what to never put in writing (this includes email)
The eighth in a series of posts elaborating on my list of skills to use when dealing with difficult personalities.
No matter how difficult you find some personality - never put it in writing. Sure, we all need to vent sometimes. We all need to openly discuss our problems at work with someone outside of work who can sympathize and help us stay calm.
But don’t do this via email or even IM if you can help it. Especially not from your desk at work. You don’t own those words. If it was written at a time when you were supposed to be doing work, your employer owns those words, and you never know how they might be used. Even if no one is logging your IMs or reading your email without your knowledge, someone may walk by your desk and see what’s on your screen.
So don’t write steamy love letters at work. Don’t complain about specific people in email or on a blog. Don’t play the blame game in writing. Never send email in anger. Go ahead and write it out if you have to, but then set it aside and wait at least an hour before you hit “send” - and before you do, make sure to read it over carefully and as dispassionately as possible. More often than not, you can just delete it without sending. Your personal feelings rarely have any bearing on business. Remember these people are just your co-workers. They’re not your family. You’ll all move on over time and they won’t have any impact on your life in the future.
Generally speaking, don’t put anything negative in writing. Be vague in the memo and follow up in person or with a phone call to explain further if necessary. One of my supervisors wrote on my review that I was having trouble delegating. Seven years later, a VP saw that and thought I was still having that problem. The negative things hang around for years when they’re in writing.
Real life example of when this principle kept me out of a deposition.
At one point in my career I was juggling a new IP with two powerful owners. There was a long chain of approvals everything had to go through, and still we were skirting a raft of conflicting IP issues. I’m not going to go into detail here because after about nine months this project devolved into a lawsuit between IP stakeholders.
Something my team made turned into a key piece of evidence going before a judge. This was one of those times when I loooooooved my corporate legal team. Talk about overwhelming. Fortunately, my friendly corporate lawyer said, “Well, Wendy, where did you get the materials for making this item?”
At which point I said, “We got it from this person in that place where we got all our approved materials.”
His eyes lit up. “Is there a paper trail for this?”
Yep, all my email for that six months was submitted into evidence. Lawyers on both sides read it, paralegals on both sides read it, file clerks on both sides read it, all the IP stakeholders read it and more embarassingly, some of my bosses and clients read it.
Boy was I glad I’d been careful about what I put in writing. One line I wrote in anger actually became a sticking point in the case. At one point early on we missed a deadline and I had been asked to explain why in an email to my boss. I wrote something vague … something like, “we were held up by the complicated politics going on in such-and-such office.”
Boy, the lawyers were intrigued by that and wanted to know what I meant. I had to justify that one sentence right to the face of the person I had written it about. Fortunately, since I hadn’t been explicit I could explain in detail with a level head - and not on the witness stand or in a deposition on tape. Just to a coworker. She was the one who had to go to the deposition and explain what my emails meant. Because she was in the office where the politics were going on.
The moral of the story is, of course, be careful what you put in writing. You never know when you’ll have to defend it in front of a judge.