Abstract
This study draws from personality psychology and linguistics of written communication to explore the characteristics of self-selected well-written email communications (N=273) solicited from Polish managers who organized and supervised the (remote) work of their units during the COVID-19 period. The focus is on the writing of managers with above-average levels of conscientiousness and agreeableness, as these personality factors are predictors of efficacy in the completion of two work-related goals, Achievement and Communion, according to the Theory of Purposeful Work Behavior. The linguistic patterns responsible for effective email communication are identified through both automated and qualitative textual analyses of the email sample. The study has implications for management training via the assumption that linguistic patterns that a reflexive manager uses in writing are subjected to monitoring and can be modeled and adapted to. Specific recommendations for managerial writing styles concern informational, instructional, explanatory, feedback, and query messages.
Keywords
Introduction
This study offers input for management training programs by highlighting the increasing importance of written communication that has complemented face-to-face managerial interactions during the COVID-19 pandemic. While research demonstrates that managerial writing styles are influenced by managers’ personality, they also vary enormously depending on the context of the organization, the communicative goal of the text (e.g., information, instruction, and feedback) and the composition of the working team. Textual patterns that a manager uses while addressing coworkers and subordinates in writing are subjected to monitoring and can be modeled or trained. Even though recent scholarship highlights the value of such features as leader’s “supportiveness,” “preciseness,” and “assuredness” in addressing subordinates (Dirani et al., 2020; Kempster & Jackson, 2021; Kirchner et al., 2021), few studies offer specific advice how to construct texts that bear those features or how to reflect on one’s writing style to channel it better to such desirable communicative goals.
This study investigates the ways Polish managers communicated through emails with the people whose work they managed during the COVID-19 period. The managers whose writing is examined here are heads of units, departments, or offices of either public or private organizations, with between 3 and 30+ subordinates. Because they are institutionally appointed heads of working teams, we have chosen to refer to them as “managers” and to the communications they engage in as “managing in writing” of work-related tasks and relations in the respective organizations. This is a terminological choice, since what we study here overlaps to a substantial degree with research on leadership practices and teamwork mechanisms (Dinh et al., 2014; Hoch & Kozlowski, 2014; Judge & Bono, 2000). We acknowledge the priorities given to communication in leadership studies, but keep our terminology of management because of relatively formalized work relationships, which, as our study assumes, tend to be reproduced through writing styles.
The object of analysis in this study is written communication. The linguistic patterns that are responsible for specific writing styles that could be recommended are identified through both automated and qualitative textual analyses of emails. However, to identify such patterns we needed a consistent sample of well-written, rather than random, texts given the infinite variety of writing styles. To obtain such a sample, we subjected the managers whose emails we solicited to “Big Five” personality questionnaire measuring neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and agreeableness. As it is the latter two traits that are considered to be the most likely to influence writing styles in ways that were worth pursuing from the point of view of recommendations for managing, we focused on analyzing the texts of conscientious and agreeable managers only.
In this study, we perceive written communication as a goal-driven action that is influenced by managers’ personality on the one hand, and constrained by institutional norms, conventions and affordances of written mode, and emailing on the other. This complex dialectic makes it hard to present “management through writing” as a closed set of fixed and deterministic factors. Rather than to assume a fit-for-all best practice approach to managerial writing, we aim to promote managerial reflexivity with regard to writing styles, in tune with research which indicates that the more reflexivity there is, the more apt team management strategies and higher performance can be noticed (Konradt, 2015). Reflexivity, in the context of managerial writing, would be “the ambition to carefully and systematically take a critical view of one’s own assumptions, ideas and vocabulary and to consider if alternative ones make sense” (Alvesson et al., 2017, p. 14, emphasis ours).
Even though we narrow the scope of the study to how personality traits of conscientiousness and agreeableness are reflected in managers’ communications, it would be reductive to claim that personality is a determiner of one’s writing style, especially in view of the broad literature that challenges this. Therefore, we draw on the Theory of Purposeful Work Behavior (Barrick et al., 2013) and represent managerial email texts as actions channeled toward achieving certain work-related goals: getting things done (Achievement), controlling the work of the unit (Autonomy), being recognized as in charge (Status), and fostering work-related relationships (Communion). While agreeable managers devote more effort to fostering communion, and conscientious people stress achievement, good management will call for a contextually calibrated mix of various written patterns and vocabulary choices that we aim to describe here.
The objective of this study is thus to identify the linguistic patterns in well-written email communication that conscientious and agreeable Polish managers use to effectively deal with work management, and to explain how these patterns help to realize work-related goals (mainly Achievement and Communion) in ways that could be recommended to reflexive managers. Even though our raw textual data are in Polish, we believe that the analytic insights and interpretations are not language-specific and the recommendations can be applicable in various work settings. We translate all Polish key words and phrases into English using literal translation, sometimes giving more than one equivalent for precision.
Literature Review
There are many strands of research at the intersection of management and leadership on the one hand, and communication styles on the other, often with a view to improving the efficiency of management and teamwork. One strand of this research focuses on personal qualities and trust in managerial communication (Bakker-Pieper & de Vries, 2013; de Vries, Bakker-Pieper, & Oostenveld, 2010; Yang et al., 2020). Another strand of scholarship identifies effective communication patterns in various sectors and recommends best practices with respect to, for example, motivating workers, preventing conflict or limiting free-riding (de Vries, Bakker-Pieper, Konings, & Schouten, 2013; Boulu-Reshef et al., 2020; Thapa et al., 2022). This study considers this literature, but refocuses from studying managers’ personalities to studying managers’ communications, particularly emails.
