Keep Calm Before You Hit Reply
One time I was working on a global promotion with someone in another company that partnered with the one I worked for. We each had different contacts in our European offices, and emailed them back and forth while we tried to determine who exactly we needed to work with, and when we could speak with them. After a week or so, the person I had been working with stateside emailed me that we could share the details of the promotion at a reoccurring meeting with the exact European colleagues that we needed to talk to.
Great!
He forwarded the meeting invitation to me, and I quickly drafted a short explanation of the promotion and agenda for the next meeting occurrence, which I emailed to the meeting attendees.
What happened next was so awful that I still cringe when remembering it.
The meeting owner immediately replied to me and copied everyone who had been sent my original email, informing me that I was not permitted to hijack his meeting, I was completely unprofessional and he was going to tell my manager how rude I was, etc, etc. He wrote that he set up a new meeting series with a new conference call number that I wasn’t invited to, so there is no possible way I could join his meeting, ever. There were a lot of capitalized letters and exclamation points.
I was stunned. I got on the phone with the person from the other company to ask what happened. It turns out I wrongly interpreted his email to mean that he had organized our presentation with the meeting owner. What he meant was that the people we needed to speak with had regular meetings and we could try to get on their agenda.
Oh.
You know that saying, “When you assume you make an ass out of u and me”?
Yep.
I needed to do damage control but there was no way I was calling this guy. For one thing, there was a nine-hour time difference and it was too late at night to receive calls at his location. Also, I didn’t want to experience over the phone the same level of rage that came through his email.
I started drafting an email response but was so upset that it was difficult to know what to write. I was very sorry for my screw up but also defensive because I had acted in good faith. At the heart of the matter, the joint promotion I offered would help increase sales of a product that none of them were meeting their forecasts for.
I was also angry and offended by his words, and humiliated that he blasted me with 30 other colleagues on the email. I wasn’t ready to appreciate the irony of him labeling me as unprofessional.
So, my email response was not coming along very well. I got up from my desk in search of my manager or someone else who could advise me. Luckily, I ran into Jill. She is to this day the most unflappable business person I’ve ever met. I told her what happened and asked her advice.
She suggested that I reply to everyone on the email and in as few sentences as possible, explain my mistake and apologize – but to strip the emotion out.
I went back to my computer and wrote several more drafts until I had a version that sounded neutral. I hit “send”, went home, and dreaded what I would find in my inbox the next day.
I only received one email reply, from a colleague of the meeting owner. He wrote that he was embarrassed by his coworker’s email and apologized on his behalf. I never heard from the meeting owner again and forgot his name a long time ago.
What I remember, though, is how effective it was to reply to a heated email in a completely neutral tone. If I had responded in a way that sounded defensive, offended, or angry, I would have been adding fuel to an emotional situation. On top of making a careless mistake, I would have appeared as bad-tempered as the other guy. Instead, I looked mature and rational by taking responsibility for the situation and briefly explaining why I thought I had been on point for the meeting.
I try to remember to read my email responses out loud whenever I’m responding to someone else’s strong emotions. If I sound mild to my own ears, my text is probably fine. And when its about participating in someone else’s meeting? I do not assume.
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