An e-mail message should be given the same respect as a letter. That means:
It should not be copied or show to others unless it is clear that the sender would have no objection or there is some extraordinary circumstance that applies, such as a health issue.
I've noticed this rule is usually breached via a response. A writes to B and B responds but copies C despite the fact that A may not have wanted C in on the exchange.
This can be a defensive strategy. I recall emailing a question to a manager and purposely not copying the manager's boss because I didn't want to appear to be putting pressure on the person. Back came the reply with the manager's boss copied.
Aargh.
My reaction was twofold: Irritation that the boss had been involved on a minor matter and curiosity about whether the employee was afraid to send a simple response without copying the boss. Perhaps the copying was a requirement; a possibility that does not speak well of the boss.
Have you noticed this practice? Do you think the person sending the response even considers the significance of bringing another person into the loop?
5 comments:
I've seen this with ulterior/more nefarious motives too. Just annoying someone with being copied on a message they don't need to be bothered with may be the least on the spectrum of intent in this practice.
I worked in the corporate world for quite a few years. I can't tell you the number of times I saw this happen. In some cases it was because the employee wanted to cover their butts and make sure the boss knew what was going on and in other cases it was because they were using it to tattle on somebody. Then there were the people who just didn't know any better. Whatever the reason, it always aggravated me to no end.
I once worked with a VP (a very Alpha kind of guy) who considered CC-ing a boss a sign of weakness. If you email me and CC my boss or your own you are showcasing weakness. By including only me you are showing a level of respect which says that you trust me to handle the situation.
I once worked in a department where the Director wanted to be copied on everything.
Every. Thing.
It was really aggravating, especially since he thought that people were "hiding things from him" if he was not copied on something, and found out about it later.
It was even more aggravating when you actually needed him to be paying attention to the emailed discussion, but he had obviously only read/skimmed part of it (probably because he had WAY too much email to read...), then chimed in with some directive out of left field that derailed the entire thing.
Great comments!
Michael
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