OK this happened a number of years ago but it still blows my mind and I thought I would ask if I am crazy or if my bosses are?
I had a performance review with my manager and manager’s manager all together, and one of the issues they brought up with me is that I don’t respond to emails properly. My boss gave the example that he often asks “who has time to work on X project” or “who knows what happened to this app” and he said he was disappointed that I didn’t respond very often. At first, I totally misunderstood this complaint. I thought he was saying he was disappointed I didn’t volunteer for the new project, or know about the situation with the app, so I explained how busy I’ve been with my current project load, working lots of hours already etc etc and then he further explained “No, I’m not saying you need to do anything, I just need a response on the email.” My brain went record scratch Huh?? So if I am too busy to take on a new project and you send an email that says “Who can do this?” you want me to respond with “Sorry I don’t have time.” And he said “Exactly. Every one of these emails deserves a response.”
I was flummoxed by this and said something like, “But that’s not what you’re asking, you’re asking WHO can do whatever task or WHO has the knowledge?” So you want me to respond to all of these with “Not me.” He acted amazed that I’d even be confused by this and said “Yeah of course!” And his manager agreed “Yeah, of course you need to respond every single time!” Then I said something like, “So you don’t see that’s not what you’re asking for, in the email? With the way you are asking, it seems to me that not responding is acceptable.” They kinda got angry at this point and said “Never, you always respond to your manager’s emails! How could you even think of just ignoring it?”
It was a very weird disconnect. I even gave an example of a teacher in a classroom asking a question to the class and it’s like they expect every kid to raise their hand and say “I don’t know the answer!” but they didn’t track with that at all and just kept saying “you need to respond.”
I still think they were crazy and I’m glad I work for different people now. But this whole disconnect on communication styles still blows my mind.
You are not crazy. They have somehow gotten it into their heads that responses are mandatory. I’ve been doing work, and replying (or not replying) to my bosses over email for 25 years, at four different companies, and this has never been an expectation.
By responding you’re confirming you’ve read the email? If you don’t respond they might think you haven’t read it. My work email program Groupwise allows one to see who has received and read your sent email. So that takes care of that.
No, you aren’t crazy. The sender could expressly state, “Negative responses required” or somesuch. Strikes me as a pretty stupid policy - as well as a pretty stupid thing to bring up in a performance review but hey - that’s what performance reviews are for, no?
Just be glad if that is the worst they say about you, and shoot off the ridiculous time-wasting replies.
Sorta surprised you would - um - respond at all, not to mention repeatedly, and to your boss’ boss, once you realized they were asking something so stupid. Not sure I see the benefit in that. But I guess if you really are gobsmacked, you might not respond in the optimum manner.
When I used to have performance reviews, I was just perfectly happy to sit there silently so long as they didn’t say I was fired. Stupid was pretty much the best I could hope for.
My boss gets so many emails about various things I think she’d probably get annoyed if I sent a bunch of “not me” emails. I certainly have never been asked to respond to such things.
Now, if the email is sent to you specifically, that is of course different.
Agreed, I was rather gobsmacked that they were not understanding the questions the same way I was, so I kept trying to explain the disconnect, and I definitely pushed farther than I should have with the schoolteacher analogy, but I was shocked not only by their complaint about me, but also their shock that I did not automatically see it their way. Like… they were legitimately confused by my interpretation of “Who has time to help with X?”
I’m so inured to ridiculous time-wasting requests at work, I’d probaby just respond, “Just so I’m clear, every time you send such an email, you desire a negative response if I am unable to do it?” And then I’d probably send a cover my ass email corroborating that, and would dutifully reply, “No thanks” or whatever. Hell, perversely I’d welcome it as a simple way to show I’m a “teamplayer!”
If I may, how long into your career was this? I mean - it IS really stupid, but not crazy stupid compared to my experience and understanding of other peoples’ experience.
I had been at the company about 10 years at this point, on this particular team about 6 years, and this manager only managed us for about a year and a half and then left the company. He had been with the company for about the same length of time as me, but this was his first management position. He made a weird comment to me soon after joining the team. I led a training that everyone seemed to enjoy and he commented “Well that was great, now I’m worried you’re gonna take my job.”
