Coaching employees: Why e-mail doesn't work

Excerpted from the Executive Report: Coaching Skills for Managers and Supervisors  

Researchers at Vanderbilt and Rice Universities set up identical tense coaching scenarios in which one pair communicated over the phone and face-to-face, while the other pair used only e-mail.

Results of the experiment:

• The phone/face-to-face pair managed to resolve their differences, but
• The e-mail-only pair more often ended up with insults, anger and breakdowns in communication.
  

Besides the obvious differences in communication methods, researchers noted one factor that's the main contributor to breakdowns when subjects use e-mail. It's something called a "lack of cotemporality."

Simply put, that means neither side heard (or read) the communication at the moment it was produced. Turns out, that's important in coaching - and it's often lacking in e-mail communication, since people read e-mails some time after they're written.

The lesson: Face-to-face, when possible, is usually the better approach. 

DIGGING DEEPER
Coaching employees to be more effective, productive and motivated is challenging for even the most experienced managers, but it can be done. For help, read the Executive Report: Coaching Skills for Managers and Supervisors

Comments

[Coaching Employees]

I totally agree. Sometimes you need to coach someone then and there so they can better relate to what has happened and what needs to be done because they are able to better evaluate things. And this seldom happens in emails.