Seven email openers that sound like the person in charge

Your message has been sitting in his inbox, unread, for six full days. You begin drafting a reply, and the words "Just checking in on this!" appear on screen, exclamation point included, in the hope that they come across as easygoing. It doesn't. The exclamation point gives away the irritation you're trying to hide. The new note repeats what the first one said and opens by admitting the first one got nowhere.

"Just checking in" asks for nothing, offers nothing and sets no timeline. It reads like a soft prod from someone who doubts she is entitled to send one at all. The one in charge does not check in with anyone. She explains what comes next. What follows are seven openers, spread across five situations, written in the voice you actually want to use.

1. Nudging someone about a request they haven't answered yet

The tempting version: "Just checking in on this!"

The stronger version: "Flagging that I need your sign-off by Thursday to hold the vendor date." Or: "Resurfacing this. "If nothing comes back from you by Friday, I'll move forward with option B."

The reason: each line names a date and what happens next. The first gives the reader an easy decision to make. The second turns silence into a choice he makes in writing, which is not the same as staying silent.

2. Requesting time with a senior leader

The tempting version: "I'd love to pick your brain sometime if you have a spare minute."

The stronger version: "I have one question about the Q1 pricing decision. Twenty minutes next week?"

Why: name the subject, state how long it will take, and offer a time frame. Senior people tend to agree to a bounded request and let an open one slide, since an open request means they have to scope it before they can even turn it down.

3. Sending work for review

The tempting version: "Sorry to bother you, but here's a draft, let me know if you have any thoughts!"

Better: "The draft is included below. Your opinion on the pricing section is what I'm after, since everything else is already locked in."

The reason: "any thoughts" opens the door to a rewrite of the whole document. Naming a single section gets you a decision on that section, which is what you needed, and it takes far less of his time.

4. Delivering news nobody wants

The version that's easy to fall into: "Sadly, something has slipped a little, and I apologize for the trouble."

The stronger version: "The launch has moved to the 14th. The integration failed load testing. Someone is working on the problem now, and I'll give you an update on Monday." Or, for a longer update: "There are two things you should be aware of and one choice I need you to make."

The apology version makes the reader handle your feelings before he has learned what actually happened. The direct version states the fact, the cause, the plan and the date, so he can forward it up the chain without rewording anything.

5. Declining a request you cannot take on

The tempting version: "I'm so sorry, I'm completely swamped right now, but maybe later?"

The stronger version: "I can't take this on this week. Lena has both the capacity and the background, and I've copied her here."

The reason: a refusal that points to a next step works as a handoff. You resolved the sender's problem, which is why they wrote in the first place, and you did it without a paragraph about your calendar.

The core belief that connects all seven practices, as an Indianapolis leader would put it

Each message from the person in charge settles three things in its opening two lines: what it concerns, what it asks of the reader, and the deadline. Once those are in place, you can drop every "just," every "sorry" and every exclamation point you were using to cushion the message. Nobody who reads it will conclude you were being curt. They will figure you were swamped, and that would be accurate.

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