In this episode of The Engineering Career Coach Podcast, my guest, Pat Sweet, is going to give out some amazing strategies with nine specific points on writing proper and meaningful e-mails.
In today’s show, I interview Pat Sweet, a full-time electrical engineer and an MBA student living in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Sweet maintains a blog at www.EngineeringAndLeadership.com, where his goal is to teach engineers everything he knows about leadership and becoming a better engineer. Pat has held various leadership positions throughout his career already, even at a very young age.
Listen to this session and learn:
- How to decide whether or not you really need to write an e-mail.
- How to ensure that you send e-mails only to those who need them instead of to everybody!
- When and how to use the “Reply All” button.
- How to use e-mail subject lines that will ensure your e-mail is read and remembered.
- Ways to use the To, CC and BCC fields correctly when writing an e-mail. This is one that most people do wrong; learn how to do it right.
- Why the main point of your e-mail is what you should be focusing on the entire time you write it, and how to do that.
- Why using proper grammar, punctuation and spelling is critical.
- How to format your email properly, including strategies for headings, bullets, tables and lists that can make all the difference in getting your point across quickly and easily.
- What you should include in your e-mail signature.
Resources and links mentioned in this session include:
Institute for Engineering Career Development
Special Event for Engineers in San Diego
A Five-Step Process for Overcoming Your Addiction to E-mail
“How to Write an E-mail,” from the Engineering and Leadership Blog
Click Here for Session #28 Transcription
Do you have any tips that you have used successfully in writing e-mails?
I would love to hear any questions you might have or stories you might share on how to write meaningful e-mails.
Please leave your comments or questions in the Comments section below.
6 Responses
Dear anthony,
It was a great post, in most of my emails I don’t write an appropiate subject, and as you said in the podcast, I’m perfectly aware that’s no the proper way, specially when my boss ask for a file we are working at, most of the time, I send only the file attached, thinking that it will be readed inmediatly. For now on, I’m going to write better emails, as part of my overall good practices as an engineer.
Hey Francisco,
Thanks for your feedback! Great to hear that you were able to take something from it.
Pat
Glad you enjoyed it Francisco – thanks for the feedback.
KISS Keep it simply stupid. Through out most describing words you are not writing a book after. Just get the point across.
Agreed! Thanks, Kristin.
Yes good point Kristin. Thanks for sharing.