My hubby is often accusing me of moaning, when in my mind what I am saying is a) helpful and part of my personal opinion and b) said in a pleasant tone of voice. He appears not to agree, but then he is also it seems unable to hear the tone of his own voice. What about emails then? What if you respond to an email with a one (or more) liner, how then do you make sure that the tone is right? How do you prevent people from taking offense from seeing what you are saying as a moan and a pretty ill thought out and petty one at that. If the working population of the NHS is predominantly over 40 then the people using email within it are likely to be of a similar age. When we were at school there was little in the way of computers and people communicated by letter, phone and telegram. Speaking of telegrams I never received one myself but have read a couple e.g. Arriving Tuesday, stop. Hope that is alright, stop. Staying a month, stop. (too bad if it’s not alright they have already left). Anyway emails are a source of interest to me, because I think people tend to say things in an email, and in a way that they wouldn’t dare to either face to face or over the telephone.
Yesterday I read an email from a colleague, to which a paper was attached. The email said that the paper was for consideration and comment and that a meeting to discuss the matter would take place later in the month. 2 dates were mentioned. The first interesting thing, is the way that anyone who responds to the email then tends to copy in all of the other people to whom it was sent (about 20 in this case). So the first couple of replies were people saying they would be away, fine, I now know that these 2 individuals will be on holiday at the end of August. Others though, from local GPs (not sure that is relevant) were very curt in saying that the time scale doesn’t give adequate time to cover the aspects they need to within the paper, and a meeting in August when people are on holiday is terrible. Ok so I have had my holiday, and I am back at my desk. But I printed off the paper (6 pages), read it through, made some comments, read through some other supporting documents that I already had, made some more comments and have left it for a day or two to see if anything else occurs. People often seem, these days. to need an inordinate amount of time to do things. People are busy, I know that, but sometimes I think it is all an excuse, an excuse to moan, to send out a curt email and perhaps even to avoid doing some of the things we have to do. My plea though is, before you hit that send button think about what you have written and how you would receive it if it were sent to you particularly if you are ‘replying to all’.
