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Knowing when email should be a meeting is one of the most underrated communication skills in the workplace. You drafted what felt like a thorough, clear message. You hit send. And then came the reply-all thread, the conflicting interpretations, the questions you thought you already answered. What started as efficiency turned into a slow-motion communication breakdown.

Here is the thing: email is a brilliant tool for the right job. But it is terrible at building shared understanding. It flattens nuance. It cannot course-correct in real time. And when a topic involves complexity, potential disagreement, or ambiguity, email does not resolve the situation. It amplifies it.

In this episode, I walk you through my philosophy on meeting hygiene and the specific criteria that signal when a conversation needs to happen in real time rather than in a thread. I cover the meaning-making test, which helps you quickly assess whether a meeting is actually required, and I break down the five clearest signals that you should close the draft and open the calendar instead.

I also share Janel's Rule of Three, a simple heuristic I use with my clients and in my training programs: if you are on the third round of back-and-forth on a thread and the topic has not moved forward, it is time to pick up the phone. Decisions, complex trade-offs, sensitive topics, and anything that could land differently depending on tone of voice or facial expression: those belong in a room, not in your inbox.

Listen and catch the full episode here or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can also watch it and replay it on my YouTube channel, JanelAndersonPhD.

LINKS RELATED TO THIS EPISODE:

Episode 116 - My Best Advice for Hybrid Meetings

Episode 149 - The Power of Generative AI to Transform Meetings

Episode 153 - 6 Tips for Better Virtual Meetings

Episode 259 - You're Probably Doing 1:1 Meetings Wrong

Episode 261 - How to Speak Up in Meetings When You're an Introvert

Episode 273 - This Meeting Should Have Been an Email

Have you ever sent what felt like a perfectly clear email and gotten back a thread full of confusing, conflicting interpretations and questions that you thought you already answered the first time around in the email you were trying to be efficient, but instead you created a mess, and you feel like it's not your fault. Well, if this sounds familiar, this episode is for you, because sometimes the most efficient thing that you can do is stop sending emails and just call a meeting. Last week on the episode, we talked about how to survive another meeting that should have been an email, and how to make that an email when it really should have been an email. And in this episode, we are flipping the script on that, and we're looking at when do you actually call a meeting, because email isn't sufficient.

So, when is email not the right tool? So, again, last episode we talked about the meeting that didn't need to happen, the meeting that should have been an email, and we talked about a couple of different types of meetings that should just get canceled all together because they're no longer useful, but then we also talked about the CYA meeting, the Cover Your Ass meeting, which is when somebody is worried or fearful that they're going to take the fall or take the blame for something until they feel like let's just get a bunch of people together and have a meeting, and then I'll be okay. So it's a meeting that kind of covers or protects. Now again, we talked about how nobody's ever really formally taught meeting facilitation skills, unless you take a class like one of the ones that I teach, where I actually teach how to run an effective meeting.

Now, this episode is not necessarily how to run an effective meeting, but it's how to know if you should have a meeting instead of just sending an email about the subject. Okay, so if you missed that last episode, why don't you go back and listen to episode 273 You can listen to it. This is episode 274 you can listen to it before, after, doesn't really matter, but it's a companion episode to this, and I've also recorded a number of episodes on running more effective meetings, and so we're linking those up in the show notes. You can find the show notes for this episode at Janelle anderson.com forward slash 274 for episode 274 All right, back to why we're talking about this.

Here's where it gets interesting. In a world where everyone is trying to have fewer meetings, because again, meetings have increased more than 70% since pre-pandemic. Okay, so we have a lot of meetings, people are in back to back meetings all day, and we know that we don't want to spend so much time in meetings, and so some folks have started to default to emailing everything, so fewer meetings, absolutely, that sounds good, but when email becomes a default tool for complex communication of, you know, issues that are potentially sensitive issues, where people might have strong feelings, or they might be things that are contested, where somebody might give some pushback to something, then you end up with a very different kind of basically dysfunction, one that's quieter, slower, and harder to see, and harder to read, and certainly harder to fix.

