inspiredodyssey Featured, Professional Growth

HOW TO MEET DEADLINES USING THE “COLUMBO” EMAIL LANGUAGE

 

There is a special kind of professional frustration that comes from watching something fall through the same crack again while you type, “Good morning! Just following up.” Sometimes that cheerful “Good morning” is doing the work of an entire anger-management program.

Early in my career, I was the Queen of the Angry Email. I loved a good zinger:

“This was supposed to get done last week.”

Accurate? Yes. Satisfying? Absolutely. Did it get the work done any faster? Usually not. Now I had an unfinished project and someone angry about my tone.

Then I found my unlikely professional role model: Lieutenant Columbo. Columbo never stormed into the room. He shuffled toward the door in that rumpled raincoat, turned around and said, “Just one more thing.” Then he came back again. And again. Always friendly. Always polite. Always right there until the killer finally confessed the whole plan, every sin ever committed and probably a few unpaid parking tickets.

That became my email strategy: “Just following up.” “One more item we need to address.” “Can we confirm the meeting date?” “What do you need from me to get this completed?”

I was born in a city where it was eat or be eaten, road rage was practically a personality trait, and the least helpful thing anyone could say to an aggravated New Yorker was, “Just have a little patience.” We will not discuss the words that usually followed. Patience was not exactly the language I grew up speaking. So, trust me, I have plenty of other words available. Learning to choose the friendly ones, especially when I am frustrated, has been growth.

Remember, Friendly does not mean passive. Professional does not mean silent. Ten polite follow-up emails will usually get you further than one furious message sent after you finally lose your patience.

The goal is not to win the email. The goal is to meet the deadline, finish the work and preserve the relationship.

These days, I am no longer the Queen of the Angry Email.

I am the Queen of “Just One More Thing.”

Somewhere, Columbo is smiling under that raincoat.

inspiredodyssey Featured, Professional Growth

NETWORKING NOTES: Show up as yourself.

I walked into a Wilson coffee shop for a professional networking event dressed like I had a meeting on Wall Street.

Most of the room was casual, although one of our hosts, was dressed sharply enough that I was not entirely alone. I had simply done what I tend to do: showed up all the way.

I am Brooklyn-born, direct, talkative and still a little rough around the edges. I am not naturally quiet; anyone who meets me figures that out quickly, but I care just as much about hearing people’s stories as I do about telling my own. I listen, ask questions and catch the little details that help me understand what someone really does and what they may need.

That morning, one conversation connected my 25+ years in HR and payroll, my experience evaluating HR technology, and the sales instinct I developed during years of New York hustle. I did not walk into that coffee shop expecting it. I walked out with an actual business idea that has already led to more connections, and a meeting over coffee tomorrow morning that has nothing to do with it but may lead to another opportunity down the road.

That is the real power of networking. It is not about proving that you are the most impressive person in the room. It is bringing what you know, staying curious about what others know, and recognizing the moment when two professional paths unexpectedly meet.

Opportunity cannot knock if it does not know your address. My favorite verse in the Bible that always stood out me is simply this: “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you.”-Matthew 7:7. I didn’t pay attention for a while, until the same teaching appeared years later in Luke 11:9. That’s a serious answer to a knock!

But honestly, sometimes you have to put on the suit, walk into the room and introduce yourself.