The latest strand of studies traces the processes related to reconfiguring managerial communication given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic that normalized remote work with less direct control over employees and with a growing prevalence of computer-mediated communication channels (Kirchner et al., 2021; Thapa et al., 2022). (Written) communication is shown as an even more essential competence for managers at the time of pandemic, as they become chief informational officers in many organizations (Dirani et al., 2020). Oberländer and Bipp (2022) point to the growing role of digital communication during the ongoing pandemic in the context of facilitating work engagement and providing social support. However, even though computer-mediated communication technologies have been available for some time, some research suggests that employees perceive face-to-face communication to be of “higher quality” than telephone and email communication (Braun et al., 2019; Brown et al., 2014; Turnage & Goodboy, 2016). This finding inspires our study in aiming to explore textual patterns of effective email communication in which managers delegate tasks without compromising their subordinates’ sense of autonomy and belonging to a team (Barrick et al., 2013).
Recent perspectives on processual, relational, and shared leadership (Endres & Weibler, 2017; Gadelshina, 2020) draw more attention to how communication is performed—not as a transfer of information but as a complex process of meaning and relationship building, which is iterative and socially constructed. As a result, successful management should no longer be theorized as attributed to the competencies and actions of the person in charge but to the emergent practices of interacting often through communicating, negotiating, and coordinating (Uhl-Bien, 2006). As a result, in this study we make use of personality tests only to identify managers with the traits that are likely to be reproduced in writing styles—particularly conscientiousness and agreeableness—in order to attend to linguistic patterning in their email communications.
Computer-Mediated Written Communication: Affordances of the Mode and Technology
According to Braun et al. (2019), the written mode, as opposed to the spoken mode, is characterized by comparatively low synchronicity and utilization of contextual cues. Emails do not usually require immediate feedback (which would be useful in the case of the need for clarification), but they can be returned to by employees, reread and reprocessed on demand. In addition, recent studies conducted under the circumstances of the pandemic indicate that email communication is perceived to be less time-consuming, more reliable, and more efficient than telephone communication or even face-to-face meetings. It is also the main channel of instruction distribution and feedback, and a possible vehicle to foster trust within the organization (Haesevoets et al., 2021). Having said this, we are also aware of the life-work balance movements that advocate cutting down on excessive emailing, especially beyond work hours (Russell & Woods, 2020).
On the sender’s side, email communication allows for rehearsing and tailoring the messages to the needs of the recipients, provided that managers chose to take time to do this. The choice of the written mode of communication is also related to such factors as decrease in personalization (loss of tonality of voice, intonation prosody, mitigating fillers) and in language variety, mainly due to formulaic conventions required in emails. Even though it takes more time to write/read written messages, the processing of information is on average more efficient in the work context (see Table 1 for an extensive comparison of three forms of office communication).
Comparison of forms of communication.
Source: Braun, S., Hernandez Bark, A., Kirchner, A., Stegmann, S., & Van Dick, R. (2019). Emails from the boss—curse or blessing? Relations between communication channels, leader evaluation, and employees’ attitudes. International Journal of Business Communication, 56(1), 50-81. DOI: 10.1177/2329488415597516.
A line of research shows that emails are a primary and pervasive form of communication in organizations today (D’Urso & Pierce, 2009; Haesevoets et al., 2021; Turnage & Goodboy, 2016). Positive aspects of email communication underlined in studies (that date back to the 1980s) include mainly reprocessability, rehearsability, and convenience. Negative aspects of email communication center on the lack of clarity, lack of reliability due to delays in answering, and their “impersonal” character, which is counterproductive to team-building. Although email communication provides users with response flexibility by normalizing a time lag between message reception and reply (Cambier & Vlerick, 2020), business norms regarding email responsiveness have been evolving systematically and involve pressure to respond to a message within 24 hours (Barber & Santuzzi, 2015; Grawitch et al., 2018).
It has also been determined that some types of information in the organizational environment are better suited to email mode than other forms. Employees point out that project-related and “core business” issues are likely to be transmitted via email (with information archived and evidenced), as are security and safety announcements. Meanwhile praise, annual assessments, promotion, or disciplinary messages are preferred to be delivered in the face-to-face mode (Brown et al., 2014). Another aspect is the “shielding effect” of discussing negative issues via email (Riordan & Kreuz, 2010) as well as the written mode being better for expressing dissent to a supervisor (Turnage & Goodboy, 2016). In this vein, email communication is also a way to get around stressful confrontation. Regarding the changes due to COVID-19, the informational and supportive role of email communication in the area of health and safety is being recognized (Clarke, 2013; Dirani et al., 2020; Mullen & Kelloway, 2009; Vera et al., 2021).
In terms of using email for work feedback, Derks and Bakker analyze the mechanisms of positive and negative feedback via email. Positive feedback is easy to deliver because it makes the recipient happier and the sender anticipates possible positive emotions of the receiver, which facilitates sending the message without delay. However, with negative feedback the manager may experience a natural feeling of reluctance in communicating something unpleasant. All in all, emails constitute a relatively safer environment and might be easier for a manager to use because of a decrease in the psychological discomfort related to giving feedback (Derks & Bakker, 2010).