Now, don't get me wrong, email is a brilliant tool for the right job, but it's terrible at building shared understanding. It flattens any sort of nuance that might need to be there in an issue in order to understand the nuance that you're trying to give the issue, if you are the one who would be initiating the meeting, or in the past writing the email, but also the nuance of the people who are on the receiving end, because when we're in real time with people, and we can read their facial expressions, and their verbal utterances, and their body language, all of those things, it really helps interpret, it helps us interpret how the message is being landed, and if we need to do any subtle shifts, or course corrections, or provide more detail, or maybe an example, or three, so it email cannot course correct in real time in the same way that a meeting or a one on one conversation can when somebody reads something the wrong way, so when a topic involves complexity, potential for disagreement, ambiguity, or uncertainty in the minds of the people who are receiving that information, then email isn't going to cut it, it's not going to resolve anything.

In fact, it's going to do the opposite, and it's going to amplify the disagreement, the complexity, the ambiguity. So, instead of it solving for x, it is going to multiply by x. Okay, so every reply adds a new layer of interpretation, especially when there's multiple people hitting reply all, and then it's like some concerns that somebody else had, you didn't even have those concerns, but now that you see their reply, all of a sudden those concerns are yours as well, and if they don't immediately get resolved, they may be hanging out for you, causing anxiety and consternation, and so forth. Whereas if you were in a face-to-face meeting and somebody asked that question, you might be thinking to yourself, oh, good question, I wish I had asked that, but that's a good question.

Let me lean in for the answer, and it gets resolved immediately, and you're like, oh, okay, yeah, that sounded alarming, but really the answer was pretty straightforward. Okay, so by the time you're 15 replies deep on an email, nobody remembers what the original question was, and the team is more polarized than when you even started, and it's just frustrating for everybody, and that's not a meeting problem, that's an email problem. And the solution is knowing when to close the draft email and open up the calendar and write a meeting agenda instead.

Okay, so my overall philosophy on meetings is this: meet to create meaning, and if you've already listened to episode 273 you heard me talk about that meetings do an excellent job at creating meaning between people, because we're right there in real time, and we can shape the understanding of the situation with back and forth, and questions, and answers, and even just with the subtle cues that we're imbuing a message with, with our facial expressions, our tone of voice, and so on. So, when meaning needs to be built together in real time with real reactions and the ability to adjust on the fly, that is when you need a meeting. So, no meeting for the sake of meeting, that is not helpful for anybody.

A meeting works because the work of the meeting requires it, so again run the meaning making test, and this time, and if you don't know what I'm talking about with the meaning making test, you're going to want to go listen to episode 273 but this time I want you to be asking, Does the situation require real time interaction to be handled well. If the answer is yes, well, you might recognize one of these criteria being present. You're solving a complex problem again. The more the complexity goes up, the more social cues you need to support the interaction.

Okay, so if you're solving a complex problem, then yes, you probably want a meeting. Do you need to make a difficult decision that you are not unilaterally making, but you are making it in conjunction with other people. The answer to that is yes. Then, yes, you need a meeting with people in the, in the space together. If you have ever tried to make a complex decision on email, you know what I'm talking about. It's like 47 replies, and people are missing each other left, right, and center. It's just not useful.

Okay, so if you need to make a difficult decision, we want people in the room, whether that's the virtual room or the co-located room, where they're sharing ideas around that difficult decision, so we hear each other's voices and see the facial expressions in all the things in order to shape the decision together, if you're working through disagreement, then you absolutely need to be one on one with it's just you and one other person, or you know, a small group collectively in a meeting format, if you are working through that disagreement, because if you've ever either been on the receiving end of an email or started typing an email that says that's not what I meant, just stop yourself right there and call a meeting, or you know, if it's just you and one other person, pick up the phone or hop into a Zoom call or a Teams call with them, if they're not co-located, or I mean, if they are co-located, just get up and walk over to their desk and talk to them about it.

