10 Tips to Navigate the Politics of Office Email
1. Never reply an email when angry; take your time for your adrenaline to drop before replying.
2. Read your composed email at least three times before clicking ‘send’.
3. Decide whether to use ‘reply’ or ‘reply all’ by asking yourself, what is the relevance of this email to each of these persons.
4. If you must reply all, ensure you know all the recipients; if you don’t know, you can ask a colleague, ‘please who is Robert Alabi?’
5. Knowing the people in the email will guide the tone of your email. Imagine if a GM is in the email trail, compared to when all the recipients are your peers. The tone may be different.
6. No problem in asking a colleague to help you go through your composed email message before sending, especially if the information is not critical and the recipient(s) is(are) top level people.
7. If an email trail within the company must be sent out to an external party (e.g your banker or consultant) by you, make sure you leave only the parts that are harmless to be sent out and relevant to the external recipient in making decision. Read through the trail and make sure you delete any confidential internal communication in the mail trail.
8. There is nothing wrong in running a message by your boss before putting into email. If you and your boss are in the copy of an email and you need to reply, you may first walk to your boss and tell him what you want to send out, else you run the risk of sending out information that runs contrary to your boss’ understanding. And knowing when this is necessary and when it is not, is another thing you must know.
9. You get result fast when you copy a colleague or external recipient’s boss, but never abuse this. Don’t copy bosses just anyhow, you may make enemy for yourself.
10. Never use direct strong words in your email. If you can’t control your strong emotion at that time, use phone call. . There are some words you can use verbally and escape it, but when they are written down, they are unimpeachable exhibits that will easily land you into trouble.
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See also: The Politics of Office Email
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