When NOT to send an email

In a college world where break-ups happen by Facebook message, it's valuable to acknowledge that there are still some situations when an email is not the best way to communicate. If you're one of those student leaders who does everything by email, text message or wall post, take a moment to consider 10 situations when you should find a better way to communicate.

1. You want to send a heartfelt thanks or apology. Sincerity is the key in both situations, and an email or a "thanks, you rock" text message doesn't convey much. If you want to really, sincerely thank someone, say it to their face, write a short note, send a small gift, or stand up at a meeting and say something nice about the person. If you need to apologize, be a big person and do it face to face. "I'm sorry I slept with your roommate. Forgive me" on a text message isn't going to get the job done.

2. You haven't spoken in a long time. If you've fallen out of touch with someone and then you suddenly send an email asking for something, it speaks volumes about the nature of your relationship. Picking up the phone and having a real conversation that conveys your sincerity will make all the difference, plus it gives you a chance to re-establish the relationship.

3. Your request isn't crucial to the recipient. Guess what? Your important email isn't the most important thing the Vice President of Student Affairs has to deal with today! It's important to you, but it's just one of 80 messages she has received today, and while she likes you, it's not the thing on the top of her to-do list. She read your FB message on a 5-minute break from a meeting and will forget it completely an hour from now. If you need a response badly, then put it in front of the person in a more urgent way.

4. You have enormous files to send. Only send big files via email if the person asks you to. That gigantic attachment could clog their account, end up in a spam filter, or tie up his iPhone for 10 minutes downloading.

5. You want to keep something confidential. If you haven't learned this one yet, you will, eventually. What seems like a private conversation now can become a public mess with the purposeful or accidental click of the "forward" button. Email lasts forever. Your status with the recipient of that email might not. Be careful.

6. You need an immediate reply. Texting helps with this, because right now, people feel like they are more urgent. That won't last forever. People used to pounce on emails the moment they came in. Some still do, but others barley check email at all. If you need an immediate response, find the person, or have a Plan B.

7. You're trying to build consensus among leaders. There are some subjects that simply should be discussed in a group setting – where people can bounce ideas around, play off each other, and yes, argue a bit. Email is not a good place to build consensus on a subject because people read emails at different times. It's not a conversation where everyone gets to participate equally or simultaneously. It's OK to put out the information necessary for a discussion ahead of time, but have the discussion in person, or on a conference call. You need to recognize when an email string has moved into the realm of a meeting agenda item.

8. The subject is complicated. If it seems too complicated to write in an email, then it is. Emails are not meant to be intense and intricate. Talk it out in person so the topic gets the explanation it deserves.

9. Things could get tense. Emotion and attitude are very difficult to convey in an email, or heaven forbid, in a text. If you're writing when you're emotional, you could say things you don't mean, without the benefit of body language and non verbal cues. Feelings get bent out shape quickly when fiery messages fly around. Just avoid it.

10. Email caused the problem in the first place. If your message or someone else's has caused a stir, move it off the Internet. You'll just make matters worse by firing back a response, inappropriately sharing their message, etc.


This blog post is based off material I gathered from Margaret McDonald, a wonderful writer, trainer and consultant whose blog can be found at www.MissCommunications.com. If you're looking for someone to train your group on the do's and don'ts of electronic communication, check out her website at www.SmartPeopleAtWork.com. Margaret gave me permission to tweak her material for my blog. Thanks, Margaret.

Act your age

This one is for the alumni out there.

I want to tell you about a little journey I've been taking. When you're a professional speaker, you go through a sort of progression. In my 20's, I was all about "being one of them" to the students. I wanted to dress like them, look their age, and speak on their level. I could talk about sex and dating, for example, and the students were right there with me.

It got harder as I neared 30, but fortunately, I was usually able to pull it off most of the time. A well-placed reference to that summer's big teenage movie (I specifically remember forcing myself to watch "Road Trip") worked wonders. Even as my life started to move toward more mature, adult things like financial planning, buying a house, and having a kid – I worked hard to make sure I didn't lose touch with the student set. It was definitely an act, though. I couldn't keep up with their musical tastes, and I didn't want to. I didn't think getting drunk three nights a week was normal, anymore, and I wasn't laughing along with the stories of idiotic behavior. I was getting a little "judgey."

