Courier

Words matter. They do. But, how often do you spend time worrying about the font that matters in an email?

Yea, me neither. Until the day I did. A day quite early in my career, when I laboured over an important email to a client, finally hit send (re-reading it multiple times in my sent items, as you do) only to receive the swift blow response: "Yikes, Courier!"

It took me a moment to comprehend that she wasn't reacting to the content I had agonised over, but rather the font in which it was delivered.

It would have been easy to laugh this off and move on. But dig a little deeper, and it turned out to be a valuable lesson: that empathy is fundamental to conversation.  A leap too far? Bear with me. 

Spending time on getting the message right is important. And it’s only part of the story if we're to move beyond the purely transactional.  In virtual conversation there are always things that remain outside of our control. When, where and in what frame of mind the message is read, for example. But we can reduce the impact of those factors by investing in the relationship.

Client or not, showing an interest in what's important to somebody is rich information to help us communicate effectively with empathy.  By not knowing about my client's strong aversion to this particular font, I exposed that I didn't really see her.  And if I didn't really see her, how could she trust that I would take the care required in my work for her?

Sure, there were probably other ways to deliver this feedback, but I can't think of many that would have made such a lasting impression.

30 March 2023: Here’s an unexpected P.S. to this from the one and only ICE-T.