Lessons learned on email communication.

Most of us might have come across the following situation in professional life.

"You might have received an email either from your colleague or boss or team or customer, and the mail content induced anger or frustration within you. Immediately you reacted to the mail by bursting all your emotions by way of words and pressed the sent button. Later on, you felt that you overreacted or subsequent mail communications led to friction in relationships or waste of time. In either way, you might have realized the incident should not have happened."

Some years back it happened to me to receive a mail from one of my clients, and I reacted very harshly in a reply mail. However, fortunately, due to some intuition, I kept in the draft without sending. I had given some time to read the contents again and again. Then I called the client over the phone, and to my surprise, the client responded to my call, patiently explained his views which were quite the opposite to what I interpreted the mail content. The problem was eventually solved and our relationship is continuing till now.

the key lessons I learned from the incident were 

1. Unlike in verbal  communication.we  may not understand the intention of the content in written communication. In verbal communication, we may understand the intention through tone quality to some extent. We need the patience to interpret the contents rightly.
2. We should avoid the temptation to react to mail communications immediately. Email as a tool is not for instant communication We can take time and respond.
3. Even the mail content evokes negative emotions; we can give some time to dilute the emotion Any problem is solvable if it is understood in the right perspective and good state of mind.

To sum up, we should not react to email communications while in emotionally feeling low. Take time and then respond for better relationships and quality of life.