Truth 16. Your goal and audience determine the best way to communicate

Jessica had worked for Kate, her new supervisor, for six months and found her boss’s style cold. So she wrote a long e-mail explaining how Kate could get better results from the staff by praising them more and not giving preferential treatment to a few.

Was that a good idea? Obviously not. Even if the boss wanted Jessica’s advice—not all that likely—a personal meeting would have been a better choice. The same is true the other way around: Jessica would much prefer an in-person critique of her performance to a written one.

Here are some guidelines to help you choose the best communication channel. Remember to take the individual person into account, especially his or her age. There’s a real generational divide on preferred communication modes. When you’re addressing multigenerational audiences, use multiple channels.

E-mails—E-mail is useful for sending brief notes to colleagues, such as telling them about meetings and checking their schedules; inviting people to lunch; giving a quick progress report; providing or requesting information; giving updates after a meeting and making assignments; and more.

Did you notice the common thread? E-mails are best when they’re short, to the point, written with an immediate purpose, and also, geared toward people who use and like e-mail.

What about those times when you need to deliver a lot of information? Many of us work virtually now, so almost everything we write is sent by e-mail, and in most organizations, sending reports and other materials by interoffice mail doesn’t cut it.

The principle still holds: Keep e-mails short and deliver bulky material as attachments. Then the e-mail serves as a cover letter.

Never forget that e-mails tend to live forever, thanks to backups, e-mail storage, and archiving. Whatever you write in an e-mail can come back to haunt you, in legal, professional, or personal ways. If you don’t want to see your message on the front page of the newspaper, don’t e-mail it.

Letters—There are occasions when a letter, whether sent by postal or e-mail, is right. Among these are when you need to thank someone; request an appointment, favor, contribution, or interview; introduce yourself to a potential employer; provide a reference or recommend a colleague; or congratulate someone.

Letters work to promote your business in the community or via a network and to tell clients about a new service or special offer. You need letters to cover a proposal, grant application, or résumé submission; and to create a formal or official record, such as a complaint, legal announcement, performance review, resignation, or offer of employment. And you need letters if you want to present your views to your elected representatives or a newspaper.

The common thread? Formality. Sometimes, also, your communication may need to be a bit more formal because the recipient is higher up in the company or older than you.

Letters used to be necessary for signatures, but many organizations now accept faxed or even e-mailed (typed) signatures as valid, although you should check to be sure they’re legal for your purpose.

Paradoxically, a letter can communicate more warmth and individuality than an e-mail. This makes letter writing a good choice when your goal is relationship building. Letters have their own downsides, including the fact that copies can be made and circulated, or the letters themselves can be saved and archived.

Telephone calls—Sometimes it’s better to pick up the phone. This applies if the other person responds better to the sound of the human voice and whenever it’s important for you to hear a personal reaction. The telephone also works if you’re untangling a knotty issue that’s best talked out, need an immediate response, or want the conversational interaction you don’t get with written communication. A call can be followed up with an e-mail or a letter giving details or reinforcing what was said on the phone.

Texting—For business purposes texting, is increasingly wide-spread, because it’s so convenient for our on-the-go, on-the-road work styles. Often it’s the only form of communication that’s practical, given differences in location, time, and accessibility. Texting’s downside is clear: The messages may be cryptic, hard to decipher, or both. It’s also a generational thing, in that many people beyond their twenties have never texted and may not want to.

Meetings—Face-to-face communication has many advantages, mainly because body language, facial expressions, and tone are clear to everyone. Although corporations use video-teleconferencing and even sites like Second Life for group conversations, nothing really gets the message across as well as sitting across a desk or a table.

So, when should you aim for a personal get-together? When the topic is sensitive or possibly hurtful; you’re delivering criticism or bad news; a brainstorming session is needed; you’re making a sales pitch to a potential major client; a major decision or organizational change is being made; cultural differences could affect communication; or when a team culture needs to be forged.

For example, a software manager in Boston, supervising a work group in Bulgaria, may find that e-mail, conference calls, and videoconferences are difficult because of language-use problems, time differences, and the like. Getting on a plane and sitting down face to face at least once may resolve long-standing differences.

Unified communications—Another way of sending a message is called “presence,” or “unified communications.” This means sending a message—by e-mail or voice—that’s delivered to the recipient via cell phone, desk telephone, desktop computer, laptop, fax, BlackBerry, or similar device. This lets you communicate with recipients wherever they happen to be, in the fastest possible way for each.

The bottom line—There’s no one answer to which communication medium to use. Among the variables, consider the age and tech savviness of recipients; the time/speed required; the potential language, cultural, and physical barriers; and the nature of your message.