The Balance of Tricky Tone In Email

Professional communication is one of the toughest things to master in freelance life in my experience. We’ve all had that weird unexplainable frustration well up inside when we’re trying to decipher an email. What’s their tone here? What did they mean by that? is that passive aggressive or just concise? There’s no facial expressions or vocal inflection to interpret from. There’s no body language to draw context from. And no matter how open and clear your mind is, you’re going to add a tone to the words in your head while reading it and interpret accordingly.

Email can be incredibly effective. You can quickly and efficiently discuss and plan details, negotiate rates and contracts, and create schedules moving forward. So, theoretically short concise correspondence should lend itself perfectly to that medium. The problem is, though, that no matter how professional the nature of the email is, we’re all driven by emotions to some extent. And the stressful nature of freelance production can also have us already on guard and on edge.

It can start from the very beginning. We all carry a certain amount of self worth. You have to as a creative to be confident in your ability to do a job. That self worth carries with it expectations. Expectations of positions we believe we’re all qualified for and rate and contract details that go along with that.

So when we get that first email we are often on guard, ready to fight the low ball offer we expect from past experience. That creates and establishes a tone in our heads that we read the email in. So right off the bat, regardless of how concise and even the words are, we read it with excited suspicion.

I don’t have a good answer for this yet. I love concise professional language, but I also want to come across as personable, likeable and conversational. So I try to add “unnecessary” things like exclamation points and pleasantries. It’s strange to me, but it does help to take some of the awkward uncertainty out of a very unpersonal correspondence. Very few people email with the intent to be aggressive. I think many of us just fall back on that as a form of self preservation. Especially when it comes to tricky things like rate negotiation I want to be as calm and human as I can.

Now, the most frustrating communication often comes later, when it comes to hunting down that pay you fought and negotiated for. This is where I have added stress and lost years off my life. Again, I want to do all I can to de-escalate, but the frustration of that check that is my livelihood being delayed over and over is enough to boil things over and simultaneously take all the wind out of the sails. I’ve tried things like email trackers, but quite honestly that can make it worse, as then you know the email is being opened and read with no reply. As seems to be a common thread in my writing and problems, I don’t have a clear answer. I don’t want to be taken advantage of, nor can I afford to be. I want to be personable, but I don’t want nice to be mistaken for soft, as Will Smith said. I guess the only way I can handle it is to be professional and reasonable, but concise and persistent and have a very clear idea of what I’m owed and when it’s due.

Money, especially when it comes to money earned needed to survive, can cloud and complicate things. And that’s no exception in email. I’ve learned a few things regarding tone over the years. (i.e. adding “I hope you’re doing well,” or “I loved your work on BLANK,” or “Thanks for taking the time”) can go a long ways. But I feel like, as with many things, I’m constantly learning and evolving. At the end of the day I know I want and need to be clear with my intentions and negotiations, personable with my tone, and precise, persistent and professional with my responses, follow ups and money inquiries.

And above all, not create a tone that will cloud my judgement and cause me to misinterpret before actually taking the time to consider and decipher.

- GALEN MURRAY -

VISUAL VAGABONDS Owner/DP