Another funny thing – I had to stop talking about sex and dating altogether. I couldn't even make casual references. College students are repulsed by the idea that anyone over 35 has sex, ever. Take my word for it – students groan and squirm in their seats at the slightest suggestion.

Now, I'm 40, and it's over. I'm their dad. As a professional speaker in my 40's raising a teenager of my own, I've had to morph into something much different than I was 15 years ago. In 15 years, I went from being one of them, to being their cool older brother, to being an ancient relic. When I tell fraternity audiences that I was initiated in 1987, before they were born, they look at me like I'm one of their founders.

I had to embrace the fact that students were seeing me differently, and I needed to stop trying to be their cool buddy. I had to rewrite my programs and change all my jokes. I had to speak to them as what I was – a smart adult with something to say. I had something to teach them. I stopped trying to speak at their level, because I was somewhere higher. I had to embrace that.

I write about this, today, because a colleague suggested I write about those alumni who simply haven't learned this lesson yet. They come to events and try to be cool by acting like they are still 22. I cringe when I see them – men in their 40's at campus or leadership events who are trying hard to be "one of the boys."

Dude, you're not 22 anymore. You're not fooling anyone. Enabling the "boys will be boys" crap is counter productive. Oh, and by the way, everyone over 30 in the room thinks you're being a tool.

I've seen a past national president of a fraternity act this way recently. He was ogling young sorority women and saying the most embarrassing things to the younger men as he bought them beer and encouraged their worst behavior. Funny thing was, he thought he was being cool with the young men. I could tell they were laughing at him, not with him. The staff members of his fraternity were in visible pain watching him, unable to stop him.

It was humiliating.

Here's what I wanted to say to him. "You have a lot to offer. Be a role model. Show these young men what they can grow up to be. Stop acting like you stopped maturing around age 24. Show them what manhood looks like."

I'm not saying you have to launch into lectures. I'm not saying you have to be their father.

Just be yourself, and embrace the fact that you can be relevant without being one of them. College students have their own buddies, their own age. They don't need you to fill that gap for them. You can't do it, anyway.

What many students crave are role models and mentors to whom they can relate. Try it. You might like it.

Why I didn't join a fraternity, at first

When I arrived at Indiana University, I fell in love with a house. A physical structure.

Across from the law school on Third Avenue sat the Acacia fraternity house. It was three stories tall with a gray stone facade. About a dozen two-story white columns dominated the front of the mansion, and a beautiful green lawn stretched out to Third. It was breath taking.

I had no idea what Acacia was. I knew nothing about fraternities. As I passed the house those first few days, I would just stare at the building and the young men going in and out. I was fascinated. I couldn't believe that undergraduates like me could live there. If a young man from that fraternity had approached me those first few days, I would have been hooked.

My love affair ended soon enough. I found out it was a fraternity, and my friends at the residence hall told me that pledges there were made to do all sorts of humiliating things. I have no idea if it was actually true. True or false, I believed what they said that evil things lurked behind the doors of Acacia and the other fraternities I passed each day.

Having just turned 16 (I went to college very early), I was petrified of older guys ordering me around and humiliating me. I heard stories of fraternity pledges doing naked, sexually-oriented activities. I had flashbacks to fourth grade when a neighborhood bully would routinely humiliate me in front of other kids at the bus stop, and I shuddered at the idea of putting myself in that situation again. Nothing was worth that.

I didn't even have a word for "hazing" at the time, but I knew I didn't want to be mistreated. I didn't have the self esteem for that. I didn't want anyone yelling at me. I wasn't interested in mopping floors at 2 a.m., or doing pushups. So, I didn't join Acacia, and I didn't consider joining any other fraternity. I found other things to do, like writing for the student newspaper, which I loved.

In the coming year, I would watch pledges from Beta Theta Pi across the street from my residence hall being harassed. From the Journalism building, we could watch the Sigma Chi pledges marching and dressed alike. If those young men were having fun or enjoying themselves, I couldn't see it. I felt good about my decision to avoid the fraternities at Indiana. I didn't see anything I liked.