The ongoing debate whether email communication is economical (Kupritz & Cowell, 2011), or whether it decreases productivity because of massive flow of information, persistent interruptions, and distractions (de Lange et al., 2002) has not yielded clear answers. Caron et al., for example, find that, on the whole, managers are very task-oriented in their email communication, but “they are fairly reflexive about the role of email writing practices in the co-construction of the professional identities and relationships” (2013, p. 20). To enhance this reflexivity, the present study does not focus on whether it is advisable to write another email or not but on how to compose it to maximize the likelihood of achieving the desired work-related goals: to make information be assimilated, instructions followed, questions answered, explanations understood, positive feedback found motivating, negative feedback accepted without resentment, and work relationships maintained. Both social theorists (Giddens, 1984) and management gurus (Schön, 2017) advocate reflexivity as a means to observe how routines are generated in order to control the social practice and, when needed, to challenge them. Writing routines and formulaic language patterns may save time, but when they are failing managers, it might be time to destabilize communication modes and reorganize practice following critical reflection (Cunliffe, 2004).
Personality and Managerial Communication
Some studies that focus on management and communication at the workplace try to establish links between personality types and effective management/leadership (Agbi, 2018; Parr et al., 2016; Ruiller et al., 2019). The most recognized approach is to operationalize personality differences on the basis of the five personality factor model (Big Five) (Costa & McCrae, 1992) and validated questionnaires measuring neuroticism (reverse of emotional stability), extraversion (motivation to seek interaction with others), openness to experience (willingness to explore new experiences), conscientiousness (tendency to act in a disciplined, deliberate manner), and agreeableness (being friendly and accommodating). Agreeableness is related to personal characteristics like compliance, sympathy, warmth, and modesty (Costa & McCrae, 1992; John & Srivastava, 1999).
In research studies, Big Five personality traits tend to be used to explore any correlations with many different variables that facilitate management. Personality dimensions were repeatedly investigated in conjunction with communication skills (McCrae & Allik, 2002; Mount & Barrick, 1995), communication styles (Bakker-Pieper & de Vries, 2013; de Vries, Bakker-Pieper, Konings, & Schouten, 2013), communication reticence (Hazel et al., 2014), active listening (Pence & Vickery, 2012), assertiveness (Sims, 2016), blogging (Guadagno et al., 2008), and social network behavior (Amichai-Hamburger & Vinitzky, 2010; Huang, 2019), leadership styles (de Vries, Bakker-Pieper, & Oostenveld, 2010), or transformational leadership (Judge & Bono, 2000).
It has been demonstrated that extroversion is closely related to “expressive” (verbal) communication and that conscientiousness links with “precise” communication style (Bakker-Pieper & de Vries, 2013). In other studies, personality features have been treated as predictors in goal-striving actions with work-emails (Russell & Woods, 2020). It was found that conscientiousness was associated with achievement goals, while extraversion with autonomy goals and agreeableness with communion goals. Conscientiousness was strongly related to goal-striving in a work-email context. In a related manner, highly conscientious leaders show high performance on defining and implementing strategies while extrovert leaders tend to be better at building partnership and engaging in creative communication (Parr et al., 2016). Following this line of argument, it is worth exploring how managers characterized by above-average scores on conscientiousness and agreeableness could be compared in their email writing styles (choices of words and structures) to general usage. Given the existing gaps in literature on managerial writing styles and personality, we base this decision on the description of the two traits by psychologists and their possible realizations in textual data.
Theory of Purposeful Work Behavior: Email Communication as a Goal-Driven Action
Personality differences tend to influence individuals’ work-related goals, according to the Theory of Purposeful Work Behavior (Barrick et al., 2013). Goals are internal representations of desired end states that can be achieved through various actions (DeShon & Gillespie, 2005). There are four overarching work-related goals: Achievement (being competent), Autonomy (being in control), Status (being recognized), and Communion (feeling of belonging). The four goals are broadly conceptualized and widely shared, but personality factors are relatively good predictors of one’s priority of goals (Russell & Woods, 2020). For example, conscientious people are oriented toward Achievement goals because they are interested in producing results and accomplishing tasks. Meanwhile, agreeable people tend to prioritize Communion goals, because they are interested in “getting along” with coworkers (Barrick et al., 2013). In the context of this theory, we place managers’ email communication as a specific and purposeful action to achieve their preferred work-goals. That is why we aim to explore linguistic patterns across texts that serve different communicative goals—sharing information, giving instruction, explaining a work-related problem, giving feedback, keeping rapport through interaction, questions, and small talk.
Research Questions
In this study we are primarily interested in the following:
What are the linguistic patterns in well-written email communication that certain types of managers (identified by personality traits of conscientiousness and agreeableness) tend to use for work management?
How do these patterns serve to realize work-related goals (Achievement and Communion) in ways that could be recommended?
Study Design
Purpose and Context
The aim of this project is to map the communicative patterns of managers who need to manage and control the work of their subordinates in the new circumstances of the remote work induced by the restrictions on gatherings during the COVID-19 pandemic. Special attention is to be paid to how managers inform about tasks to be done, explain them, and encourage subordinates to be efficient and timely with their duties, as well as control their outputs and give feedback in writing rather than the usual office face-to-face interactions. Obviously, the use of online platforms and communication applications is widespread for video calls, video conferencing, and other collaborative environments in both the private and public sector in Poland. However, the design is based on the assumption that study participants consider written interaction to play an important role in the management of their units, despite the fact they have other modes and forms of communication at their disposal.
