Email: Do It Well

Book Reviews / Communication

In my quest to model good reading behavior, I often check out books to peruse while my kids read. Recently I picked up Send: Why People Email so Badly and How to Do It Better. I admit I was wondering what a book could teach me about e-mail, but it turned out to be very useful.  For starters, I can articulate what bothers me about a poorly crafted e-mail.

This book lays out things that many of us learned through mistakes. For instance, while it is ok to mention details of your recent rubber-ducky induced plumbing disaster to your close colleague, if that same information is forwarded to your Dean, it feels embarrassing.

The book also provides clear guidance on some trickier things – like when to ‘BCC’ someone and why to ‘CC’  someone rather than including him/her in the ‘To’ box. (Hint: if you don’t need a reply, the CC box is appropriate.)

It also includes some nice tips for getting what you want out of e-mails, especially how to break up long e-mails and provide the reader with clear action steps for responding.  (Hint: Include bulleted action steps early with a date for response.) This information is critical in an age when we often ask people for favors online and need a prompt response to keep a grant or publication moving forward.

Other tips I found helpful was clear subject lines with keywords to allow for later searching, as well as updating the subject line when the conversation switches to a new topic.  We have all had the experience of trying to find an e-mail months later, and these simple steps can retrieve items quickly using the search function.

As someone who thinks a well-crafted e-mail could be used to save an hour-long meeting, this book is a must read for a more productive day and a functional outbox.  The book has short chapters and several nice tables to break up the text and summarize key points.  By the end, you’ll be primed to update subject headings frequently and craft tightly-worded, functional e-mails that will be safe when forwarded along to the rest of the universe.

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How to Be Heard by Legislators about Proposed NIH Budget Cuts

Communication / Doing Research

Your senators and congressional representatives want to hear their constituents. They have fairly specific channels they use to estimate the weight of opinion from residents of their districts:  1) phone calls, 2) visits to district/national office(s), 3) letters, and 4) local meetings. The last is getting harder to read. Bet on the former.

Here’s the plan:

  • Identify your legislators and their contact information at whoismyrepresentative.com
  • Call when you have time to be on hold.
  • While you are waiting, Google the address of the district office for each of your legislators. The website above has DC addresses which are slightly less potent.
  • Have your talking points ready (see below). However recognize that you may not get to them in if staff are counting calls by content, a process similar to a yeah or nay poll.

Draft your letters with a similar script:

Who you are:

I am in my third year on faculty at [Important University in Your State]. (Of course I don’t officially represent the university and am sharing my personal views.)

What you study, in plain language:

I study what makes some people much less likely than others to get Alzheimer’s disease using genetics and brain imaging like MRI. We aim to find an approach to prevention.

Current relationship to NIH:

I have an NIH early career award. The federal government has already invested more than $350,000 in helping launch my career and my research team has made breakthroughs.

Remind the staffer that funding is based on merit:

Fewer than one in three scientists who apply receive these awards. I say that to emphasize that researchers do compete to get their research funded.

State what reduction in funding could mean for you and/or your institution:

In the next step of my career, I am currently facing 1 in 5 odds that my NIH proposals will be funded. Less available funding could make this challenge unwinnable for me and for my colleagues.

Closer (your take home message with passion):

The loss of investment in great science and promising investigators will be stunning if the NIH budget is cut.

Offer to stay in touch (scientists on the record are hard to find):

Please feel free to contact me if you need specific stories to make this point.

Email volume is overwhelming and most legislative offices do not have enough staff to sort out signal from noise. Ditto Facebook, Twitter, etc. Even if the legislator has a social media presence, the staff work primarily to control flaming and don’t use comments or messages as data about their base.

In contrast, calls and letters are logged and that makes them potent. Block off time on your calendar for calls as it gets closer to the active consideration of the NIH budget and make those calls. Scientists are making a difference.

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Scientists and Clinicians: PR is Not a Four Letter Word

Communication

Many of us were trained to avoid reporters like the plague. We were told that our words would be misconstrued, our colleagues would judge us as being ‘showy’ and that we would be beseiged by the public if we engaged with the media.

As academics hid from the limelight, the national stage for medical and scientific opinions became overrun with less than credible sources. We have seen resurgence in scientists stepping up and talking not just about their work, but about public policy and perceptions that influence health care and research spending.

We chatted with FSU professor Gregg Stanwood on his recent viral editorial piece in the Tallahassee Democrat entitled “Repeat After Me: Mental Health IS Physical Health” was picked up nationally by USA Today and other venues and afforded him a place on the national stage which clearly resonated with patients and physicians.

Here’s some protips he shared with The Edge on what to expect and what he’s learned.

FS: You got great national and local coverage on this! Were you at all anxious about how your school or colleagues would receive an article advocating for embracing mental health concerns?

Dr. Stanwood: No, not really.  My colleagues and friends have been very supportive of my efforts to improve how we understand and treat mental illnesses.

