Fake it 'til you make it

Your Body Language Shapes Who You Are 
Amy Cuddy | TED Talks

Really worth investing 20 minutes of your time to have a look at this video.

To emoticon or not to emoticon...

Do you find yourself sending business mails late at night? You may want to reconsider your email habits after reading my latest Leadership Magazine contribution on page 92.

To emoticon or not to emoticon...

You’ve really built a solid relationship with your client, supplier, employee [insert key stakeholder that forms part of your business here], they have become one of your closest confidants, so there is no harm in ending off your e-mail with some hugs and kisses at the end of it; not to mention the array of emoticons at our disposal to really express yourselves in a written message! Right? When it comes to business e-mail protocols this is a big no, no. Regardless of how close you are with your business contacts, keep it professional.

E-mail etiquette could prevent awkward misinterpretations of e-mails, not avoiding common mistakes could have a detrimental impact on you and your company’s reputation.

Sending e-mails have become such an integral part of our daily lives that we very often dart off an e-mail without actually considering what we’re sending to whom. Here are a couple of e-mail etiquette tips to be considered:

Timing – Until about a year ago I quite happily sent e-mails late at night, or super early in the morning. I also checked mails just before putting off the bedside lamp for the evening and felt rather proud of myself for being so on the ball with my quick response rate. I stopped checking mail before going to bed when I received really bad personal news via an e-mail one evening. There was nothing that I could do about the situation; however I had a really bad night’s rest, which then meant I was not on my A-game the next day. What sealed the deal for me was receiving an incredibly unpleasant e-mail sent at about one o’clock in the morning, which was clearly sent by someone who was overtired. This made me realise that sending out e-mails late at night, or in the wee hours of the morning sends many negative messages. I am not convinced that anyone is productive after 19:00 at night after a long day in the office, let alone after twelve at night. It is important to have a balance in your life and use office hours to conduct business. My team and I now have a rule that we don’t sent e-mails after 19:00 at night or before 07:00 in the morning, we respect each other times, and those that we are sending mails to. 

Check your spelling and grammar – spelling and grammar gremlins happen, however many of them could have been avoided with a quick ‘once over’ before the mail was sent. In the last week I received two e-mails from totally different people, who have fairly senior positions in their respective organisations. The emails were riddled with spelling and grammar mistakes. This definitely dented my perception of them. Respect the person that you are sending an email to by re-reading it before sending it; the recipient may not necessarily have the time or inclination to unscramble your incoherent sentence structure. 

Length – steer away from very lengthy e-mails. There will be times that you may need to write longer e-mails, especially when confirming details and the e-mail will be used to keep an audit trail of a conversation or project. However, more often than not, the content of an email can be reduced significantly. When an e-mail is too long, it takes time to read through it and to respond to it, which then causes other emails to heap up and before you know it you have a cluttered Inbox.  Cut to the chase, let the recipient know exactly what you need from them and by when, this will also help them to prioritise accordingly.

Subject lines – it really helps if you can provide as much detail of what the email is about in the subject line. This will also allow the recipient of the mail to know whether it is urgent and requires a response immediately or if reading it can wait until later in the day. We’ve started implementing [eom] and [nntr] in our subject lines for internal mails. We try as far as possible to reduce our emails to a couple of words in the subject line; eom denotes that it is the ‘end of message’, then the other person knows that they don’t need to open the email. Ending with [nntr] means that there is ‘no need to respond.’ Very often we feel compelled to respond to every single mail, which also clogs up Inbox space.

CC carefully – sometimes we feel it necessary to copy numerous people into a mail for various reasons. If you are copying someone in for their reference, or to be aware what’s going on, let them know; if you’re going to CC 20 people into a mail, and each one of them want to reply or acknowledge your mail then you’re going to have a pretty full Inbox. Also there is the problem that crops up when people accidentally hit the ‘reply all’ button, then all and sundry will get see all the replies. Again this overloads your Inbox unnecessarily. 

Add the recipients last and make sure that it is addressed to the correct people. Few things are as cringe-worthy as accidentally sending an e-mail to the wrong recipient and knowing that there is just no way of retrieving it. By adding the recipients last you have a chance to go over the content of the mail, grammar and spelling one last time before hitting the send button.

Turn your emails around quickly - our American ECCO partner prides themselves in a three-hour turnaround time on e-mails. Realistically, I think 24 hours is good, and this is what we aim for. Reading through the email etiquette literature, it says that you should reply to all emails that you have been sent. Even if you are only copied in it, or if the email was not intended for you, you should reply and indicate that the mail was sent to you in error. Also, know when to draw the line to replying; acknowledge the mail but avoid then a to and fro of “great” and “thank you” mails. The important part is to reply to emails. Instead of checking mail throughout the day, what I’ve found works quite well is to allocate specific timeslots to checking email. This increases your productivity for getting down to doing actual work and avoiding distractions.

Make it easy for people to find your contact details – especially if the thread of the mail is getting quite long, it’s incredibly frustrating to trawl through the whole mail to try and track down a contact number.