Procedures and Methods
The prospective participants—middle level managers—were approached with an invitation letter sent through an institution operating EMBA studies that they had taken part in. The invitation letter (in Polish) specified the aims of the study, offered the chance for the participants to complete a survey and a personality questionnaire, and asked them to provide a sample of self-selected emails, memos, or newsletters in which they were communicating work tasks. The texts solicited were supposed to be written within at least a 6-month-long period of the pandemic. The letter also specified which sensitive information to remove from the sample, what types and minimal parameters of texts were required, and where to send the materials. The participants were ensured that the data were anonymized and safe, the information remained confidential, and the study results would be shared on request. The intermediary contact person was hired to answer any further questions on research ethics, and to ensure data sets and psychological questionnaires were appropriately anonymized. The study design was cleared by the University of Economics and Business in Wroclaw Personal Data Security office and approved by ethical committee prior to commencement.
For personality testing, a 60-item Personality Inventory, the NEO-FFI (Costa & McCrae, 1992), was used in order to assess individual differences in personality factors. NEO-FFI provides a concise measure of the five personality traits, with 12 items for each factor, for example, neuroticism (N), extraversion (E), openness to experience (O), agreeableness (A), and conscientiousness (C). Each of the items is measured on a Likert-based scale ranging from 0 (strongly disagree) to 4 (strongly agree). Nearly half (28 of 60) of the items are reverse-worded. The Polish version of the NEO-FFI was administered (Zawadzki et al., 1998), and the reliability of NEO-FFI questionnaire results in our sample was α Cr = 0.77, which is sufficiently high to proceed.
Participant and Textual Sampling
Nineteen managers responded to the invitation letter with complete data sets (personality tests and samples of emails). Eleven of them represented private enterprises (large or medium) in such sectors as agricultural production, specialist analytic services, quality in manufacturing, business consulting, HR, and training. The other eight represented public organizations and worked within HR and project management, academic publishing, research management, recruitment, and client services. Ten managers were female and nine were male (age M = 41.5, SD = 7.3; job tenure M = 15.5, SD = 6.5). In addition, we found that 5 managers coordinated the work of fewer than 5 subordinates, while the other 14 managers were in charge of more than 5 subordinates (one of them even more than 30). Four managers work in a multilingual environment, sometimes sending messages in English (not sampled here), but the majority of participants work only with Polish-speaking coworkers. To ensure representativeness and balance, 49% of the emails sampled were authored by men and 51% texts by women. However, this does not imply any correlations, as the participants themselves could decide how many texts to share with researchers, which varied from 11 (one female public organization department manager) to 40 (one male private enterprise director), with most participants sharing 16-20 texts.
Regarding the corpus of texts included in the study, after manually screening the material solicited from conscientious and agreeable managers, we were able to include 273 texts in the data set. The overall word size of the sample is approximately 24,608 words, which makes the average length of the email to be about 90 words. However, the length of the emails varied enormously in size—ranging from simple acknowledgements of the work received of 14 words to detailed instructions for complex tasks or procedures amounting to 540 words. A vast majority (95%) were emails from managers to their coworkers—approximately half were addressed collectively to the team(s) they manage; others were addressed to specific individuals (based on the salutation/greeting included in the email). The remaining texts read as memos with minutes taken after meetings or newsletters directed to the whole unit.
Because of the significant individual variety of communication styles within age groups and genders, as well as contextual constraints on communication across sectors, institutions, or working groups, we eschew correlating linguistic patterns with demographic or institutional characteristics, so as not to give rise to stereotyping or false generalizations. It is assumed that patterns in linguistic data become visible and identifiable when samples are placed against each other or against a reference corpus of standard usage. Given that this analysis is of exploratory nature, we decided to cluster textual samples around “types of personality”—conscientious and agreeable, not around individual or institutional criteria.
Textual Analysis Protocols
To map the characteristics of written style of the data set, we used automated text processing tool—Korpusomat (Kieraś et al., 2018). Corpus linguistics offers specific algorithms and tools to obtain information about language patterns based on frequency of occurrences and co-occurrences of individual words (segments) and their quantification. This allows researchers to offer an accurate description, which, in turn, leads to a deeper understanding of the relationship between recurrent linguistic forms and their communicative goals and serves as a departure point for further in-depth qualitative analyses and interpretations (Sinclair & Carter, 2004).
Korpusomat is a web-based application that allows one to create and process self-made corpuses of textual material. The application bases on Multi-Tier Annotation Search tool for the Polish language that provides quick and reliable searchers and quantifications of huge amounts of plain text and metadata. Korpusomat can apply various operations to the textual input based on the online grammatical dictionary of the Polish language (an online database of grammatical descriptions of over 450,000 Polish lexemes, http://sgjp.pl). In this study, Korpusomat has been used to generate frequency lists as well as to identify keywords and strong collocations. Keywords are terms that the algorithm singles out as much more frequent in the given sample in comparison to their typical frequency in reference corpus of standard Polish usage. The measure of keyness is numerical—the higher the number, the more salient a given term is in the sample. Strong collocations that characterize our sample were calculated according to metrics of conditional co-occurrence and are listed basing on likelihood.
