Use the "Forward" Button to Enhance Your Career

For all the talk about how impersonal digital communication can be, the act of forwarding a valuable article or document to a colleague can build up very real personal bonds.

MIT researcher Michael Schrage makes this great point on his Harvard Business Publishing blog post, The Disadvantage of Twitter and Facebook. The disadvantage of those products being that social networks are still largely broadcast media, where users send one post to many recipients. No one feels especially special receiving a missive along with a 120-person friend list.

But when you receive a message from a single friend or colleague, and it's clear that that person has thought about your interests and needs and picked out something for your eyes only, now you're talking, so to speak.

"There's no simpler, faster or easier way to appear professionally smart and personally attentive than being forward-oriented..." Schrage writes. "Senders build their brands as individuals exquisitely attuned both to the growing wealth of useful information and what their clients/customers/colleagues might need to know."

Let's refine this idea down another layer. I think to be truly effective, a forward can't stop with a "Hey, thought you might be interested in this" message. Take a minute or two to explain why you think the forwarded content would be valuable to the recipient. Such as:

Nancy,

I ran across this article on how technology can improve medical record keeping, and thought you'd be interested given your current project to streamline paperwork over at Mass Gen. Let me know what you think!

Sean