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www.HartfordBusiness.com • March 26, 2018 • Hartford Business Journal 33 TALKING POINTS Returning work emails should be a time-management initiative By Joel Samberg B ack in the days when my freelance career was devoted to magazine journalism, for every one article I was fortunate enough to have assigned or accepted I received more than a dozen rejection notices. Oh, how I long for those days! Not because I enjoy rejection, but simply because I appreciated getting responses. These days it is exceedingly rare that an editor or publisher will send any response at all. One recent estimate puts the number of unan- swered proposals between 85 and 90 percent. And it's not just journalism where this has become a new normal; almost every industry has a non-response issue, affecting countless people who submit ideas, offer outsource services, or sim- ply ask questions. Certainly the ease and expediency of email has made it especially difficult for publishers, editors, vice presidents and general managers these days to provide timely responses to the dozens they receive each day. But does that mean they should just give up? That they should not even try? I believe that if more people received more responses, it would go a long way toward generating more confi- dence and optimism among all those looking to make a difference, grow careers, establish new contacts. Even rejections are constructive in more ways than one. It might simply come down to time management. Years ago there were many corporate initiatives designed to help us in our work, including time-management training. I wasn't the biggest fan back then. In fact, I used to mock all the acronyms that went along with them: TQM for Total Quality Management, MBTI for Myers- Briggs Type Indicator, CIT for Contin- uous Improvement Teams, and others. Attending sessions was mandatory, and I didn't like that. I was always tempted to propose an article called "AAD: Acrimonious Acronym Disor- der," and try to have it published. (I didn't; I may have had a rebellious streak, but I valued my job.) Only later did I come to appreciate the value of these and other corporate initiatives. As both an initiative and a practice, I don't think time management is near- ly as prevalent today. But maybe the world of email overload could be made somewhat less chaotic if it came back. I think it is incumbent upon all corpo- rate leadership to improve their time- management skills, which may help them answer more emails. Certainly many emails are useless and impracti- cal. But that's not the point. There are equally worthy issues at play — about business culture in general, goodwill, humanity, doing what's right. It is not impossible to learn how to put aside some time each day for tasks usu- ally avoided — like reading and respond- ing to emails. But it does take courage to admit that the world does not revolve only around our current projects — that it's worthwhile to extend ourselves a bit. Most emails can be answered with brief or even prepared forms (which are still better than no responses at all). When possible, we can use college in- terns (in return for credit) to spend some time each day reviewing emails, deciding which ones are worthy to pass along, and sending brief replies to the others. That can be a great learning experience. But for those who do find answer- ing emails an impossible task, why not meet with a group of colleagues one day to brainstorm possible solutions? CIT, anyone? Joel Samberg is a freelance corporate and employee communications writer and editor at JoeltheWriter LLC. His website is at JoeltheWriter.com. HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM POLL LAST WEEK'S POLL RESULT: Has this winter's inclement weather negatively impacted your business? NEXT WEEK'S POLL: Should employers be restricted from asking about a prospective hire's past salary history? To vote, go online to hartfordbusiness.com BIZ BOOKS How to talk about race, religion, politics at work By Jim Pawlak "We Can't Talk about That at Work — How to Talk about Race, Religion, Politics and Other Polarizing Topics" by Mary- Frances Winters (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, $18.95). Winters, a diversity consultant, sees management's "don't go there" state- ments as a barrier to inclusiveness in the workforce. Why? By making topics taboo, management inadvertently sets up barriers to dialogue that could promote understanding of various viewpoints. What happens outside the work- place "has a direct impact on em- ployees, and they are talking about it whether management likes it or not." By avoiding discussion, management comes across as not caring about the impact of the non-workplace environ- ment on employees. Winters acknowledges that "light- ning-rod" conversations make people uncomfortable because they often trigger emotional responses. But having such conversations tempers emotional responses by replacing biases and fears with knowledge and understanding. Most biases are the result of hear- ing the same story over and over, which results in assuming its true. Dialogue intro- duces other stories, which results in reexamining per- spectives. Winters makes this point in her semi- nars by showing a video of a man wear- ing shoes entering a room followed by a barefoot woman. There's food on the table; the man eats before the woman. When they leave, the woman follows a few steps behind the man. The usual ste- reotype that comes to mind: Man con- siders woman subservient. BUT — what if the man precedes the woman because he wants to ensure there's no danger ahead; what if she's barefoot because only a woman can communicate with the earth; what if he eats first to ensure that the food is suitable for the woman? In some cultures, that's the case. While Winters provides advice on numerous ways to shift from "don't talk" to "let's talk," the shining ex- ample can be found at Sodexo, which provides employees with dialogue- across-difference tools. 41.7% No 58.3% Yes READER COMMENTS: "Totally — and the snow- magedon" "We sell digital services and we all can work remotely." "If weather is too hazardous to drive to the office, we usually know it's coming and all prepare to work remotely." Joel Samberg Jim Pawlak Book Review