Replying with grace to angry emails at work can work well

I received an ‘anonymous’ email from an address outside our organisation. It related to a project I worked on which resulted in a piece of work that became publicly available. The email was highly critical of this work, but was also somewhat personal and rather rude.

At first, I was shocked and felt humiliation, probably because I was quite proud of this work, but also because I haven’t encountered such harsh language in my work life. In the last few days, I re-read the email. Although I was still uncomfortable, I was also curious about who sent it and why. I began to wonder whether I should have replied. Or even whether there’s still a chance to reply. Is that a good idea?

I think it could be a good idea. But it depends on the kind of email you received.

For many years, I thought the concept of “killing someone with kindness” was a load of idealistic rubbish. Responding to disparagement or anger with impeccable courtesy seemed to me like something that could only work in a B-grade romantic comedy.

Then, as part of my work, I started receiving emails all the time – some of them quite disapproving. As I began replying to them, I realised that, to a large degree, my cynicism was unwarranted. Not always, but surprisingly often, responding to hostility with a complete lack of bitterness works well.

Loading

I have two theories on why.

The first is that most people don’t expect a reply. And if they do, they certainly don’t expect a thoughtful one. That may be simple conditioning. Replying to difficult questions or challenging situations (or even just to multiple people in a short period of time) is unfashionable: anyone who’s written a complaint, queried a policy or submitted a job application in the last 20 years knows that.

If we’re lucky, these days, we get a cold, templated response. Mostly, though, large organisations are comfortable entirely ignoring (or glossing over) the objections, questions and observations of people without much power.