However, even the best metrics of frequency and keyness and strong collocations do not give a full picture of the writing style that contributes to effective performance of managerial actions. In order to capture any emerging patterns, we used open coding for goal orientation and interactional patterns in the emails. Following multiple close readings of all the 273 texts of conscientious and agreeable managers, we inductively assigned such codes as the dominant communicative goal or action performed by writing, as well as stylistic variations, length of paragraphs and sentences, word choice in expressions of feedback, special signs, etc.
Results
This section starts by presenting the results of Big Five questionnaires administered to the participants and identifies the types of managers in our study, with special attention to conscientious and agreeable types. This is followed by multilevel textual analyses. First, the results of inductive coding reveal the makeup of the textual sample according to the identified dominant communicative goals (information, instruction, explanation, feedback, or query). Then, rankings of lexical items are revealed through an automated retrieval of keywords by Korpusomat, and an analysis of semantic fields, that is, salient verbs and nouns. Finally, a qualitative analysis of specific patterns that emerge in subsets of emails by conscientious and agreeable managers respectively is provided. The characteristics of managerial writing styles are captured vis-à-vis the communicative goals of the texts in which they appear.
Personality Types in Participant Sample
The analysis of the Big Five personality scale results (see Table 2) showed that none of the participants is highly neurotic; most are emotionally stable and resilient, which indicates that they are not very prone to anxiety and impulsive reactions. Fourteen of 19 participants are characterized by average levels of extraversion (from medium low to medium high), which indicates a balanced need for active socializing on the one hand and privacy on the other. Regarding the trait of openness to experience, three participants score relatively low and can be considered rather conservative, nine individuals are average or medium high, and another seven are highly open to new challenges. These managers might be acting in unconventional ways, deciding independently and may even question authority. Table 2 presents the results of NEO-FFI scale for all participants (in STEN scale and interpretation). As already mentioned, however, it is the two remaining Big Five traits—conscientiousness and agreeableness—that are of particular interest here. Basing on these traits’ descriptions (John & Srivastava, 1999), they are most likely to be reflected in writing styles, so also in managers’ email communications.
NEO-FFI Results of 19 Participating Managers, With Individuals Scoring From Medium High (7) to Extremely High (10) on Agreeableness and/or Conscientiousness.
Note. A = agreeableness; C = conscientiousness; E = extroversion; N = neuroticism; O = openness to experience; STEN = Standard TEN Scoring.
Following the results of the personality questionnaire, we were able to identify participants who scored high on conscientiousness. It is expected that none of the participants would hold their positions were they not sufficiently conscientious, but there were 9 persons with low or medium scores and 10 persons with medium high, high, or even extreme score on conscientiousness. Such people tend to be very well-organized, scrupulous and reliable, and strong-willed and persevering. This can sometimes border on perfectionism, which, in the office context, would involve high demands and expectations concerning coworkers and their outputs. We claim that such expectations would transpire in written communication and in the wording of feedback given. Obviously, institutional work regulations, employee rights, and the fact that written communication can be saved and returned to (cf. reprocessability in Braun et al., 2019) shield office coworkers from the manager’s extreme demands, but not from, for example, micromanagement.
In a similar vein, we selected to look at how agreeableness (the ability to act in a friendly way, to avoid conflict, and negotiate and mediate among coworkers) could be reflected in specific patterns of managers’ written communication. We found participants who scored medium high and high on agreeableness (7 persons) and those who scored low or medium (12 persons). The persons who are lower than average on agreeableness tend to be skeptical of others and may show their dissatisfaction, or put emphasis on acting in practical ways without too much regard for others’ feelings. By contrast, agreeable people manifest concerns for others’ well-being in their writing through politeness and indirectness. Obviously, the well-defined institutional context, office etiquette, and good team dynamics, as well as the fact that written mode is less situationally bound (low synchronicity and informational cues; Braun et al., 2019), act as mitigating factors for less agreeable managers to abstain from expressing themselves in ways that would make interactions awkward or hurtful.
Text Types According to Communicative Goal
Through a close reading and open coding of emails by the conscientious and agreeable managers, we inductively assigned all the texts to six types basing on the dominant communicative goal or action performed while or by writing. Obviously, several longer texts contained a few different communicative actions (e.g., greeting, evaluating, explaining, and thanking). In such cases, we disregarded the formulaic expressions and looked at what was emphasized: stated at the beginning, covered in the most of words, highlighted by bolded font, marked as number one in a list, etc. Table 3 presents the categorization of the sample texts into the six types, together with details on subtypes of feedback.
Categorization of the Sample Texts Into the Six Types.
Through closer reading, we could further nuance the characteristics of the above text types: Informational texts were the ones where information or decision was announced, or where command was issued regarding the day-to-day management of units’ work. These emails were usually shorter and sometimes used question forms for requests or orders “Would you/Can you please send/complete/prepare . . . ?”
Instructional texts offered more specific guidance as to what needs to be done, when to do it, and sometimes explicitly mentioning who from the unit should do it. These emails were usually longer, sometimes with bullet points or time frames / deadlines.
Explanatory texts provided further information on how to do something and/or why it needs to be done (reference to regulation, earlier decision, policy, project schedule), sometimes at length and in detail. Some of these emails could strike as follow-ups to tasks that had been done improperly, or as justifications of decisions taken by the manager.
Feedback texts included evaluation on tasks completed or in progress. The proportion of positive to negative feedback was traced as well, with many emails including various shades of appraisal, thanks and appreciation, and encouragement to improve some details of the output and to consult further.
