Improving Professional Readers and Persuasion

To: T. Leoni, Manager Personnel Department
From: Donald Pryzblo, Manager, Data Processing Department
Subject: INCORRECT PAYROLL CHECKS

Leoni, to follow up on our conversation from yesterday in regarding to the incorrect payroll checks, I feel the majority of the errors rest on your clerks.  Correcting these errors will be very time consuming and I feel it is the responsibility of your staff to make the correction in a timely manner.  I will provide any assistance available from my department to help in the matter, but we are running on a very tight schedule.  I also would like to schedule a brain storming session to discuss any other suggestions you may have to keep this matter from happening again in the future.  I will also ask my staff to double check their work in the future.  I would recommend that you tell your clerks to review their work carefully before giving it to the computer operators.  Payroll is a very sensitive matter and could have a very great negative effect on our employee and their families and I expect the matter to be handled as so.  Leoni I look forward to working with you company and know that this matter will be address in a timely manner.

This email I feel is a good example of how many people communicate in the work place.  The tone of this email is very disrespectful and unprofessional.  Pryzblo was very demanding and in a disrespectful way was blaming Leoni for the errors and seem unreasonable in will to work with Leoni.  This email also gives a good representation on how people have a hard time in separating personal and business professionalism in regards to email etiquette.  If this email was between friends on a personal level it would have been ok, but when writing in a business situation you need to give a little more explanation and keep complete thoughts when writing.  Also you need to keep in mind that when writing is that you only getting one chance to explain and give solutions so the tone is very important.  If you put the person on a defensive level you may not get the end result that was expected.  Also you could go back to the rule, talk to people as you would like to be spoken too. 
Many employees are guilty of sending this type of emails, because they tend to type in the same tone of their emotions and attitude. Pryzblo shows his attitude throughout the email and his emotions towards the time his people would spend if they have to correct the errors.  He also shows his anger with the company and their steps taken to resolve the people. 
The changes that were made to the original email were to speak in a more professional manner and also not be so accusing.  In the first email, if I would have received it, I would have been on the defensive and would have been less willing to work with the other company.  Also in regards to the speech I wanted to keep it more professional and remember that you are not speaking to your friend, but you are writing a professional email in a business setting.  When sending emails, we will also say things we most likely would not say in person and this could be a problem also.  A rule of thumb that I try to use is when dealing with a heated situation is to write the email and then take a break to breath and come back to proof read the email.  Taking the break to calm down will help in preventing something being said in anger of frustration.