FS: What inspired you to write this blog?

Dr Stanwood: I wrote this piece soon after the Germanwings 9525 crash in the French Alps in March 2015.  I found a lot of the wording used by the media and in the public reaction to the crash repugnant and scientifically incorrect.

FS: What advice would you have to folks thinking about using local media to talk about important issues in science?

Dr. Stanwood: The public and media are much more interested in science issues than many of us in science assume.  Write and speak from the heart and focus on what’s important to you.  You don’t need to be the voice for everything, but you should definitely become the voice for something.

FS: How has this changed your relationship with the local or national media?

Dr. Stanwood: It’s improved it.  The editor I have worked with at the Tallahassee Democrat is very interested in these issues and we have discussed more in depth series.

FS: What has been the most positive part of this experience for you?

Dr. Stanwood: Hearing from people who read the piece.  Not only those who expressed gratitude for helping people understand their point of view, but also those who strongly disagreed with the perspective I shared in the editorial.

Pointers for interacting with the media are also available from The Union of Concerned Scientists.

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Prevent the Email Faux Pas That Gets You Fired: Read Send

Book Reviews / Communication

Did you know that signing an email with “Sincerely” instead of “Best regards” can irrevocably alter your relationship with a colleague?  Or that “please” and “thank you” can be anything but polite?

send-largeAlthough it’s now almost five years old, Send remains an invaluable guide to emailing appropriately to staff, superiors, friends and relatives.  Oh, and with advice like “If you’re working with weasels, watch their e-mails like a hawk,” it’s pretty funny, too.

Authors David Shipley and Will Schwalbe divide the book into seven chapters and an introduction, each focused on topics such as when emails (versus phone calls or personal meetings) are most appropriate and useful; the “anatomy” of an email, from when it’s best to Cc, to how to put information and requests in the most readable formats, to how to convey different tones in greetings and sign-offs; and how to keep from landing in trouble, with advice on how to avoid both potential legal issues and on word choice or sentence constructions that give the wrong impression to your recipient.

With well-defined sections, bullet points, and sidebars, the book packs a ton of information into an easily-perusable format.  Curious how to make your subject lines more informative (and the message more likely to be read)?  Check out the section—and examples—on page 80.  Not sure who to Cc that important message to (and why it matters so much)?  Page 64 is your friend.  Want a guide to making email requests that get a favorable response?  The section starting on page 143 is here to help.

In the introduction, the authors give one of their most important general guidelines: “If you don’t consciously insert tone into an email, a kind of universal default tone won’t automatically be conveyed.  Instead, the message written without regard to tone becomes a blank screen onto which the reader projects his own fears, prejudices, and anxieties.”  If you want to give your colleagues, buddies, and everyone else you email the best possible impression of you and your words, start with this book.

Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better
By David Shipley and Will Schwalbe
New York: Vintage, 2007

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What Folks Want to See on Your Lab Website

Communication

Your colleagues, current and potential trainees, collaborators and yes, study sections are doing internet searches on you with greater frequency. Knowing that people are looking, why not show them what you want them to see?

Here’s a list, in no particular order, of things these folks want to see on your first lab website.

  1. A picture of you and your awesome team. An up-to-date lab group photo helps folks who love your work find you at meetings, put faces with your CV and gives an quick sense of how big a program you have.
  2. Give your trainees a shout out.  Writing about a few lines about who the members of your lab are with a link to the current CV promotes a sense of lab ownership . It also provides reviewers and future mentors a sense of who your lab folks are. Don’t forget that your trainees are also applying for grants and every bit helps in promoting your lab as a good place to work.
  3. Contact information on where to send your Nobel Prize. Most universities are a labyrth of halls and similar looking buildings. Give job applicants, lab guests and collaborators a leg up with mailing addresses for packages, a map of where your building is and how to find your lab once inside the building. The kind folks at Google Maps will also help you out but providing pictures of the outside of your building so there is no way the people carrying your million dollar check from Publisher’s Clearinghouse will get lost. (From what we understand, the Nobel Prize committee calls you when you win).
  4. Your new pony. Okay, not a literal pony (although it would be cool if you had one), but if you have gotten some great PR from your university, newspapers or journals, a lab website is a fabulous place to share them. These digests of your work are particularly helpful in nabbing new students and helping them fill in gaps on where you see your team going.

These are the essentials, but a couple of things to note:

  1. Don’t be a bandito. Most universities have policies on your ‘official’ internet presence. Check with your administrators to see if they require you to use their server and web development platform or have disclosures about how your views do/do not reflect those of the university.
  2. Hide in plain sight. If you are checking ‘google’ or another internet search engine and not finding yourself, you can give yourself a few clicks to help, but adding your lab website to your email signature, posters and business cards is a great way to get more traffic moving up as a popular site.
  3. Undergrads are your new best friends. We recently posted on how getting undergraduate work study students is a great time saver but very few universities will help you as you put together your lab’s web site.

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