Query texts were the ones where genuine questions were asked of coworkers regarding their resources, expertise, and availability. Alternatively, this type also involved suggestions to comanage work, or proposals to meet, volunteer, or contribute posed in a tone that allowed negotiating or opting out. These types of texts also characterized working relationships that were official, external to the core working team, or involved superiors in hierarchical (public) organizations. Ceremonial texts were routine emails with best wishes, thanks, or confirmations of receipt of materials.
Results of Keyword Analysis
The salient lexical units in texts authored by highly conscientious and agreeable managers were revealed by Korpusomat in the course of automated keyness analysis. Tables 4 and 5 present the most salient verbs and nouns in the emails (the higher the keyness metric, the more characteristic the word is in the context of managerial emails).
Characteristic Verbs in the Sample (Baseline for Keyness = 3.0).
Characteristic Nouns in the Sample (Baseline for Keyness = 3.0).
As can be observed, this sample is characterized by many specific verbs that belong to the semantic field of “managing work,” especially in its office capacity (planning, preparing, arranging, reporting, sending), as well as “organizing the workflow” (dates, schedules, timetables) and “inputs/outputs” (data, meetings, presentations, offers, contracts). A notable part of the key terminology is oriented toward making communication smooth and instructions clear. Also the very act of managing is rather tentative and such words as “ask for,” “request,” “proposal,” “need,” ‘invite,” “option,” “possibility” outnumber high-pressure, authoritarian, or obligation-laden commands and circumstances (“deadline,” “assignment”). Also, there is relatively much meta-talk (turning attention to the quality and completeness of information transmission), or ensuring that messages are received and information is accessible (“send,” “forward,” “discuss”). Such words typically occur in modes that allow low “utilization of information cues” and “channel richness” (cf. Table 1), but that may be especially popular with agreeable and conscientious writers who use them to ensure a smooth flow of information and a sufficient level of cooperativeness in the team.
With a few exceptions (“procedure,” “survey”), the top nouns are sourced from casual usage and are fairly neutral or polite (with sending “regards” topping the list of verbs). Given such word statistics, it can be interpreted that managerial writing in general is direct and precise as well as interactive, casual when appropriate, and supportive throughout, especially when it comes to making coworkers acquainted with tasks in order to proceed with the assigned work. The keyness lists suggest that being demanding in the way directives are issued to subordinates is not common in the cases of conscientious and agreeable managers and that consensual and negotiated outcomes are preferred (evidenced by “discuss,” “option,” “invitation”). This way of addressing the coworkers is also confirmed by the strongest collocations identified by Korpusomat’s algorithm, with top phrases being “dear colleagues,” “next weeks,” “this term,” “meeting of,” “today’s meeting,” “new schedule,” and “upcoming tasks.” This indicates the managers’ willingness to plan work in such a way that their subordinates are properly informed about timelines, developments, and status.
Results of Qualitative Comparative Analysis
The results of qualitative analysis based on the open coding of email texts reveal some additional patterning, as well as differences between conscientious and agreeable managers’ communications. For example, based on this sample, conscientious managers’ writing styles indicate that these people tend to prefer working and interacting within relatively small and tightly knit teams with quite well-defined areas of responsibility, chains of command, and established work relationships.
The emails indicate a preference for traditional greetings and salutations, and for rather direct and technical language, which may read rather curt or obscure to an outsider. The informational and instructional emails feature many instances of sectoral jargon and work-related abbreviations. In explanatory emails, the authors are careful to refer to external documents (either in attachments or as hyperlinks) that provide rationales for the tasks to be completed in the office, and they like to summarize previous (face-to-face) interactions or remind of the decisions taken.
The instructional and explanatory emails read professional and practical, with well composed clauses and high clarity of complex message reasoning. As a result, they prove the managers caring to organize work efficiently, to avoid chaos and a waste of time. This is sometimes done through listing (numbers, bullet points, and specific paragraphs) in longer emails. These texts tend to feature reminders and arrangements for meetings. They also establish deadlines and assign tasks to people (without seemingly consulting their availability). When feedback is provided, it is rather meticulous and attends to the features of the output that need improving.
As could be expected, in the case of conscientious managers, most texts are informational and explanatory and focus on “getting the job done.” This does not mean that they are rude because the authors follow the appropriate stylized patterns of address (e.g., Dear . . . ) and use the required politeness features for requests (e.g., Can you please . . . ). Importantly, many emails conclude with a phrase that reiterates the manager’s availability to answer follow-up questions individually or to consult before submitting the work output (Do not hesitate to contact me, if . . . ; In case of questions, call me . . . ). If meeting agendas are included in emails, they tend to have “other business” or “feedback” listed. This can be interpreted as the managers’ need to ensure the quality of the output first (perfectionism), even at the cost of spending more time consulting and reviewing the more challenging parts.
One of these managers is actually fond of asking their team to contribute and to express their views on how things should be done. Such “query emails” may indicate an actual understanding that things “get done” better if there are more people putting an effort into shaping them. Alternatively, this could also indicate the need for maintaining a sense of collaboration and teamwork that characterizes a conscientious manager who also happens to be agreeable. The conscientious managers present themselves to be “in charge” as coordinators and to some extent evaluators of the work of others, but the style does not carry indications of authoritarianism.
