Enough With the Phony Familiarity

During my early days as a public speaking coach, the fad (never a good one) was to “Tell them what you’re going to tell them, tell them, and then tell them what you told them!” Pure bunk and fortunately no longer in vogue.

Being under lock down has had its own influence on how we talk shop, some good and some extremely vexing. I’ve been able to coach online classes on how to Upgrade Presenting Skills for Zoom, and the results are deeply gratifying- formerly shy, introverted senior level people have absolutely bloomed. Confidence is shored up. Meetings become engaging once people understand how to speak on/camera.

Now I’m seeing an annoying trend and to anyone out there who thinks it’s clever, think again. It’s e-mail abuse, in the form of familiarity:

“Hi Katie, I hope you’re doing alright and are in a good place…are you? You’ve probably noticed from my emails lately that…” These are from people I’ve either never heard from, or else haven’t heard from in a dozen years or more. So no, I haven’t noticed anything lately and this approach guarantees that I never will again.

Please don’t make that mistake out of sheer desperation. Or another type- my husband got a jocular work email, much the same fake friendly but with the added touch of the sender in a highly inappropriate outfit and pose.