Conflict-Free Messaging: Reduce and avoid conflicts to boost productivity and wellbeing
In every organization, project or community, the reliance on written messages can lead to conflicts that impact both productivity and wellbeing. But by adopting easy-to-learn strategies, anyone can reduce or avoid these conflicts, minimizing their impact, smoothing interactions and reducing stress. Mastering these techniques borrowed from the world of diplomacy will make your messages less likely to provoke negative reactions and help you to deal with incoming messages that appear to be hostile.
Focusing on Objectives
Nobody is measured by the number of email wars they win, or given prizes for especially ironic or sarcastic messages. You will be judged instead based on the results of your work and the messages used to achieve these results are just a tool. For this reason, it is important to always remember that the real purpose of any written message is to help you to achieve one of your goals. Focusing on objectives in this way is a good way to avoid sending needlessly hostile or provocative messages that cause or sustain conflicts.
In 2001 the CEO of Cerner Corporation, Neal Patterson, became famous for a badly-conceived email to his company’s managers that caused the share price to fall 22%, costing the company $300M in lost value. Patterson was annoyed that there were empty spaces in the company parking early in the morning and wrote to his reports a long and hostile message telling them that they should fix this in two weeks or be fired. One manager sent a screenshot to a local newspaper and if Patterson’s goal was to get people to start work earlier his effort failed spectacularly. He should have considered first his goal.
Before you send any message always ask yourself if that message will contribute to your goals. If it doesn’t then maybe you have chosen the wrong approach. And in the case of a provocative incoming message, don’t respond in the same way because that will also not help you to achieve your goals. One good way of dealing with hostile incoming messages is to ignore the tone and address only the substance, sending a polite reply with the information requested. Trying to reply to a provocative message in the same way is a waste of time because nobody ever wins an email war.
Using Neutral Language
In any message you should also take care to use neutral language, avoiding words that take sides or could provoke anger. Some words are simply neutral all the time, like issue instead of problem, while some others depend on the specific case.
In April 2001 a US Air Force spy plane was captured in Hainan Island, China and the crew arrested. In the subsequent standoff the US ambassador wrote a message to the Chinese Ministry for Foreign Affairs that began “I now outline steps to resolve this issue…”, a perfect example of how you can find words that soothe the receiver even in a tense situation. You can find examples like this in published diplomatic cables and also in replies to complaints from companies.
You should always use neutral words to avoid confrontation, but at the same time there are some other less obvious things to consider. First of all, it is best to avoid using capitals as much as possible because they are interpreted as hostile. It also helps to avoid listing complaints with bullet points or, much worse, numbered points, which are often interpreted as being more aggressive than simple text.
Slowing Down Message Cycles
Many email conflicts are simply caused by the rapid cycle time of modern electronic communication, where people respond to a message while they are still angry and the other person is still upset, leading to an escalating conflict.
Surprisingly, this is a 19th century problem. Already in 1875 the French historian Charles de Mazade wrote that the Franco-Prussian War was in part caused by hasty responses to messages sent by electric telegraph. We know know that the leaked messages were manipulated to provoke this conflict, but at the time diplomats blamed the speed of the telegraph.
Slowing down messaging is another effective technique to reduce conflict. One way is simply to reflect before sending any message. Another is to avoid responding when you are angry. In any case it can be helpful to generally slow down message cycles by leaving messages before answering. This is another reason for having scheduled email windows at certain times of day.
Create “We” Feeling
You can also avoid many conflicts by taking advantage of the ways in which our brain divides other people into ingroups and outgroups. Psychologists have known since the 1950s that people separated by any barrier or label tend to develop some distrust and hostility. Muzafer Sherif at Oklahoma State University studied this with a series of famous experiments in Robbers’ Cave National Park, where boys divided into two groups developed some hostility for no rational reason. More recently, Jay Van Bavel of Ohio State University published research in 2008 about the neural substrate of these effects.
But the good news is that you can easily move someone from an outgroup to an ingroup simply by redefining the boundaries of the group. You can do this in practice by adopting language like “How can we move forward with this issue…” rather than “what are you going to do?”. Concretely, you can use “we” based language, focus on problems not people and look for solutions, not blame.
Sometimes I call this the “Pandemic approach”, after a board game where all the players are on the same team and play against the game. A truly inspired concept that is much more fun that the usual you-against-them games.
De-escalate
The final lesson from diplomacy is to always de-escalate tensions. Very often when there is a diplomatic incident like the expulsion of spies the response will be carefully calibrated to be slightly less than the first move. This avoids escalation of the situation.
We can learn from this by adopting the same approach. First of all, take care that the response to any hostile message is carefully measured to be clearly less intense. It can help also to focus on just the most important point or points and ignore the smaller ones. This can also have the effect of making your response stronger, since the work of researchers like Zachary Tormala has demonstrated that fewer points make stronger persuasion. Finally, when an email conflict is serious the easiest way to de-escalate is often to stop the message thread and switch to an alternative channel. You might try a phone or skype call, a face-to-face visit, or the help of a neutral mediator.
Culture Risks
In addition to these five techniques, many message conflicts are actually caused by cultural misunderstandings. While I was preparing this seminar, I saw a question on quora.com saying “I get offended by business mails with no salutation…” In fact, come people dislike salutations and others get annoyed when they are missing. The easiest way to find out what one person likes is to look at the messages that they send.
You can also cause cultural misunderstandings simply by sending messages to the wrong person or by copying a boss. In strongly hierarchical societies the boss is always in the loop, while in very flat hierarchies like Sweden the boss is usually only copied when there is a problem.
Whether you begin a message with small talk or not is also important, since some people find it annoying and others find short messages rude. There are also many misunderstandings caused by the conflict between direct and indirect speakers.
All of these culture issues can be avoided simply by taking the advice from the start about ignoring the “tone” of a message, because very often that tone is entirely unintended.
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