Clarity as kindness
Shortly into my first full-time job, I sent an unsolicited email to my boss’ boss. I don’t remember the reason, but I do remember that a few minutes later he responded, characteristically in all lowercase and with no punctuation, asking me to resend it, this time with a subject.
I was embarrassed, but not offended. He was a particular man, who no doubt had a system for triaging the copious correspondence he received. A subject-less email forced him to click on it, wasting his time. I learnt then that constructing a properly-worded email subject was not merely a way for the sender to convey information; it was a convenience to the recipient. And not to make that effort was to be inconsiderate.
All communication is like that. My primary purpose is to get what is in my head into yours. But my secondary purpose should be not to tire you out in the meantime. To do that, my communication needs to be clear.
Clarity is hard. What is clear to me may not be clear to you, so it requires empathy. I need to put myself in your shoes, making an educated guess about what you know, what you will easily follow, and what will confuse you. I need to select words that you will understand, even if other words are more precise, or come more easily to me. I may need to repeat myself, if I suspect that you will miss something important the first time around. I also need to keep it short, because you may stop paying attention after a while. That is a lot of work. If good manners are made up of petty sacrifices, as Emerson once wrote, good communication is made up of more substantial ones.
These sacrifices are the reason that most people are not clear. It is easier to vomit out the first thing that comes to mind, to copy someone else’s explanation and add “See above”, to give your own knowledge and ego precedence, than it is to imagine your audience, order your thoughts, and light the shortest path to understanding while obscuring the others.
But when you do fail to make that sacrifice, understand that you are not merely being lazy. You are being unkind. Every time you force someone to read your text again, to ask two or three follow-up questions, or to travel the wrong road through misapprehension, you have wronged them. You have taken something from them that didn’t belong to you, and they are right to be upset.
