Individuals:  Understanding your challenge

In your work, the road ahead is paved with email.

How well do your emails represent you?

If you're like most of us, you now use email for everything. So consider these questions:

• Is your writing easy to read, easy to understand?
• Is your intent always easy to discern?
• Do you carefully manage your tone?
• Does the manner of your writing inspire confidence in your abilities?

Email now plays such an outsized role in your work, so these questions are more important than ever.

The good news: Whatever your current situation — whether you're employed in a company, between jobs, or working as a solo professional — you can take charge of your email right now.

NEXT:  How Email Excellence can work for you.

Want to improve your email?

Here's what it takes:

• You need a clear understanding of what's broken. To make changes or improvements, you must first be clear about what you're currently doing — your current email behaviors — and what's not working.
• You need to adopt new practices. To fix the problems, you'll need both 1) a plan for changing your existing habits and 2) replacement tools and practices.
• You need to invest yourself. It takes a little time and real commitment. The trick is to invest your effort wisely.