it has to be punchy and convincing enough to command attention. Between 2014 and 2018 the average office worker received about 90 emails a day and since yours is competing with 89 others, it must stand out and beg for priority.

Therefore, the subject line should follow four simple rules: be short and concise; be clear and easy to understand; be specific; and include a reader action.

Opening Paragraph

As with the subject line, clarity and directness can help a reader to understand what they need to do, therefore after providing some brief context, state your conclusion.

This means reiterating what you want your reader to do: approve copy; confirm a deadline or respond with draft materials attached. This gets straight to the point and reduces confusion and means a lot less scrolling, which sends your reader to sleep.

Culture & Clarity

While you think your message is on point other may not, which can lead to a lot of frustration and negative consequences for your relationships. When you are emailing teams in far-away places, it is vital to identify the communication patterns they use there and match that style.

For example, colleagues in the U.S. and the UK are more individualistic and therefore begin sentences with “I”, while their Asian counterparts in countries such as China, Korea and Japan will be affronted by this style, favoring the collective “we”.

Structure

Structuring your message involves you making it easier for your reader to understand and action. For most busy professionals and senior executives, a prelude of lengthy context and historical details is something they do not time for.

Ask most decision-makers and they will probably tell you they just want to know the purpose of the document and what to do about it.

A good standard structure that has mass appeal:

Start with the main point or conclusion.
The action you want your reader to take and when that action is required.
Supporting reasons / evidence, visually this has impact from being formatted using a number or bullet list.
Less important detail.
Reiteration of key points, namely the main point, reader action and deadline.

Conclusion

Emails that provide all the details needed to move things forward without having to follow up to clarify points and extrapolate precise meaning are important.

The tips above can help you to craft the kind of efficient, self-contained messages that are favoured by today’s professionals.

Take advantage of this approach when you are writing your next email.

What is the STAR?

The STAR technique is a process that helps you to respond efficiently and effectively to those tricky interview questions that ask you to reflect on your experience. It will help you to ace every interview. These types of questions will often begin, “Tell me…?”, “Describe a situation…?” or “Give me an example of a time when…?”. Interviewers ask these kinds of questions to understand how you will perform in the role.

Using this technique, you can match your answer to the question and perform better at interviews by outlining the:

Situation
Task required to address the situation
Action you took to complete the task
Result of your actions

Explain the Situation

Start by describing a specific situation or problem rather than a general explanation of many situations because this will make sure it resonates. It could be your experience from a previous job; voluntary experience; or any relevant event.

Provide details because the interviewer must fully understand how your situation matches the question they have posed.

Introduce the Task

Make your interviewer understand the objective you were set or your realisation of what was required to turn the situation around.

**Describe YOUR Action**

The spotlight is on you therefore describe the approach you took to address the situation.

Tip #1: Provide precise and methodical detail. What did you do and what were the specific steps you took?
Tip #2: Keep the focus entirely on you. People tend to use the collective “we” to describe contributions at work since we are often working with a team. When explaining actions in an interview, focus exclusively on what YOU did by using “I” not “we”.

**Own YOUR Result**

The most important part of your response. To nail it like a pro, describe the positive outcomes of your actions and what you accomplished. Besides that, put these results into clear context by throwing in some metrics, numbers or percentages.

Tip #3: This is YOUR moment and YOUR accomplishments so keep the focus on yourself.
Tip #4: Delight the interviewer by ensuring they understand that the result outperformed expectations.

Modelling STAR

Example Question:

Give me a specific example of a time when you used logic to solve a problem?

Example Response:

S: Interest in our marketing services was declining with less clients renewing contracts and revenues down.

T: I was tasked with generating new ideas that would revive interest in our services, retain our most important contracts and increase revenues year on year by 10%.

A: I conducted research that revealed increasing competition in the market for traditional services. I decided to prioritise our design capability and overhaul our digital presence to promote this service. I also set-up a special training session for the sales team so they could promote this service in new business discussions.

R: As a consequence, the business won eight pitches for new business. Two previous clients returned to us, which increased sales revenue by 30 % over the same period in the previous year.

Conclusion

Your appearance, passion, values and likeability only gets you so far in interviews.

To ace it, the STAR technique delivers a structure that helps your message chime with the requirements of the job and most importantly ensures you go one better than the rest.

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