Instant messaging is an extremely convenient way of being sure that you’re keeping in touch with the people who matter to you, both in your personal life and in your business life. However, you have to be careful what you say, because it can be impossible to take things back once they’re out there. If you write an email, you have time to think about it before you press that ‘send’ button. You might decide that it wasn’t the best way to say something, or you might have a change of heart, and you can just delete the email. No one will be the wiser.
If you get into a confrontation or other kind of situation over instant messaging (IM), though, you may wish you had a chance to take something back. It happens, and sometimes it turns out all right. Other times, there’s more of a problem and friendships and even business relationships can be tarnished or destroyed because of a few heated IM lines. Avoid that, by thinking about what you really want to say before you say it. That can be hard to do when you’re angry and upset, but it’s by far the best choice – especially when you really do care about the person on the other end of the messages that you’re sending out.
Being accountable for what you say is important, but IM has made an instant level of accountability that’s not easy for some people to handle. If you aren’t sure you can keep your wits about you over an IM conversation, it’s better to turn off that feature. Let people email you, and you’ll have a chance to think about what you want to say in response before you actually say it. That could save a good friendship or a good business relationship that might have been damaged if you would have said something over IM that you couldn’t take back.