1. Allow a cooling-off period. If a message, business situation, or reader annoys, angers, or astounds you for any reason, realize that your tone might reflect that emotion. Nearly everyone I talk to on this point agrees: The heat of the moment chills over time. Sometimes walking away may help you determine an appropriate response. Other times, you might return to the message to see it's not as big a deal as you first thought.
2. Read the message with your purpose in mind. Every work-related message has a business purpose, whether it is a transmission of information your reader needs to know or a call to action. That purpose might be about complying with a policy, changing a procedure, relaying lab findings, relating a root cause of an incident, or requesting resources, among many others. Sticking to that point will keep you in a politically safer, all-business state.
3. Look at the message from your reader's viewpoint. We've heard the wise expressions, "see it through my eyes" and "walk a mile in my shoes." Truer words are hard to find. We all have feelings: kick us and we scream, punch us and we cry, scratch us and we bleed. Hurting feelings is unprofessional conduct. If we remember point 2 above, then getting even, firing off a zinger, or delivering a nastygram have no place in business communication. And seeing your message from your reader's viewpoint is easier than you might admit, because you know what's motivating you is your own upset.
4. Ask a trusted associate to read the message for tone. Here's another piece of timeless wisdom to which most experienced, sensible people subscribe. Buddies removed from the emotions of the situation will tell you straight out whether they detect a tone problem. Defer to their judgment. It might not be infallible, but it's better than yours in the swirl of a dramatic moment.