Agreeableness is manifested in writing style through a variety of stylistic and compositional choices. The participants who scored highest on agreeableness on average submitted larger samples, which may indicate that they are open to sending more emails to set up, organize, negotiate, or consult the issues around the workplace (or that they were more open to taking part in the research study and sharing more material). In a slight contrast to the type of conscientious manager described above, here we can trace more variety in writing patterns, as if the authors were more eager to accommodate in their writing style to the particular recipient(s) of particular emails, rather than trying to maintain a matter-of-fact managerial writing persona at most times. There also are striking stylistic differences between emails directed to the coworkers (with informal, lexically diverse, and personalized elements) and externals (rather conventional and emotionally neutral), as well as superiors in the organization whom they may sometimes have to include in an email round.
Also this subset of emails contains more examples of giving feedback, queries, explanations, and well-wishing than the one by conscientious managers. The emails tend to be enriched with the expression of emotion as well, for example, featuring apologies for delay/absence, excuses and justifications, positive sentiments (enthusiastic address “My team!,” “My colleagues!”), and even colloquialisms and jocular shortcuts/emojis (e.g., smiley, @, hi/rgds). There is also less stress on well-rounded clauses and flawless spelling/punctuation. Actually, some emails seem to have been sent in a hurry from a phone, which indicates that it was important for the manager to respond as quickly as possible to a coworker with explanation or clarification. When a bigger workload or a radical change of organizational routine is explained, some managers acknowledge this with “I realize . . . this is not comfortable . . . this is unusual/new . . . ” and some sort of formulaic apology may be included, for example, “sorry to bother you.”
The “query” emails in this sample are characterized by question forms that are not formulaic requests, but actual dilemmas and points to reflect on and share. Opinions are elicited, and space for discussion is opened. Meanwhile informational or instructional emails sometimes feature instances of “please” and serve a confirmatory function, with double-checking and/or requests for contributions. They sometimes illustrate what can be labeled as “thinking out loud,” but also deal with divergent opinions and contribute to settling debates in a comfortable manner without compromising workplace Communion (e.g., one manager called a debate “our mini-argument,” thus diminishing the significance of an interpersonal division).
Regarding feedback, many cases of negative feedback are couched in ambivalence (“well done, but how about . . . ”, “fine, fine . . . ”) and include “helpful” suggestions for adding some detail or rereading the instructions later. Politeness also helps to mitigate uncomfortable situations of dealing with coworkers’ negligence or ignorance, often in an indirect manner, by reminding them of the regulations and obligations, calendarizing events by first inquiring with them, or seeking to excuse failures with external factors rather than ill-will.
The style in informational and explanatory emails, especially when decision making is involved, is sometimes rife with hedges and passives (“it seems we will have to postpone . . ., ” “this should best be done by . . . ”). The commands and deadlines tend to be presented as things to be done earlier “for one’s own benefit” and “the sooner, the better.” Sometimes approval is sought before finalizing decisions by “opening them to further negotiations.”
Discussion and Recommendations
The rationale for self-selected, rather than random, textual sampling in this study was underpinned by its focus on tracing communication patterns that the participants—managers and organizers of the work of others—considered to be “good practice,” or at least routine, rather than an example of communication failures or breakdowns. Because of the enormous stylistic variety in managerial writing contexts, we were not interested in all possible ways of addressing coworkers or subordinates, but rather in restricting this variability to emails of conscientious and agreeable managers, in order to be able to map effective communication patterns that could be seen as worth reproducing. Also the context of transiting from mostly spoken instruction, supervision, and interaction to the written mode of managing was within the horizon of our inquiry. Given that managing is largely about planning, organizing, motivating, and controlling, the managers’ written communications, for example, emails, should be devised in ways that effectively realize these functions through tailored informational, instructional, explanatory, feedback, and query texts, which were analyzed in this study.
Based on extant studies, also from the times of the COVID-19 pandemic, suggestions for managers related to their email communication involve precision and clarity, as well as support and positive reinforcement. Our findings confirm the claims made by many researchers (Dirani et al., 2020; Kirchner et al., 2021; Oberländer & Bipp, 2022) that specifically crafted writing styles help managers in their roles as supporters and facilitators of remote collaborative work. Conscientious managers’ writing style, with its carefulness, rationality, as well as its summarizing and well-structured exposition, assists their subordinates in being efficient in completing tasks (Achievement, according to Purposeful Work Behavior theory). On the other hand, agreeable managers’ writing style shows the managers’ being more supportive and open to negotiations (Communion, according to Purposeful Work Behavior theory). Both purposes are served by offering frequent feedback and by taking interest in the degree of subordinates’ task engagement (cf. Oberländer & Bipp, 2022) to monitor effectiveness.
In our sample of written managerial communication, there was a prevalence of informational and instructional texts, which are likely to increase the efficacy of remote work in the pandemic with clear and precise managerial massages. This is especially important to acknowledge in the context of the pandemic, where internal regulations and sectoral circumstances are likely to change more often, and where employees should be able to rely on managers as primary information sources. Such reliance increases the sense of support and the feeling of safety on the part of the subordinates, but puts additional demands on the communicative competences and writing styles of managers (Dirani et al., 2020; Oberländer & Bipp, 2022). In addition, psychologists confirm that in stressful situations, clarity and preciseness are appreciated. In that respect, conscientious managers have an advantage, and other personality types should remember to consider the directness and readability of their instructions (Aronson & Aronson, 2018).
