Welcome back to the Look and Sound of Leadership, an ongoing series of

executive coaching tips designed to help you be perceived in the workplace the

way you want to be perceived. I'm Tom Henschel, your executive coach, and today

we're talking about taming email. Mitchell, a senior vice president at a consumer products company, led a worldwide division

of 1,200 people.

Nine months before our coaching began, he had rolled out a major initiative that he had hoped would

be a shot of adrenaline for the division. Instead, people had received it, he said, with a big yawn. Ryan was a senior director at a software giant.

Unlike Mitchell's large global audience, Ryan's team was made up of just five engineers.

In Ryan's year-end feedback,

four of the five engineers had raked him over the calls.

They described him with words like uncaring, mean, and brutal.

Jessica adored her role as a vice president at a television network.

She was on track to be promoted to Senior Vice President

within the year. Each of her shows had a dedicated creative team, marketing team, and producing

team, all of them geographically diverse. She said we do

brainstorm through email and they're fantastic but no one can keep track of all

the ideas. We keep covering the same ground over and over. It's insane.

Brief detective work on my part revealed that all three of these high-performing

executives had stepped on that most treacherous workplace

landmine that has ended careers and resulted in prison sentences. Email. Mitchell rolled out his initiative in a series of lengthy

well-written emails. In return he received a yawn. Ryan delivered performance feedback to his engineers via email.

In return, he received a scalding.

...