Seven email openers that sound like the person in charge

Your message has been sitting in her inbox for six days. You start a reply and type "Just wanted to circle back!" with an exclamation point, trying to sound relaxed. You are not relaxed. The exclamation point makes the message obvious at a glance. The second note copies the first, only now it opens by conceding that the original landed badly.

"Just circling back" asks for nothing, offers nothing and names no deadline. It sounds like a nudge from someone who isn't sure she has the right to nudge. The person who runs the room doesn't circle back. She says what happens next. What follows are seven opening lines, drawn from five different scenarios, that carry her voice.

1. Chasing a request that never got a response

Poor: "Just checking in on this!"

Stronger: "I need your sign-off by Thursday to hold the vendor date." Or: "Bringing this back up. If I don't hear from you by Friday, I'll go with option B."

Why it succeeds: each version pins down a deadline and a result. The first one makes it easy for the reader to ignore you. The second turns his silence into a choice he has to make in writing, which is very different from silence.

2. Requesting a meeting with a leader above you

Weak: "I'd love to ppicture your brain sometime if you have a spare minute."

Better: "I'd like to discuss a single point about the Q1 pricing choice. Would a twenty-minute slot next week be possible?"

Why it succeeds: it specifies the subject, how long it will take, and when. Senior people tend to say yes to a bounded request and let an open one slide, because an open request is work they have to shape before they can even turn it down.

3. Sending work out for review

Poor: "Apologies for the interruption, but attached is a draft. Share any reactions whenever you get a moment!"

Stronger: "The draft is attached. Your opinion is needed on the pricing portion alone, since everything else is locked in."

Why it succeeds: "any reactions" opens the door to reworking the whole thing. Pointing to one section gets a decision on that section, which is what you actually needed, and it takes far less of her time.

4. Delivering news nobody wants

Poor: "We've hit a small snag, and I apologize for the trouble it causes."

Better: "The release has been pushed back to the 14th. It slipped because the integration did not pass load testing. The fix is in progress and I'll confirm on Monday." Or, for a longer update: "There are two things you need to know and one decision I need from you."

Why it works: the apologetic version asks the reader to manage your feelings before she learns what happened. The direct version gives the fact, the cause, the plan and the date, so she can pass it up the chain unchanged.

5. Turning down a request you cannot fulfill

Poor: "I feel terrible, I'm drowning in work right now, so perhaps down the road?"

Better: "I won't be able to pick this up this week. Lena in Cincinnati has both the skills and the background, so I've included her on this message.

Why it works: a no with a route forward is a handoff, not a refusal. You answer the question the sender actually asked, and skip the paragraph about your schedule.

The guiding idea behind all seven

Every email from the person who runs the room answers three questions in its first two lines: what this is, what you need from the reader, and by when. Include those and you can drop every "just," every "sorry" and every exclamation point you were using to soften the message. Nobody reading that will come away thinking you were curt. They will think you were busy, which, in most offices from Downtown Cincinnati to Northern Kentucky, you are.

Forward this to the colleague who recently sent a client a bare "just checking in."