One sentence to add to difficult emails

One sentence to add into those difficult emails. The ones where the person at the other end is going to find what you say hard to hear.

Here's the transcript for those who prefer to read:

So a tip about writing difficult emails, ones where the message is going to be hard potentially for the other person to hear.

This happened to me this week. I needed to challenge a fairly significant breach of data privacy. This tip is useful when I can imagine that the other person is going to feel a sense of real blame of themselves. They're going to feel very unhappy with what they've done.

When I'm writing that kind of email, I want to start with an appreciation of them. So in this case, I think I said something like 'Dear x I'm really appreciating all of the hard work that you've put in, especially since the new year when we've been so busy’.

You've got to put something real in there! This is not about buttering the other person up. It's not about softening the blow. It's definitely not about manipulating them.

What it's about doing is reminding you both of the connection between you. Because what you want to do is you want the problem resolved, and you want the problem resolved in a way that looks after the relationship. And often the way that we go about things may or may not get the problem resolved, but it leaves difficulty at the end of it.

So that's the tip for today.