Of course, I did end up being a fraternity man. A pretty active one, in fact. I joined a group that was chartering a couple of years later, in part because I knew that I wouldn't be hazed. I would have a chance to make friends and do important things, without any of the garbage that other new members routinely endured on my campus in the late Eighties.

As we begin National Hazing Prevention Week, I offer this story, humbly. I have every reason to believe that the groups I've mentioned here are now amazing chapters who treat their new members better than they did in 1988.

But, I wonder how many other young men walk on our campuses, and view fraternities from a place of fear. I wonder how many, like me, see the beautiful houses and the excited young men walking in and out the doors, and decide that fraternities aren't for them. So many bright and hard-working young men who could make amazing contributions to fraternities, but hazing scares them away. They just can't sign up for humiliation.

Some who read this might be fine with that. Perhaps, you think, I wasn't strong enough to be a fraternity man. If I wasn't willing to suffer a bit, then I wasn't fraternity material. I would argue the other side. Just as you disrespect a man who couldn't tolerate hazing, I found myself (and still find myself) disrespecting anyone who would.

For years after joining the fraternity movement, professionally, I would seek out the men who ran Acacia. I wanted to know them, because in the back of my mind, I remembered that initial infatuation with their beautiful house on Third Avenue. I found them to be good and honorable men.

"I almost joined Acacia at Indiana," I would tell them. "You should have," they'd tell me. "Why didn't you?" I didn't explain, because by then it felt silly. I was older, more confident, less fearful. I would simply think to myself that had hazing not existed at Indiana back then, I might be one of their brothers.

It's not enough to stop hazing in our chapters. That's the first step. After we have found better ways to build our brotherhoods, we have to reach out to the young men arriving on campus and let them know that brotherhood isn't about hurting people. It's not about servitude and being humiliated. It's about something better. It's a place where a young man, unsure of himself, can gain confidence and a place to belong.

Once we have turned our undergraduate chapters into something admirable, we need to put the truth in front of them and fight back against decades of cautionary tales.

I love fraternity, and I hate that I almost missed out on it. Let's get rid of hazing, re-educate our communities, and make sure we never miss out on a good guy again.

Encourage dissent, but stay on offense

There will come a time when you, dear student leader, will promote something that is not entirely popular. Maybe it will be a dues increase, or a decision to cosponsor something with a controversial group on campus. Perhaps you will have to cancel an event, take a stand against a group of your own members, or go head-to-head with the college administration.

If you are doing meaningful, meaty things, then dissent is part of the deal. You'd be smart to simply expect it, plan for it, and encourage it. I've been reminding myself of this as I watch the folks protesting President Obama this past weekend in D.C.. I think they're nuts, but I also understand that any good fight has to have sides.

Notice that President Obama is on the offense. Like him or not, he's out there aggressively selling his ideas. He's getting in front of people. He's demanding that the conversation take place. He's not sitting at the White House nursing a bruised ego, crying that people aren't loving his every idea. He's out there throwing punches.

If you're going to do something controversial as a student leader, you had better be ready to play the same game. Be ready to sit down for that newspaper interview. Be ready to stand up for your point of view in small meetings in coffee shops and in people's apartments. Make your argument to key leaders and opinion shapers. Be ready to have someone call you a nasty name, or insult your leadership. Smile as a few punches land squarely on your chin.

If you simply sit around and whine that your opponents are wrongheaded and unfair, you're going to lose, or you're going to have to concede a lot more than you want to. Don't be annoyed that people are arguing with you. Go out there and win over the hearts and minds. Throw punches of your own.

While your opponents are getting emotional and hysterical, listen to their concerns, address them, and validate any good points they bring up. At the same time, offer the facts, promote your ideas, and give people the context of the issue. You won't necessarily change the minds of your vocal opponents, but you might win over the folks in the middle, and that's who matters.

Stay in control. Direct the conversation. Stay on offense.

In a basketball game, there's the guy with the ball in his hand, and there's the guy waving his arms around hoping for a block. Be the guy with the ball.