SECRETS TO POWERFUL E-MAIL
How to tap e-mail's maximum potential
and steer clear of its lethal traps

World Bank Features Whelan Group's E-mail Seminar

ARE YOU USING E-MAIL SMARTLY?

Amazing! Even though e-mail use now eats up, on national average, 25% of the work day—and work week—there's been virtually no investment in training people to use this new medium smartly. No coaching on capturing, to the full, e-mail's huge communications potential and avoiding its hidden and dangerous traps.

Secrets to Powerful E-mail fills this learning gap. It takes participants through a fresh, comprehensive, and highly productive look at their own e-mail practice. The workshop also includes a nifty take-away card distilling the key learning points for easy reference.

WHY YOUR ORGANIZATION NEEDS THIS PROGRAM

THE PROBLEM

E-mail is "better, faster, cheaper." So what's the problem?

With its speed, ease of use and virtually unlimited reach, e-mail is edging out conventional on-paper and phone communications — and bypassing face-to-face meetings. The result: a radical change in the culture of communication in the workplace. But along with it comes:

• High tech. Low touch.
• Bluntness in tone
• Higher volume. Lower quality
• Miscommunications
• Flooded in-boxes
• In-house e-mail battles among co-workers
• Sloppy, on-the-fly writing
• Offended clients and stakeholders
• Legal exposures
• Damage to corporate image
• Impulse-driven messages, sent out without the cautionary second look that used to go into every paper letter and memo

All because e-mail is a complex, speed-driven medium that lures users to write quickly, informally and carelessly.  It creates the feel of impermanent phone or face-to-face talk. But it delivers its message permanently and impersonally in text.

In short, it's a hybrid that creates contradictory expectations on both the sender's side and the reader's side.

THE SOLUTION:

SECRETS TO POWERFUL E-MAIL

This seminar is the latest in a menu of Whelan Group workshops that have consistently earned high praise for more than a decade in both the U.S. and internationally.

It provides e-mail users with a structured forum to develop a sophisticated understanding of the complex nature of this powerful new medium—and share experiences about a medium typically used in isolation. It even addresses when NOT to use e-mail.

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WHAT PARTICIPANTS WILL LEARN

The workshop focuses on five key dimensions at play in almost every e-mail interaction. It shows practical, hands-on ways to:

• Master each dimension for more powerful, effective communication, and
• Steer clear of the traps inside each.

The five dimensions:

1. THE IN BOX: Learn how to arrive in your receiver's in-boxes with reader-friendly subject lines and openings that grab attention.
2. ON-SCREEN WRITING: Deal with the special challenges of communicating effectively on the e-mail screen—which calls for new writing strategies, quite different from conventional on-paper communications.
3. PERSON-TO-PERSON: Learn how to cope with the uniquely interpersonal character of e-mail—where the right tone builds good business relationships, but careless or insensitive word choice can backfire in damaging miscommunications. Valuable tips also on sensitivity in using e-mail's in multicultural environments.
4. PUBLIC EXPOSURE: Security/Privacy/Legal Exposure—Develop a savvy awareness of how e-mail's seductively "private" character can lure even seasoned users to send impulsive, ill-thought messages that cause serious legal or reputation problems.
5. RELENTLESS VOLUME:  Choose from a host of best-practice tips to save time and cope effectively with the flood of e-mails that crowd in-boxes, calling out for rapid replies or getting lost amid in-box clutter.

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AVAILABLE IN TWO PRESENTATION OPTIONS

STANDARD HALF-DAY FORMAT

Covers all five dimensions plus hands-on e-mail editing exercises. Includes laminated take-away tips card distilling core e-mail “secrets” to apply in each dimension.

ABRIDGED "BROWN-BAG" FORMAT

Designed for a lunchtime offering or for an engaging session in a departmental retreat.