What to Do When You Get Too Much Email – Behind the Scenes
When you take time to attend meetings or even take time away from the office, do you feel a touch of anxiety about the amount of email that will clutter up your inbox? The “I get too much email” is a familiar feeling for anyone who is a business founder. Today, we look at some of the real issues that lead to “too much email.” There is a bigger problem going on that you have to understand. Discover some new approaches to the despair of “too much email.”
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Too Much Email: The Transcript
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Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
[0:01]
Have you ever felt like you just get too much email? But we probably all felt like that because email has been something that we have to deal with on a daily basis, if that hourly basis for some of us, email just never stops, right, it always comes in. And a lot of it is junk, a lot of it is things that we don’t need to read and don’t need to see don’t need to give it any energy. But yet, we still get too much email.
[0:24]
Well, my video today is not about how do you reduce your email, I could go over some of the rules and some of the things I put in place that filters inside my inbox that would help you as a leader. But that’s not really the purpose of this video, this video really is about what’s going on behind the too much email. Well, the big thing is, you have to realize that if you’re getting too much email, you probably don’t have a chance to review the things appropriately. And you probably have things that are slipping through the cracks.
[0:54]
This means that you’re there are emails that need a response, and you’re not responding to them. And people feel like you’re not listening. And that really is dangerous inside of your culture inside the organization to build trust. But the bigger issue going on if you get too much email is you have to ask yourself, if you’ve empowered people the right way, if you’ve been power people and delegated the work as needed so that they don’t feel like they need to send you all these emails to see by you know what CIA is right? Cover your ass.
[1:25]
The emails that you get that are CIA, are just meant to cc you on these is meant to keep you in the loop. But if you have hundreds of emails every day that you have to stay in the loop on, then you really aren’t empowering your employees the way you could, you want to make sure that you have a better understanding of what empowerment is, in a very simple way. empowerment is the opposite of micromanagement. None of you are micromanagers. I know that. But it is the complete opposite of micromanagement when you think about are you showing up to these meetings and truly letting the people run the meetings. Or maybe you’re not even showing up anymore, maybe there are certain aspects of the business that runs without you, in some cases runs better, because you’re not there. All of these things are part of the empowerment process, where you want to make sure you as a leader are empowering your people because that’s one way to reduce your email. If you give them you know, kind of guidelines around when they should email you are not, you will actually start reducing the workload you have on your email. I’ve done some other videos about your second shift.
[2:31]
I think it’s kind of funny because I’ve had these moments where I’m like, you know if I could just work an hour after dinner, you know before I go to bed, I would be caught up for the day before Well, you can go check out that video about the second shift a little bit later. But this video is all about, you know what’s really going on when you get too much email. And it really has to go back to your sense of empowerment, the big keys to empowering your employees are you want to make sure that it’s okay for them to make decisions. You want to empower them to see opportunities in front of you to be able to look at those choices and make decisions. Because if they don’t feel like they can make decisions without you, they’re going to send an email, they’re going to want to have more conversations with you, so that they can get approval get permission. And if they don’t feel like they trust themselves, they won’t make these decisions, you’ll be still making these decisions for them for years to come.
[3:22]
The other aspect of this is around failure. Because when you empower someone, you have to be okay with a sense of failure, they may not do it the way that you do it, they may not do it, the way that you have learned the hard way of how to do it. And that’s okay. Because the idea for them to go through failure and to figure out a better way to do it for themselves, to work with their own talents to work within their own capabilities. And to grow from that is the real key because, over time, they will learn to trust themselves that they can, you know, pick up the pieces, if something doesn’t work the way they want it to if something if they get kind of feedback that says this didn’t work that failure, then they can figure out a better way to do it. When you were okay with failure and you get them to be okay with failure, you will get less email. And finally, I want to wrap this up with the whole concept of empowering others is really about telling them, you trust them. It’s about telling them that it’s okay to make those decisions. It’s okay to fail. And it’s okay to go pick up the pieces and keep moving. This level of trust will help you in the long run.
[4:29]
Now, is it going to be painful in the short run? Probably. But we’ve all been through these moments where we had to trust others before we were ready. And I’m not telling you to go blindly. I’m not telling you to be you know, risk-taker and that you should trust everyone because that’s not the case. But those talented people, those players on your team, those that really want to rise to the next level, deserve your trust. And you have to empower them in such a way that they feel it and eventually you’ll start getting fewer emails, eventually, you’ll start having a team that truly is, you know, playing at a different level. And you will feel the impact, not just in less email, but in a team that feels more connected, those that are collaborating more, and those that are leaving you out of some of these decisions, because they can make them on their own, they can figure out across the team and their own network, and they can actually grow the business without you being there. When you think about your own leadership, you have to evolve.
[5:27]
My job is to put a spotlight on some of the elements. This today was talking about too much email. But what could you learn from this, hopefully, you’ve learned a few strategies that will help you see what’s really getting in the way of your email? And it’s not the technical strategies that you could be used to reduce it. But it is the underlying aspect of empowering your team to the next level.
[5:49]
I work with leaders and their teams that want to continue to grow my job as an executive coach to help them see what they can’t see. Give them new perspectives, give them new strategies and frameworks, allow them to move forward. I’ve been doing this for over 10 years. I love what I do. I love my clients. If you have any questions about what you’re doing, make sure you reach out to me, genehammett.com check out the free resources. We have all the interviews on the podcast. And when you think about growth, and you think about leadership, think of Growth Think Tank, as always the word courage. We’ll see you next time.
Disclaimer: This transcript was created using YouTube’s translator tool and that may mean that some of the words, grammar, and typos come from a misinterpretation of the video.
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