It started with one email from top leaderSHIP. Something with a sense of urgency behind it.
My instinct kicked in immediately. Respond fast, show I’m on it.
So I did, reply to all, everyone included. That answer sparked more questions, so I dug up some data and sent another reply. Then another person jumped into the thread with their own questions, which added a new layer of complexity.
By the end of the day, we were nine emails deep in a chain that had eaten the whole afternoon. And I genuinely thought we’d landed on a resolution.
The Feedback That Stung
I was wrong. A mentor of mine had been included on that thread the whole time, cc’d through every reply. After a long day of meetings, he finally opened his inbox to find a nine part chain full of scattered replies, mine among them.
He didn’t reply to the group. He emailed me directly. Something to the effect of, let’s talk about your email strategy, because right now it isn’t reflecting your leaderSHIP.
Communication Was Supposed to Be My Thing
That stung, honestly, because communication is supposed to be my thing. I’ve spoken on stages around the globe, keynotes, workshops, sales kickoffs. I’ve given four TEDx talks myself, and I coach TEDx speakers on clarity of their messaging. I coach entrepreneurs on pitching with precision.
One of my favorite quotes, from Bruce Lee, is “When you open your mouth, you reveal who you are.”
That line has stuck with me for years. I believe it to be true, and use that quote to share the importance of why what you say matters.
I’ve interviewed over a hundred speakers on my podcast, World of Speakers. Communication is core to my identity.
And yet somehow, email was the one place I’d never applied any of it. I’d been treating speed as the marker of good leaderSHIP, when really I was just reacting.
What the Research Says
Turns out there’s real research behind why that reply all spiral felt so bad. Studies on email overload show that once a thread gets long enough, people hit something called cognitive overload, where decision quality actually drops the more messages pile up.
There’s also a well documented pattern called decision fatigue, the same thing that makes you worse at choices by the end of a long day, and every single email you open is its own tiny decision.
So that nine part thread wasn’t just annoying, it was working against everyone’s ability to think clearly, including mine.
Once that landed, I realized the fix wasn’t really about email at all. It was about applying the same care I’d put into a keynote, knowing my audience, choosing the right stories, being mindful of timing, backing things up with real data, to something I’d been dashing off without a second thought.
Putting It Into Practice
Not long after, I had a chance to test it. I was pushing for a particular outcome on something, and my old instinct was to fire off an email making my case directly to leaderSHIP.
My mentor suggested something different, open a shared document, and work through it together over time. Not a quick fix, this took about a week and something like nine revisions. He pushed me to boil it down to three real options, including the one I wanted, backed by actual data rather than assumptions, polished until it read as clean as a keynote I’d deliver on stage.
Then, instead of sending it to leaderSHIP myself, I sent it to him, and he forwarded it up the chain. One thought through email did the work that a messy thread of replies never could have.
What I Didn’t See Before
Reflecting on it, I think this honest feedback was something other people had probably noticed for a while, they just never said it to my face. I’m grateful he did. It still feels a little new, a little awkward even, to pause before hitting reply all, but I’m starting to see it as a real chance to show up as the leader I want to be, through something as small as email.
Here’s the part that really stuck with me. A conversation happens and then it’s gone. Email doesn’t work that way. Email is permanent. And you never fully know who might end up reading it later.
If that original nine part thread had been forwarded to someone outside the loop, someone seeing my scattered, emotional, hastily written replies for the first time, that’s the version of my leaderSHIP they’d walk away with. But the one email my mentor and I spent a week refining, that’s the version I’d be proud to have forwarded anywhere.
A Reflection of LeaderSHIP
So the next time an email lands and your gut says react now, try treating your reply not just as a reply, but as a reflection of your leaderSHIP. Think about it like a captain barking out nine partial orders during a storm, confusing and scattered for the crew, versus giving one clear command they can actually follow.
That’s the difference between reacting and leading.
One of the reasons I've always respected Bruce Lee is his ability to make things simple and powerful, like the quote mentioned earlier, “When you open your mouth, you reveal who you are.”
And if Bruce Lee were around today, with email being such a prominent part of both personal and professional communication, I imagine he'd revise it to say, “When you draft your emails, you reveal who you are.”
So I’m not telling you to change how you email tomorrow. I’m just sharing what I didn’t fully see before, that every reply is a small, lasting record of how you lead.
A great message to live by!