Tips for e-mail etiquette:

• Avoid sending emails after 19:00 or before 07:00;
• Check your grammar and spelling before sending an e-mail;
• Avoid lengthy e-mails, get to the crux of your message quickly and let the recipient know what you require them to do by when;
• Creatively use subject lines to save time;
• Carefully consider who needs to be CC’d into an email and make sure that you are sending the mail to the right person;
• Acknowledge all the e-mails that you receive;
• Make it easy for people to find your contact details.

To continue the reputation management conversation, join Regine on Twitter @ReputationIsKey or Facebook www.facebook.com/yourreputationmatters.

Do you have a reputation management question? Ask the specialist – send your question through to Regine and it may be answered in the next edition: regine@reputationmatters.co.za.

http://www.businessinsider.com/email-etiquette-rules-every-professional-needs-to-know-2016-1

http://emailcharter.org/

A couple of tips when it comes to networking

Here's a link to my latest contribution on Standard Bank's BizConnect; this month I focused on networking. Click here to read the article.

What do you do or avoid during networking sessions?

Leadership Magazine: Human Captial

May's 2016 Contribution is available online here on page 74 and 75

Human Capital

“If you think it's expensive to hire a professional to do the job, wait until you hire an amateur,” are wise words from Red Adair, an American oil well fire fighter who was a notable innovator in the specialised and extremely hazardous profession of extinguishing and capping blazing, erupting oil well blowouts.

In the previous issues, we focussed on the impact that strategic intent and operational capability has on a corporate reputation. Human capital - investing in the right people to do the job - is another key building block to building a solid reputation. Investing in your workforce means you are investing in the quality of your output, the harmony within the workplace and ultimately - your reputation. Identifying the right calibre of people during the recruitment phase is directly aligned to the strategic intent of the organisation; knowing exactly where you are going with your business and who you need on your team to get you there. Getting this right at the onset will save you a lot of time, frustration and money in the future.

At Reputation Matters, we have implemented a rigorous recruitment process; because we are in the business of managing reputations, we need to be very particular about who we have on our team. The first step is to have really good strategic alliances in place that can feed the recruitment funnel. We have a great relationship with the University of Pretoria’s communication management department, and offer their top BCom Communication Management honours students internship opportunities with us. Any students who are interested in a position must go through the same recruitment process, starting with an online application form. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, it shows whether the person is serious about wanting the position; if they are, they complete the form in full. Secondly, it demonstrates their basic use of spelling and grammar, something which is vital when it comes to business communication and subsequent reputation management. I am often amazed by the number of applications we receive where the applicants refer to themselves as “i".

The next round involves a phone call to determine how the candidates handle themselves over the phone – if very well, the first face-to-face interview is setup. Should the interview go well, we check references and then do personality profiling to get an idea of how they will fit in with the rest of the team. In the final step, the candidate is given a case study to prepare and present to the team. This may seem like overkill, but getting the candidates to whittle themselves out has saved an enormous amount of time and ensured that we are able to pick the cream of the crop for different positions. Wouldn’t you want the best possible candidate to be looking after your reputation?

Once you have selected the ideal candidate, a thorough induction is necessary to help them get to grips with ‘how things are done around here’. Margaret Hirsch, dynamic business owner and founder of Hirsch’s Home Stores takes time out of her hectic schedule to meet and engage with all of their new recruits.  I was fortunate enough to sit in on one of these sessions and see Margaret in action. Margaret speaks candidly about the vision, core values and culture right from the outset, which instils a level of respect and understanding for the organisation and leaves very little room for misinterpretation and helps the candidate grasp exactly what the expectations are. This important step links back to strategic intent and operational governance, with the message and vision being reiterated right from the top.

It’s all good and well to have the right people appointed, but in order for the organisation to grow, it is equally important to invest in training and development. Peninsula Beverages Company (PenBev), the local bottlers and distributors of Coca-Cola products in the Northern and Western Cape, does this particularly well. PenBev has been nominated and recognised as a Top Employer for a number of years, no mean feat for a provincial operation when compared to the large multi-national conglomerates it competes against for this title. What drives their success?

Greg Lewis, managing director of PenBev shares that it’s a passion for people; those that they serve and the people on their teams. He believes that without this passion they would not see the successes that they do. He adds that it’s about fairness, accountability, continuous improvement and teamwork. By investing in your people – through training and development programmes, you are showing that you see value in your workforce and have faith that the relationship will be long and fruitful.

If you have an employee who is truly passionate about their work, you can be sure that they will be telling their friends and family how much they love their job and the company they work for. This passion and enthusiasm has a positive impact on the rest of the team as well. The same can be said of someone on the team that is not in the right position, and does not share the same keenness for the company. Both of these attitudes will in the long run impact how the organisation is seen and directly affect its reputation.

Building a reputation is therefore about getting the right team in place from the onset, ensuring that everyone is on the same page regarding the business goals and vision, and then investing in training and development to ensure the individuals, teams and company is always growing. Another appropriate quote to think about is from David Ogilvy, who once said: “If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants.”