If we are to look like an old and decrepit man who no longer understands anything about today’s professional life, we might as well go for it cheerfully and even make the point: courtesy and empathy are no longer the order of the day: we are efficient right to the end, with all that this entails…
Let’s start by giving a few examples: potential customers are spontaneously addressed with a “cool attitude” in certain shops; polite formulas in an e-mail are useless; under the pretext of efficiency, the structure of a message is discarded; people enter a meeting room without saying hello, etc.
We can certainly live with these approaches, but we become worried when we see that these same people take offence at the “brutality” of certain advertising messages, judge certain companies based on mere presumptions linked to “political correctness”, no longer accept certain innocent jokes (I’m talking here about light jokes that are not serious or heavy-handed!), and act like “haters” on social media…
So, what can you do? Common sense often comes to the rescue of the poorest: a simple hello doesn’t cost much, a greeting at the end of a message doesn’t consume terabytes unnecessarily, and above all, using the right tone of voice with the person you’re talking to hasn’t killed anyone, as far as we know…
In other words, it is the tone that makes the music.
The fact that overly pompous formulas are no longer popular is nothing new. The fact that long introductions are no longer necessary in favour of a summary of a few words certainly responds to a more synthetic and rational approach but let us not go to the other extreme.
Let’s take the example of e-mails:
• The message must be synthetic and have at least one title
• The structure must at least follow a logic: introduction, development, thesis and antithesis, request, action, conclusion, etc.
• The purpose (request, information, question, etc.) of the message should be clearly visible or at least easily detectable
• Concluding and greeting sentences are not a luxury…
• Addressing an email “to all” without differentiating between the main addressee and the copied persons is not effective, or even generates misunderstanding
• And so on.
By using these few “tricks”, are we less effective, efficient, or counter-productive? In all modesty, many people (fortunately) do not think so…
Experience shows that even the younger generations appreciate being considered and treated well by their peers, even in emails. Why deprive yourself of small words that change the course of discussions and the way of acting.
The idea here is not to get into the attitudes and behaviour of other times but to bring a bit of a sociable and social touch in a world that has become more and more “raw”.
Have a nice week, good thoughts, and good reading.