I was speaking with a senior leader recently – someone who manages a large, talented team across multiple client accounts – and she said something that has stayed with me ever since. “They’re good at their jobs. Really good. But the way they communicate makes me question their judgment.”
She wasn’t talking about attitude or work ethic. She was talking about email – specifically, the messages her junior and mid-level colleagues were sending to clients, to executives, and to each other. Messages that were too casual, too vague, or simply not thought through. And what struck me most about the conversation wasn’t the frustration in her voice. It was this: it wasn’t that her team didn’t care. It was that no one had ever actually taught them what professional email communication looks like.
This is one of the most consistent things I hear from leaders across industries, and it makes sense when you think about it. We spend years teaching people technical skills, industry knowledge, and role-specific competencies. We rarely sit down and teach them the unwritten rules of professional communication – the ones that quietly shape how they’re perceived at every level of an organization.
The good news is that this is one of the most fixable gaps in professional development, if you know what to address. Here’s where I’d start.
The Opening Line Is Doing More Work Than You Think
I’ll admit something before I get into this one: “Hope you’re doing well” is practically my own default opener. I catch myself typing it on autopilot, and it genuinely takes conscious effort to stop. So when I share this, know that I’m very much talking to myself too.
The opening line of a professional email either earns the reader’s attention or loses it, and warm filler phrases – however well-intentioned – are almost always the wrong place to start. By the time the writer gets to the actual point, a busy reader has already started skimming. This is especially true when emailing anyone senior. Executives and leaders are typically receiving many more emails than the people writing to them, and they’re often reading on their phones between meetings, not sitting at a desk with time to work through a paragraph of pleasantries before finding the ask.
Training your team to lead with the reason they’re writing – clearly and specifically, right in the first sentence – is one of the simplest and highest-impact communication habits you can instill. A concept worth introducing here is BLUF: Bottom Line Up Front. The point belongs in the first two or three lines. Everything else – the context, the background, the explanation – can follow for the readers who need it. The warmth can come through in how the email is written, not in a placeholder sentence before anything of substance begins.
One Ask, One Thread, One Idea
When an email tries to accomplish three things at once, it often accomplishes none of them. The reader doesn’t know what to respond to first, so they pick the easiest item and quietly let the rest go – or they defer the whole message until they have time to deal with it properly, which sometimes means never.
If your team has multiple asks, coach them to number each one clearly, so nothing gets buried and nothing gets missed. Or better yet, encourage them to ask whether everything really needs to be in one email at all. Sometimes the more considerate and effective choice is to send two shorter, focused messages rather than one long one that demands the reader’s full attention to untangle.
On the subject of threads: one of the simplest habits to build is the practice of maintaining email conversations rather than starting a new message every time. If you’re following up on something that was discussed before – even if months have passed – go back and find the original email and reply to it. It gives the recipient immediate context without asking them to search for background information they may have long forgotten. That said, if the subject has genuinely shifted, start fresh with a subject line that actually reflects what the new conversation is about.
The Reply All Question Nobody Thinks About Until It’s Too Late
Few things create more unnecessary friction in a professional environment than a mishandled Reply All, and yet it’s one of those habits that rarely gets explicitly addressed in training.
The general principle is this: if someone was copied on an email, it was usually for a reason, and keeping them in the loop on project-specific threads matters. Removing people from threads without good cause can create confusion and, depending on the context, can feel dismissive or territorial. Particularly on shared projects where multiple stakeholders need to stay aligned, Reply All is often the right default.
But it isn’t always. When a company-wide announcement goes out and your response is simply “Congratulations!” – that’s not something a hundred colleagues need in their inbox. The better habit to build in your team isn’t a hard-and-fast rule in either direction. It’s the pause – the two-second moment before hitting send where they actually ask themselves: does everyone on this thread genuinely need to see my response? In most cases, common sense will provide the answer. The problem isn’t that people don’t know the answer. It’s that they never stop to ask the question in the first place.
The Small Things That Are Actually Shaping Perceptions
There are a handful of email habits that seem like minor details but quietly and consistently shape how professionals are perceived by the people they work with.
A professional email signature is one of them. It removes friction for anyone trying to reach you, signals that you’ve thought about how others experience communicating with you, and takes about four minutes to set up properly. Name, title, company, phone number – it doesn’t need to be elaborate, but it should be there, and it should be consistent across every message someone sends.
If an email is growing long and complicated, it’s worth asking whether it’s still the right medium for the conversation at all. Sometimes a three-minute phone call resolves what would have taken eight back-and-forth emails, and a brief follow-up note summarizing what was discussed and decided is all that’s actually needed in writing.
And one practical tip I genuinely love passing along: don’t add the recipient’s address to the email until after you’ve finished writing and reviewing it. It’s a small habit that eliminates the very human and very embarrassing risk of sending something before it’s ready – a mistake that’s almost impossible to fully recover from once it happens.
Tone Is More Nuanced Than Most People Realize
Being direct in email is generally a good thing. Vague, meandering messages waste everyone’s time and often fail to get the result the writer was hoping for. But one person’s directness is another person’s abruptness, and this distinction matters enormously depending on who you’re writing to and what kind of relationship you have with them.
The casual, warm register that works beautifully with a close colleague isn’t necessarily right for a new client you’ve never met, or a senior executive three levels above you, or someone you’re writing to in a formal professional context for the first time. What I call communication code-switching – the ability to read the context, consider your audience, and adjust your tone accordingly – is one of the most valuable professional skills you can develop in emerging talent. And it genuinely has to be taught, because most people won’t develop it on their own.
The Bigger Picture
None of these are small things, even when they look like it on the surface. Together, they make up the professional communication foundation that separates people who move things forward confidently from people who create friction and confusion without ever understanding why.
Email is often the first impression someone makes in a professional context – before a meeting, before a presentation, before anyone has seen them in a room. For junior professionals especially, it’s one of the primary ways they’re being evaluated, even when no one has explicitly told them that. The habits they develop early will follow them through their entire career, shaping how they’re perceived, how much trust they’re given, and how seriously their ideas are taken.
The goal of good professional communication has never been to make people more formal or more robotic. It’s to make them more intentional – so that every message they send actually reflects the capable, thoughtful professional they’re working hard to become.
If your organization could benefit from a focused session on professional communication – email etiquette, digital presence, or workplace communication more broadly – this is exactly the work we do at Boost Academy of Excellence. Reach out and let’s talk about what that could look like for your team.
About the Author
Trina Boos is the Founder and CEO of Boost Academy of Excellence, where she helps professionals master workplace etiquette and business skills for today’s evolving work environment. Drawing from her experience as former CEO of Boost Agents, Trina has placed thousands of professionals in leading organizations across North America.
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