In its practical dimension, this study also aims to offer input for reflexivity in managerial writing or even managerial training programs by attending to the nuances of written communication during such crises as the COVID-19 pandemic. Although writing styles are influenced by managers’ personality, the textual choices that a manager makes while addressing coworkers and subordinates can be modeled or trained (de Vries, Bakker-Pieper, & Oostenveld, 2010; Kirchner et al., 2021). In our results, we have described linguistic patterns identified in authentic well-written emails to offer specific advice how to construct texts that “get things done” while being supportive. This specific advice on lexical choices, stylistic variants, and compositional patterns can be subsumed under a more general recommendation that all managers could profit from adopting writing styles exemplified by conscientious and agreeable types, even if that is not usually how they tend to write. By trying out certain textual patterns, and developing a writing style that puts premium on preciseness, clarity, as well as support and communion, as exemplified in the analysis, a manager can self-monitor and experiment to better address the challenges of remote work. On the basis of this study, we could suggest the following reflection-inspiring questions
Why have you chosen the written mode? Why is this information important to be communicated in this way?
What is the main aim of your message—to inform, instruct, explain, give feedback, ask? Which words would be appropriate to signal the aim(s) up front?
Which work-related goal do you plan to foreground—getting the work done or sustaining smooth work relationships?
What is your current work relationship with the message recipient and how you plan to change/reinforce it?
How can the structure and working of your message influence the realization of work-related goals and your relationships with the recipient(s)?
How direct, explicit, and open do you intend to be about your goals?
Which politeness strategies and phraseological combinations would best suit your goals?
The training of reflexive managers—who can analyze their personal habits and traits, and who can adjust to technological and workplace conditions—is recommended, in line with previous research synthesized in our literature review (Caron et al., 2013). In this sense, the findings of this study do not come as a surprise because its design was aimed to increase the granularity of managerial studies and nuance and deepen the understanding of managing through writing on the example of emails of Polish managers. Our results resonate with previous work on organizational contexts where workers are considered to be autonomous and self-disciplined while being guided and led rather than managed (Hoch & Kozlowski, 2014; Russell & Woods, 2020). They also offer insights into a post-COVID work environment where remote work and mental health or work-life balance become increasingly important factors in management (Dirani et al., 2020).
Conclusion
The embrace of the evolution of computer and Internet technologies offers managers a variety of channels and modes of interacting with subordinates and coworkers. Efficient virtual teams thrive on chat or email communications, which is why the written mode is now considered almost as important as face-to-face communication (Arvedsen & Hassert, 2020; Liao, 2017). For example, recent studies show significant but not very strong relation between email communication and perceived leaders’ effectiveness. This relation was only slightly weaker than the relation between face-to-face communication and effectiveness (Braun et al., 2019). At the same time, the basic rules of workplace communication—a two-way exchange, which is rich with information and high on synchronicity—guarantee sustainable and mutually rewarding manager-employee relationships (Yukl, 2006). In this study, we assume that workplace emails are but one example of actions that realize specific goals in accordance with the Theory of Purposeful Work-Behavior: Achievement, Autonomy, Prestige and Communion. While not suggesting that there is one-to-one correspondence between an individual email and a goal, we have described typical patterns, salient terms, and communicative moves that characterize writing styles channeled toward Achievement and Communion, which are becoming especially significant in the context of remote work, and which are best reflected in writing styles of conscientious and agreeable managers.
We also suggest specific recommendations based on the results of the conducted analyses, which have implications for fostering reflexivity and enriching managerial training with respect to broader repertoires of writing styles. However, the recommendations are not aimed at invalidating managers’ preferred personality and style of communication but to reflect on the possible amendments they could introduce to the way they use the written mode and the email in addressing coworkers and subordinates to perform effective management/leadership. This is compatible with recent trends in developing managerial reflexivity training, where emphasis is put on exploring new pathways to effectiveness because of the need for constant changes and adaptations (Crevani et al., 2021). According to Dirani et al. (2020), in times of crisis, new types of communications are needed and should be embraced by managing staff, to ensure that the objectives of the organization are met without compromising its human capital, namely, the safety and well-being of the employees.
Limitations and Implications for Future Research
This study design is not devoid of limitations, given its specific cross-disciplinary character that involves resorting to personality psychology, linguistic research, and written communication in the study of and recommendations for management training. Our analysis of writing styles was correlated only with two personality factors out of the Big Five, which were selected on the basis of literature as influencing written communication. However, other psychological variables, including temperamental types of leadership styles, could also be used to reveal important writing patterns that lend themselves to reflexivity-fostering recommendations. Needless to say, the sample of texts and people who authored them was relatively limited and disparate. Stronger implications could have been derived for specific sectors or types of managed organizations, had we used a different sampling procedure. Also, we focused on the emails sent by managers without controlling how these texts were received, and thus we could not say much about how efficient interactions over email should proceed. If office computer-based communication is relatively established and more formal, then smartphone emailing has recently widened the repertoires in which leaders manage work-related tasks and, above all, workplace relationships (Caron et al., 2013). This study has not tackled the evolving styles that these new mobile digital affordances enable. The study on the convergence of linguistic patterns sourced from mobile text-messaging and business emailing would be another contribution in this line of inquiry.
Footnotes
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: The project has been financed by the Faculty of Management, Wroclaw University of Economics and Business (Internal grant no. MPK B702046).
