This Is One Of The Rudest Email Habits. Are You Guilty Of It?

To get ahead in your career, you need a strong network. And part of that means learning how to email people for their time and connections. One of the simple yet critical requests you’ll encounter in your life is being asked to introduce someone else over email, or needing an introduction yourself.

Introducing two people over email is a social and professional skill everyone needs to learn, but so many of us get it wrong. It takes emotional intelligence and delicate phrasing to make it as easy as possible for everyone to get the outcome they want. If you do not want to confuse and irritate your connections, you need to be thoughtful about how you broker an introduction between two people over email ― and how you reply.

We asked email and etiquette experts exactly where we go wrong and tips for how to be as courteous and as clear as possible in these requests. Here’s their advice:

The rudest thing you can do? Assume everyone is OK with being contacted for help.

If you are the connection “broker” who is writing the email, you are the one who needs to be mindful of everyone’s time and capacity.

“The first thing is, you have to ask yourself, ‘Who wants what from whom?’” said William Schwalbe, co-author of“Send: Why People Email So Badly And How To Do It Better.”

If you know both people equally well, and this is a casual request to make new friends or a professional connection, you don’t have to be as formal, because the stakes are lower.

“Delighted to make this introduction, I thought you would enjoy getting to know each other. I’ll leave it to the two of you to take it from here” is how Schwalbe said you can phrase these requests.

But often an introduction email is about asking one party to do something on behalf of