How Personality Impacts Your Email Communication Skills

Have you ever wondered if there was a connection between your personality and your email communication skills?

I never thought about it either until I saw an infographic by CPP Inc. (publishers of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Sendmail).

Titled What are Your Biggest Email Pet Peeves?, this infographic features a section that analyzes how personality impacts the way you write your emails. Four personality preferences/types are compared: extroverts, introverts, thinkers, and feelers.

According to the infographic, extroverts:

• Tend to write long, conversational messages and send lots of emails in general
• Might find their recipients just delete emails before even reading them
• Should review emails prior to sending to make sure all the words are necessary

On the flip side, introverts:

• Tend to keep their messages brief unless it’s really important
• Might find that their recipients think extreme brevity is inadequate
• Should remember to include all the major details of the issue

If you’re a thinker, you probably:

• Tend to focus on facts and logic instead of personal connections
• Might craft messages that cause your recipients to feel bored and disconnected
• Should make an effort to include personal touches in your messages

If you’re a feeler, you most likely:

• Tend to focus on what the recipient values most (you empathize with them)
• May lose your recipients’ attention because you are not getting to the point fast enough
• Should use bullets for organization and lead with the facts and the logical stuff

Source: http://www.business2community.com/infographics/biggest-email-pet-peeves-infographic-0655761

Using words in certain ways defines you

Another article confirms the impact personality has on our email communication. Fast Company’s article, WHAT YOUR EMAIL STYLE REVEALS ABOUT YOUR PERSONALITY, makes the point that our words define us:

People use language in different ways, and those differences are a function of their personality. Our choices are spontaneous and unconscious but they do reflect who we are. Text mining studies have found associations between key words and major aspects of personality. The more frequently people use those words, the more likely it is that they display certain personality traits.

In addition, your communication style also says a lot about you. If you make sure that your communications are free of typos it’s a sign you might be conscientious, obsessive, or a perfectionist. (Perhaps you are all three!)

Or, if you like using emoticons in your work emails, that could mean you are friendly or just plain immature (especially if you’re putting smiley faces in business communications).

Source: http://www.fastcompany.com/3031362/work-smart/what-your-email-style-reveals-about-your-personality

Avoiding misunderstandings

No matter your personality or communications style, it’s highly possible that your reader will misinterpret your message anyway. Email lacks the non-verbal cues of face-to-face communication, which means that it’s easy to misunderstand the true meaning of a text-based message.

To avoid as many misunderstandings as possible through email, you should do the following:

• Write well. Your grammar doesn’t have to be perfect, but you should make every effort to craft an intelligent message that is as free of mistakes as possible. If you write poorly or sloppily, your professional credibility suffers.
• Try and understand what your recipient needs. When you give a speech, you tailor your talk to the audience. A doctor discussing how he/she performs heart surgery would speak differently about it to professional colleagues than a group of third-graders. It should be the same when you write an email. Use language that will connect directly with your recipient to allow for the best possible understanding.
• Ask for feedback. If your message needs a timely response or if you just really aren’t sure your recipient understood it, go ahead and double check. Send a casual message asking if they had any questions or need more information. (But if you want to be really efficient and don’t want to keep writing extra emails, use a messaging system that automatically tracks recipient interaction.)