ResolutionsRTK

Responding to Hostile email in the workplace

Paul Gretton-Watson
Director, ResolutionsRTK

Hostile email is an increasing problem for employees and employers alike. With email the preferred or at least dominant mode of communication in most workplaces, we are seeing an increase in complaints, formal grievances, and conflict resolution referrals, which have originated from hostile emails.

A hostile email can be made up of both content and format. Indeed, in the flight of fury, the B , I , U , and Caps Lock buttons can become more inviting. Whether bolding, font size, underlining, italics, capitalisation, or colour changes, all can and are used to add visual emphasis to certain words and phrases. Think of it as formatting offense.

Most people will have fired off a hostile email when frustrated or angry. This is the basic problem with email: it's almost as instant as our temper, but endures longer. This means most will then suffer from e-regret after re-reading the material once they are calmer, perhaps offering an apology or at least conceding that their written language was not acceptable. Others may feel satisfied that they have vented their emotions and wonder why the receiver is so upset. On further reflection they too may see the inflammatory nature of their written outpourings and learn the valuable lesson of not sending any written material when they are reactive and angry. In general, most people are quite reasonable to deal with and can reflect on their contribution to an escalating conflict situation.

In some cases, however, an individual is so overwhelmed with emotion that they cannot see how their mail is unreasonable or over-reactive. Some are so unaware of the intensity of their catharsis that they literally shock the receiver with their level of hostility. This can often happen when people have deteriorating relationships, or are involved in formal conflicts such as divorce, child access, workplace grievances or business partnership issues. Once in writing these documents can then come back to haunt you when you least expect it.

More often than not such written material is just venting and has little real significance. For the recipient, how you handle the hostile mail that you receive can significantly reduce the escalation of the conflict. Even reasonable people can become unreasonable under extreme pressure. Others find it more difficult, if not impossible, to see. These are the high conflict personalities and they will keep on fighting even when it is against their own self interest. Regardless of who you are dealing with the following suggestions may help to prevent you from fuelling the fire.

1. Determine if a response is required

Hostile mail has no power, unless you give it power.

A majority of hostile mail is used for venting and may not need a response other than a polite acknowledgement of receipt. Often it is designed to engage you in a battle of emotional venting which will simply escalate the situation without satisfaction, with the only gain being a new piece of hostile mail back in return.

At other times, it may be important to respond to inaccurate statements of fact with accurate statements of fact, leaving out your opinions and emotional responses, particularly where the correspondence may be used as part of a grievance or court process.

2. Respond calmly and stick to the issues

Neurological research shows that our ability to think rationally is impaired when we are very upset. This is called the “amygdala response”. When we read hostile mail it can trigger many emotions and a common mistake is responding too quickly to hostile e-mails. Take some time to calm yourself down first so that you can respond in a rational and non-emotive manner. That is, step away from the keypad!

Aim not to take hostile mail personally, even if it was intended as a personal attack. Defending yourself with an item-by-item personal attack back will only escalate the conflict further and have a negative impact on your health.

Writing the response itself may act as a cathartic exercise by easing our negative reactions, and that is a good outcome. However, sending it may not be the best option. Saving such documents as a draft, reviewing it the next day when you are in a calmer state, and even asking someone else for their response, may be the safer option. At this stage it is highly likely that you will decide it is probably best not to send it at all.

3. Be clear on your goal for writing, and stick to it

Focus on the issue and what you want the person to do, not on what they did wrong. For example:

“Harry I would like to be able to finalise the tender document with input from both of us being valued”.
“Sue, I would like to arrange a meeting time so that we can discuss the best way forward in achieving a positive interaction together”.
“My goal is to sort out this situation without causing any distress.”

In your written response avoid negative comments, little digs, sarcasm, cynicism and threats. Most importantly, avoid making personal remarks about someone's intelligence, ethics or moral behaviour, or commenting about the person's character or skills in a derogatory manner, such as saying they are rude, insensitive, behaving badly, useless and so forth. Such comments do not motivate people to be rational and calm and in fact will further inflame and incense high conflict people. While most people can ignore personal attacks or reflect on what you are aiming to say, high conflict people feel they have no choice but to respond in anger and keep the conflict going and going. Personal attacks rarely lead to insight or positive change in such people.

4. BIFF

Once you have identified your goal try using the BIFF model presented by renowned family law practitioner and mediator, Bill Eddy (2008), who advises that your response should be Brief, Informative, Friendly and Firm (BIFF).

Brief Keep your response brief. The more you write, the more the other person will be tempted to criticize, thus escalating into a prolonged and angry back and forth.

Informative The main reason to respond to hostile mail is to correct inaccurate statements which might be seen by others. “Just the facts” is a good policy. Focus on the accurate statements you want to make, not on the inaccurate statement the other person made.

Friendly Consciously thinking about a friendly response will increase your chances of getting a friendly, or de-escalated, response in return. You can achieve this by making the written response a little relaxed and non-antagonistic. You do not have to overdo it! The most important thing is not to allow your anger to come through.

Firm In a non-threatening way, clearly tell the other person your information or position on an issue. Be careful not to make comments that leave the door open to more discussion, unless you are negotiating an issue or want to keep a dialogue going back and forth. Sound confident, but not aggressive and threatening, and do not ask for more information if you want to end the back-and-forth. If you receive further emails anyway, you can ignore them if you have sufficiently addressed the inaccurate information already. If you need to respond again keep it even briefer, do not emotionally engage, and repeat the key information from your previous email.

4. Finally… choose your battles wisely

These words say it all! Be aware that when we are tired, angry, frustrated or feel personally attacked we can respond, or should I say react, and it is just not worth the energy or the negative impact on our health.

Keep things in perspective and before you invest your valuable time and energy into responding to hostile mail ask yourself:

On a scale of 0 to 10, with 10 being really crucial in my life, how important is this hostile mail to me?

You'll probably find that more often than not, most hostile mail is not worth a response beyond a polite acknowledgement of the correspondence.