If this is an issue where you need to explore some trade-offs. Well, if we do this, then this is at stake, and then if we do this, well, then these other things are at stake. And so, if you've got that again, going back to that complexity, but if you've got a bunch of different trade-offs that you need to explore, you know, how significant is this trade-off versus this trade-off? Then, by all means, that makes sense to do in a meeting format instead of via email, and if you're just generating ideas, if you want input on something where you want, like, rapid fire, and you want the energy of the room to feed the ideas.

In the last episode, where I said, you know, if it's a meeting that should have been an email, if you just want straight up input where you don't necessarily want the energy of people bouncing ideas off of each other, then by all means, that could be an email where people are sending you input, but if you're generating ideas and you really do want it to be generative and creative, and that brainstorming type feel to it, you're going to want to get people together in the same room at the same time. If you're trying to build some sort of consensus or commitment around something, again, it makes sense to have people in real time together hearing each other's voices, and again, if you're the one who's trying to build commitment, you can hear that lack of commitment or the lack of trust come through, even very subtly in the tone of voice people use, so you're going to be listening for those things, and then again, the last one is if you're handling sensitive topics or ambiguous information that needs social cues for correct interpretation, which is kind of, I've woven that in a few different places.

Then, by all means, you're going to need to have a meeting, because you just can't do all that by email without making a complicated situation worse, or, or taking a lot of time, whereas just getting eight people together in a room for it sometimes isn't even only like 15 minutes for you to make a decision together or share an announcement of some ambiguous information or something that would cause uncertainty in people's minds. It doesn't have to be a half an hour meeting or even an hour meeting, it can just be 15 minutes where you share the information, do a little Q and A, and call it a day.

Okay, so notice what all of the things have in common that I just was discussing. The list of things that should be a meeting instead of an email, they all require a shared understanding that gets built in real time, meaning making you can't get there asynchronously, the back and forth, the nuance, the ability to say wait, no, no, that's not quite what I meant. Let's still get it from this angle, or let me give you an example. Okay, that's not optional, that's the work, and that work can't happen effectively in email.

Again, going back to this idea of meeting hygiene, which I mentioned in the last, in the last episode, meeting hygiene is the idea that we're, we're putting some effort and some intentionality into our meetings to make sure that they are clean and crisp and efficient and effective, and again, that takes some thinking and some planning, but it also takes that discernment of, is email sufficient as a delivery mechanism for this information, or do we need to come together in real time and have this as a meeting, because nothing is worse than the email that should have been a meeting, except for possibly the meeting that should have been an email, but you see how these are sort of two sides to the same coin.

All right, so let me just give you a couple of takeaways. Number one, spot the ambiguity signal. If your email draft contains more than two phrases that are like, well, it depends, or those moments where you're like, if this, then this, or if that, then this. Okay, then then the complexity has gotten away from you, and that needs to be handled in a meeting again, whether that's a virtual meeting or face-to-face meeting or hybrid meeting. When you're hedging, when you're qualifying, footnoting things in an email, referring to other emails, referring to lots of other documents, that is a tell that the topic is in need of a conversation, so stop typing the email and instead start crafting an agenda, so that you can talk it through.

Number two, and this is something that, if you've been in training classes with me before, you may have heard me talk about Janel's rule of three, and Janel's rule of three goes like this: if it takes, if you're on the third turn back and forth about an email, where on an email or a text message or a Teams thread or Slack, or whatever, if you're on the third rotation through where you're asking clarifying questions back and forth, and it's not like you've advanced the topic to be more nuanced or richer or moving, you know, moving the ball down the proverbial field, if it were, but if you're going back and forth about, like, which down are we on, what's actually happening here, then it's time to pick up the phone. So I call it Janel's rule of three, you send me a message and I reply back to you, and you're like, wait, what?

And okay, so now we're going three turns on the same thing, and we haven't made any meaning. This is when it's time to pick up the phone. So Janel's rule of three, and then decisions: decision making does not belong in email, does not belong in email. I mean, sure, maybe if it's should we order sandwiches from Jimmy John's or Subway, okay, fine, you could probably do that over email, but if it is a substantial business decision that you're working on, then that merits a meeting. Okay, so you're setting up, you're setting yourself up for a slow motion stalemate, or a bad decision made without full context.