It has been put to me that the whole function of middle management is communication and co-ordination, and that they spend their entire time making sure that everybody is on the same page. And I personally knew two separate people who spent years at the telephone company, talking to workers to find WTF they thought the were doing, just so they could write it down and bring management up to speed.
And my experience with teaching is that, while there are situations where you ask for volunteers, there are also situations where you should look for direct evidence.
So while I don’t think that negative responses are automatically required unless asked for, and if everything is running smoothly may be unwelcome, I certainly don’t think that managers asking for negative responses is crazy.
The other half of the question is just language. Expecting words to mean what they say is a beginners error. Sometimes people explain to you, as if you were a 10 year old, what they actually mean by the words they are using: the rest of the time, you have to work it out yourself. When you go to a different company, or different church, or different country, some of the words will be used differently.
You are thinking about this all wrong. Here’s how you are expected to respond:
“That sounds like a terrific initiative! I am excited to see our company and department take this on! It will surely help us nail that corporate goal of ours, and help land that huge contract! I am excited! I wish I could help, but I am not scheduled to roll-off my other project until September, and have no band-width until then. Bob, however, is just wiling away time right now and is in a perfect position to take this on!”
See, now you are totally supportive and responsive, and even helpful in identifying someone else to take the project!
I get emails like that, and I always reply with a negative if I can’t do it. There are times my boss may not be up to date with my progress on a current project, so if I can’t do another job, I let him know I’m still busy with the other project.
It also avoids the question by him/her if I received the email.
I personally think emails like that are not necessarily asking who is available to do a project, but who will offer to do the project.
I have about fifteen direct reports. I regularly have to end my messages with “do not tell me you do not have the thing”, “do not tell me you do not know the thing”, “do not tell me you are not going to the place”, … because a predictable subset will spam me with the fact that they have nothing useful to contribute.
I never received or sent emails like that. But not every management style makes sense, and I’ve seen lots worse.
My guess is that at one point they sent out a request and only got crickets. Someone who can take on additional work but doesn’t particularly want to will find it easier to ignore the mail than to state that they don’t have time. So the policy is not totally bonkers.
As for me, I had a pretty good sense of peoples loads and who would be best for a job, so I asked a particular person and didn’t send out a general mail.
If it is middle management like where I work the number of emails show how “busy” they are and prove they are a necessary cog in the wheel of the company. Whether the emails have any useful information is besides the point.
In my experience any manager who has the time to sit around waiting for and keeping track of “courtesy” emails that do not do anything useful has too light a load on their plate or has a micromanagement issue. Expecting a group of people working to basically drop what they’re doing every few hours to salute and say “yes sir/no sir” sounds like a dysfunctional work environment.
That or these people lack basic communication skills; a trait that’s actually surprisingly common. They expect a certain type of of answer to their emails, but rather than tell anyone what that expectation is they just sit silently watching it not happen. Then wait a year before mentioning it. Why not just simply state their question properly: “This is question X. Please reply to question X with your availability/knowledge or lack there of by Y date if you’ve received this email”.
This kind of stuff can even be automated like with meeting invites. It seems to me more a sign of a poor manager to have sat silently on a problem for a year than for their worker not to have had telepathy.
This. I had to really work with my secretary to respond to emails as a form of acknowledgment. I’d send her something and she’d start in on it, but inevitably I’d end up having to ask an hour later if she’d received the email. It took awhile but she got in the habit of simply responding “confirmed” or “on it”.
So, while the bosses are wording the email that doesn’t make it obvious, likely they want some form of acknowledgment so they don’t have to follow up to be sure.
One place I worked (a major scientific research lab) had a specific policy in our department: Performance reviews should never have “surprises”. By that they meant, any perceived problems should be discussed with an employee at the time the problem is noticed, and not sat on until review time. OP’s boss and boss’s boss were jerks for not doing that.
Another boss I worked for really was a jerk. Every time he got a bug up his ass for a project he wanted done, it would instantly be top priority and we’d be taken off our other projects to get onto it. Then, after a while when no projects were getting completed, he’d be all over our asses for never getting anything done.
Yes. If I replied to all the email to which I don’t have anything useful to add:
I’d get no real work done
People would hate me
Other people would get no real work done
This sounds like an opportunity for Malicious Compliance: long, rambling responses that end with “Sorry I can’t help on this one”. Either that, or some percussive maintenance on the “manager”.
