Posted by HT on Feb 15, 2009 in
Email The below email was sent by a conference organizer after meeting up with the professor that this email is addressed to. The purpose of the email was to remind the professor of the requests put forth during the meeting.
Note: The names and organization have been changed to ensure confidentiality
While the conference eventually turned out to be successful, with excellent feedback from the participants, this email was far from an effective piece of communication. This included the lack of correctness, coherence and clarity, among others.
Firstly, from a correctness point of view, this email was littered with grammatical errors, such as “once is confirmed” (1st sentence) and “to see if Dr Vivan interested” (Action point 2), just to name a few. While it is a student organization being represented here, the numerous errors in the email projects an unprofessional image for the organization.
From a functional point of view, the subject of the email was “Filming Interview with Minister of MCYS” when the email was supposed to remind the professor of the requests that the organization has put forth, with the interview being only one of the three requests. This might have caused the professor to overlook the other two requests when processing the email. An alternative title might have been “Requests from (Organization Name) in preparation of the Entrepreneurship Forum”
On a more positive note though, the email was rather concise, and had action items which the professor would be able to act on immediately. In addition, having just attended the meeting, the professor would have a better understanding of the details of each request than what is mentioned here.
Overall, the necessary contents of such a piece of communication is already included, but the inability to express the requests correctly and coherently might lead to others having a negative impression of the organization.
The following is how I would write the email:
Tags: Email
Posted by HT on Feb 1, 2009 in
Conflict Resolution 
It is no longer news that globalization has prevailed. In view of this, the outsourcing of work across geographical regions has become a norm over the past decade. It is thus commonplace for multi-national corporations to have teams comprising of members across different time zones and cultures, leveraging on electronic-mail (email) as the standard means of communication among members of these teams.
The email above was adapted (with details censored) from an email exchange within a software company between the lead user interface designer in the company’s California office and the lead software engineer in its India office. These individuals are two of the most important people in each product release, and they have to work together to ensure the quality of the product both in terms of its functionality and design.
As is exemplified in the email exchange, interpersonal conflict of varying degrees is common and unavoidable whenever two individuals work together. However, for these two managers, who are talented in their respective fields and well liked among their peers, interaction seems to end up each pointing fingers at the other. Compared with other more serious incidents, this email exchange is a relatively mild example. In addition to obvious lack of cross-cultural understanding with regard to working habits and cultural traditions, the inability to contact each other with short notices has also increased the level of anxiety and mistrust. Communication through email, without personal face-to-face interaction, is also a possible cause for conflict. All this has resulted in both parties often feeling frustrated working together, which in turn has brought about the reduction of efficiency in the company. The Vice-President of Product Development, who oversees both teams, also has to deal with the additional workload of managing the interaction and conflict between the two.
Given the knowledge of the various methods of resolutions for interpersonal conflict, how can we adapt these methods for a similar cross-cultural communication situation using email, a medium that limits the dimension of interaction, as the main mode of communication? In addition, what can we do if in the near future if we encounter a similar situation involving two conflicting parties?
Tags: Conflict, Email, HR Management