The Effective Communicator spoke with Tom Miller, Utah鈥檚 Chief Medical Officer, about respectful communication in the workplace. His tips? Go slow, set boundaries, and pick up the phone. Bonus: why he uses Emojis in text messages.
By Isaac Holyoak and Tom Miller | 2 minutes
Dear Effective Communicator:
I woke up Sunday morning to an email chain that took three cups of coffee to read. I lost another hour writing a response and debating whether to send it. The rest of the day is a blur of back-and-forth emailing. My colleagues spent Monday morning rehashing everything. How can I get my weekend back?
Sincerely,
Mourning on Mondays
DEAR MOURNING
Respectful communication and effective communication share a lot in common: they require deep thinking, choices about what matters most, and a focus on what you鈥檙e trying to accomplish. These were just a few insights I gleaned from a far-reaching conversation with Tom Miller in an effort to answer your question.
MODERN WORKPLACE COMMUNICATION HAS TURNED INTO AN ARMS RACE
鈥淭he more you send, the more you get,鈥 Miller said, referring to emailing habits. That鈥檚 a problem because 鈥渆mails and texts are anti-deep work. They are bursts of information that limit thoughtfulness.鈥
Your capacity to work thoughtfully is like a tank of gas. It naturally depletes with use. If you use it in a reply-all race to the bottom, you won鈥檛 have it for the more enjoyable, if more difficult, work of . And as the tank approaches empty, you open yourself to mistakes and misunderstandings. As you well know, those mistakes compound in the evenings and weekends when you would normally fill your tank for the upcoming workday or workweek.
Miller鈥檚 antidote? Go slow. How? By making the choice.
THINK OF SETTING BOUNDARIES AS ENFORCING YOUR PRIORITIES
Setting boundaries is one of the more important choices effective communicators make. But setting boundaries in a 24/7 world doesn鈥檛 come easy; often guides how we allocate our attention. 鈥淚 worry the culture doesn鈥檛 know any other way,鈥 Miller said. He prefers to think of boundary-setting as the art of crafting priorities.
When you think in terms of priorities, boundaries come naturally. If your weekend priority is spending time with family, then anything that doesn鈥檛 match that priority (checking email, for example) is excluded. You might say you鈥檝e created a boundary, but a priority does something more dynamic for you. For example, email may be how you stay in touch with out-of-state siblings. Selectively checking and responding to email on the weekend might be how you prioritize those relationships.
ONCE UPON A TIME, PHONES WERE THINGS YOU TALKED IN TO
, but Miller is a phone fan. It鈥檚 often quicker and more effective, especially when your purpose requires some negotiation鈥攕omething Miller learned during his time in Washington, D.C., as a congressional staffer.
The telephone is also a more forgiving medium. An intelligent response to an email can take time and still leave you vulnerable to misunderstanding; a telephone conversation is quicker and increases mutual understanding. 鈥淓mail is not for complex issues,鈥 Miller said. But the phone, and in-person, is.
There is wide overlap between respectful communication and effective communication. Stay respectful by taking the high road and avoiding the weekend reply-all. Your Monday morning self will thank you.
You got this,
The Effective Communicator
WHY DR. MILLER USES EMOJIS
Emails and text messages lack the nuances of body language that we鈥檝e evolved to understand over thousands of years. That鈥檚 one reason Miller uses emojis鈥攚ith discretion鈥攊n text messages. They may seem silly to the uninitiated. But text messages are more like talking than writing. Emojis convey subtexts, like sarcasm, that are lost in plain text.
The Effective Communicator is Isaac Holyoak. Isaac is contributing editor for Accelerate and leads communication for 麻豆学生精品版 Medical Group. He received a Master's in rhetoric from the Brian Lamb School of Communication at Purdue University and taught speech, argumentation, and debate to undergraduates in Indiana and Texas in his pre-health care life.
CONTRIBUTORS
Isaac Holyoak
Editor-at-Large, Accelerate U of U Health; Vice President Strategic Communications, CleanSpark
Tom Miller
Chief Medical Officer, Internal Medicine, Professor of Medicine, 麻豆学生精品版