If you're trying to make decisions via email, and then watch for the avoidance signal, and this is a bit of a counterintuitive one. If you're drafting an email because you're not sure how someone's going to react, that is probably not a good reason to send the email. That's a signal that you might need a meeting. The discomfort that you're trying to avoid by sending an email is exactly the discomfort that an actual meeting is designed to handle. And then number five, the social cue test. So, some topics need that tone of voice, facial expression, and real-time adjustment in order for them to land correctly.

So, that could be sensitive feedback, that could be organizational changes, a client is upset, anything that touches somebody's identity, emotions, or sense of fairness. And these topics may, they need a room, they need a conference room, they need a teams room, they need a Zoom room, at minimum, a video call. Putting them in email isn't efficient. It is passing on the risk to the reader's interpretation, and we all know that people will read email with a different tone of voice to it than you had intended, I think.

If we could put a voice to people's, this would be a funny, this would be a funny reel, or a funny, you know, YouTube video. It's like the manager sends the email, and then each of the people who receive the email read it in their own tone of voice, or the tone of voice that they think that the person sending the email intended. That would be funny, because I bet you none of them would be anywhere near each other. All right, so let's get to your call of action.

This is where you get to put it to work. This is the segment in the podcast we call Put to Put It to Work, because I'm going to give you your homework. I used to be a college professor until I get to get homework. All right, so this week, before you hit send on a long complicated email. I want you to run that meaning making test. Are you trying to build shared understanding? Are you working through something complex or something that might be contested by other people or disagree? There might be some disagreement around. Are you asking for a real decision? If yes on any of those, close your draft and open your calendar instead and start drafting a meeting invitation with a short agenda, meeting hygiene is, and this goes for this goes for anybody in the organization, so you don't have to be somebody who routinely, you know, either manages the work of others, supervises the work of others, or or leads meetings.

If you are an individual contributor and you are writing a long complex email, it might not be a meeting with half a dozen people, it might just be a meeting with you and your boss, or you and your coworker who are working together through something. So, this call to action, this put it to work, this goes for anybody in the organization who is writing a long complex email that really should be at minimum a conversation, if not a meeting amongst a number of people. Okay, so meeting hygiene isn't just about having fewer meetings, it's about having the right meetings and getting the right things accomplished, and the right things across the finish line, the right agenda items across the finish line in the meetings.

So, when you get that right, email gets shorter, meetings get shorter, and fewer in frequency, and your team actually moves faster, that's working conversations, that's conversations that actually work. All right, go check out the show notes for this week's episode. On that show notes page, you're going to find links to other related episodes, and you're also going to find links to the episode out on YouTube. So, if you prefer to watch instead of listen, you can go check it out on YouTube. There is also a complete, full downloadable PDF transcript of the episode. And I was not too long ago doing a training session for, and somebody was like, "Oh, I listen to your podcast all the time. And then she said she pulled me aside and she goes, "Well, I don't actually listen, and I was like, "What do you mean you don't actually listen, but you claim to listen.

And she said every Monday, because the episodes always come out on Monday. She said every Monday I read the episode while I'm eating my lunch. And she explained that she works in the office and there's people around her, all the, you know, all around the place, so she's not like playing it out loud. And she said, I just don't, I just don't love listening. I'm more of a visual learner, and so I like to read things, and so she reads the transcript every Monday at lunch. So the full transcript is there as a downloadable PDF. It's also there in a scrolling window, so lots of ways for you to consume this content, and that that PDF transcript is infinitely shareable as well. You could send that on to somebody, or you could just send the link to the show notes page, and from the show notes page, you can find it on podcast on Apple Podcasts on Spotify. So, the episode is available everywhere that you get your podcasts. So, again, my friends, I will catch you right here next week on the Working Conversations Podcast. Take good care.