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E-Mail Tip #33 - Creating an Online Persona

Guest post by: Robert Whipple

Article Overview: There are all kinds of wierd things that go on in the cyber world. Many people create a kind of persona that is not really them. The game Second Life has this aspect as a central idea. Here is an article about what goes on when there is a second identitiy behind the actual person writing a note.

E-Mail Tip #33 - Creating an Online Persona

Some individuals create a fictitious character as a surrogate when interfacing with people online. For some people, working with others indirectly through a pseudonym may seem safer than being themselves. The challenge is how to sort out data about the real person from the imaginary one.

I had a student who called himself "Mr. Evil." Actually, he was a good student with excellent people sensitivity. He just liked to kid around and make people cringe with his antics. He would write things like,

• "So, you dare to challenge the wit of Mr. Evil - well, I will dice you up into little pieces and have you for lunch - BWA-HAHAHAHA!"

Fellow classmates would attempt to keep up with brash statements of their own in a playful give and take. The problem is, this nonproductive banter deflected energy away from the serious business of the class. It was not a direct trust withdrawal, because everyone knew he was just kidding around, but it was a distraction. The game became more important than the course.

This student actually did intimidate some of the more timid classmates who were there to learn rather than play games. They did not know how to interface safely with this person. Rather than coach this individual personally, I wrote a brief note to the entire class about online decorum, and he got the message.

It is dangerous in any environment to pretend to be someone or something you are not. With the challenges inherent in online communication, the concept of playing games is even more risky. There is no place for it, because it detracts from accurate understanding. When you want to be your real self and not your alter ego, it is difficult for your reader to make the shift unless you spell it out with a statement like, "Leaving Mr. Evil in the lab for a moment, I think we need to address our next paper earlier." This is cumbersome and an inappropriate use of the reader's brain cells. However, even if we don't have a fancy pseudonym like Mr. Evil, we are all slightly different from our "normal" selves at times and have different "faces" depending on our current situation.

Recognize that we each have multiple personalities in any kind of communication. We have our "personal" voice and our "professional" voice. It is important to keep these two modes separate in online communications. If you mix the personal and professional voice in an e-mail, it will confuse your reader or it will just sound goofy. For example:

• "We need to lay off 12% of this department before the end of the year. Please start the ranking process immediately after Thanksgiving. Get whatever help you need from H.R. I am counting on you to drive a fair but decisive evaluation of everyone in the department. Don't forget, you promised to lose 22 pounds before the end of the year, so don't go eating all those donuts at the stressful ranking meetings (:-)."

That sounds pretty ridiculous, but I have seen this level of mixing personal and professional voices in e-mails. For the most clarity and continuity, stick to one or the other voice within a single e-mail.

Leaders, in particular, have many different roles they play with people. Here are just a few examples of different leadership roles:

• The voice of reason and conveyor of performance data.

• A comforting friend in times of crisis.

• A stern parent when there is need for more discipline.

• A coach for the entire team.

• An advocate for the position of upper management to the employees.

• An advocate for the position of the employees to upper management.

• A lightning rod for action in times of crisis.

• A person who challenges the group to rise to the next level.

• A strategist who plots and communicates direction.

The list could go on to include hundreds of different roles played by the leaders depending on the current need. The lesson here is to avoid mixing these roles within a single e-mail. If you try to be a preacher, an executioner, and a wet nurse in the same note, people are going to get confused.

One antidote to confusion is to screen all your messages to ensure you are consistent. In all e-mail language, be alert to the sidebar comments that can be damaging and are not really consistent with the rest of your message. One trick that will help you be more consistent is to picture the recipient of your note in your mind.

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Article Tags: email, leadership, online, persona, Second life, trust



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