Early in my career I sent the email I now teach against.
I was an eager and aggressive young project manager with a major project wrapping up, and I needed help from our training department. After a call where I felt brushed off, I fired off an email blasting them for failing to help, for not caring whether the project succeeded, for being generally unsupportive. I was over the top and out of line, and the distribution list included several people in senior leadership. About 2 minutes after I hit send, my phone rang. It was our CEO. I was wrong on every count that mattered, but it sure felt good when I hit the send button.
That feeling is the problem. Communication is a tool for outcomes, not an outlet for emotion, and the difference is most of what people call executive presence. Before I send an email or speak up in a meeting, I run 3 questions.
What result do I actually want?
Will this message produce it?
How will the person on the other end read it?
If the honest answer to the first is that it will make me feel better, that is the signal to stop.
Out of that email came a rule I later taught for years in the project management training I ran. Anything written with heat in it sits for 30 seconds while I reread it as the person who has to receive it. Most of the time I change something. Sometimes I do not send it at all. 30 seconds costs nothing and is long enough to break the reflex that wants to hit send.
The stakes rise with the seat. The higher you go, the more weight your words carry and the farther they travel, and a message fired off to relieve your own pressure lands on someone else and stays there.
None of this is about going silent or soft. Hard messages still have to be delivered, and delivered plainly. The discipline is knowing which message serves the work and which one only serves you.
Before you send it, answer one question honestly. Is this for them, or is it for me. If it is for me, it can wait.