When you were a teenager or perhaps a young adult, and you were in a relationship and you thought, this is going nowhere. I mean, we are not walking down the aisle together; I’ve got to break up with this person. And you started thinking of all these ways that you could break up without having to do it in person. Maybe I’ll write a note and pass it in class, or I’ll call when I know they’re not home and I’ll get their answering machine.
Anything to avoid that live conversation, that face-to-face breakup. But hopefully you knew, or if you didn’t already know, you learned that you really needed to have that breakup conversation live – again, either over the phone, in conversation, or face-to-face. Well, we are seeing this now creep into the workplace. In fact, 60% of Gen Z, my generation, are using email to avoid conflict and reduce their anxiety.
Email. Just like trying to break up with someone over a note being passed in class or a message on an answering machine, this is the same situation in the professional environment.
This is a disaster waiting to happen.
Notice that 60% are using email to avoid conflict, and not that it’s saying that they have used it successfully to manage conflict, or have conflict resolution. This is a pure avoidance strategy, and by using email or any other sort of text, black and white messaging platform in order to deal with some sort of conflict, we are exacerbating the situation. This is not going to actually end in a good result.
This avoidance strategy or attempt to maybe resolve is lending itself to so many different interpretations, because you and I both know that we need facial expressions, body language, tone – we need all of that to help translate what our actual words are intending, what they’re meaning.
So I encourage you, as you go to sit down and write an email where there might be some sort of tense situation, there might be some sort of conflict, or you’re feeling a little bit of anxiety bubbling up, challenge yourself and say, should I actually be writing this email or should I pick up the phone to talk live to this person, or schedule a face-to-face meeting?
It may be uncomfortable upfront, but it’s going to get that resolution so much quicker and reduce your long-term anxiety, the long-term feeling by dealing with it in person live, as human to human, as early as possible.