i spy a little i

Ten years ago when I taught small business owners how to help their brands stand out on social media, every class began with the reminder that the media they used was…social.

Get off that pedestal, I’d say. What you post should be the start of a conversation. The goal, I’d say, is to engage others in such a delightful way that the conversation moves off the platform and into a meeting.

It didn’t occur to me until very recently that the same goes for email.

In the Work It mastermind I’m currently running with the great Melissa Ford we talk a lot about email. What does it mean to connect with someone if you’re missing the physical cues of an IRL conversation? How can you invite someone to a sales call without sounding like a sleazebag? What can you write that presents as genuine curiosity to the recipient?

It’s hard. Mostly because we have a tendency to talk about ourselves in our emails. When we make messages about us, we miss opportunities to truly connect. Look at the last few emails you sent out: how many times did you use the word “I” in them?

I learned about ‘conversational narcissism’ – a Charles Barber term – thanks to Celeste Headlee’s We Need To Talk: How To Have Conversations That Matter. “It’s the desire to turn the focus of the exchange to yourself. It is often subtle and unconscious.” Even when we don’t mean to do it, we do it. We email people with impulsive streams of consciousness that often create messages peppered with “I,” “I,” and more “I.”

Go on. Try it. Write your next email and avoid using your favorite pronoun. Hot tip: if you’re truly interested in the person you’re emailing, make the email about them. Comment on observations about them. Ask questions about them. Unlearning the i-sore habit is a challenge but it can be done so that you slowly and skillfully take yourself out of the equation.

See you soon,

jill