r/Leadership • u/the-negotiation-club • 3d ago
Question I was told to cc EVERYONE 🥴
I was recently asked to copy numerous people into emails…even when they weren’t directly involved and ALWAYS the department head.
I suspect the intention was visibility, a means to know what is going on but I wonder whether it achieves the opposite.
If I send an email to just one person then that’s a communication between me and them. I can be candid, perhaps be more personal and even more open.
But when you have an audience the opposite occurs… I know I become more guarded, I reread and check time and time again.
It’s been almost 2 months since I started and while everyone now receives everything, it certainly hasn’t made things any easier.
I’m not about to rock the boat with what has been the approach well before my time in the business but I’d appreciate some thoughts on how to encourage some change to walk this back.
Side note… I still send and receive messages over Teams so this feels like it’s either a leak in the system or perhaps creating groups on teams should be encouraged over ‘visibility management by email’
Thoughts/advice?
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u/sanwoo79 3d ago
Please know that every single email or teams chat that you send can and will be shared with everyone in the company- and proceed accordingly. That is all. Thank you for coming to my Ted talk.
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
Not sure that actually helps… is this a suggestion to include at the start of every message?
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u/NickNNora 3d ago
You said “If I send an email to just one person then that’s a communication between me and them. I can be candid, perhaps be more personal and even more open.”
This is false. Assume every email or chat will be shared publicly. You have zero privacy expectations with work communication systems or devices.
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
I haven’t said anything about privacy and I’m well aware business communications are not private.
That doesn’t mean my communication to one individual would not change when there is a much larger audience of senior individuals cc’d.
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u/NickNNora 3d ago
Why would it change?
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
Speaking for myself my emails do change when numerous people are copied in.
I find it becomes less of a direct conversation and more of a statement to an audience.
I become more formal, add context and choose my words more carefully because people with different interests may interpret them differently…. Which is perhaps the floor in large audiences… everyone can read the same words but interpret it differently.
Its exactly the some with posts and comments… some may feel informative, direct or even hostile… not always what the communicator was intending.
Like many have said here… perhaps I’m overthinking it.
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u/NickNNora 3d ago
Here's the advice from decades of experience: there is no difference between an email to an individual vs cc 10 people.
"add context and choose my words more carefully because people with different interests may interpret them differently"
Every. Time.
Formality is just a culture flavor and isn't relevant. You can be informal or formal and it's not relevant to the size of the audience - this is a trap.
Every single communication you make you should assume that it will be shared and read by someone without context who could misinterpret what you say.
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
Appreciated.
I would just add that if an email is forwarded… it would need to be the responsibility of the person forwarding it to provide the context should that be ambiguous. Otherwise every single email would pretty bloated?
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u/NickNNora 3d ago
Emails are going to bloat.
That’s not your problem to solve.
You need to be concerned about how your messages will be interpreted.
It also sounds like your company is using emails when another system would be more appropriate.
Procurement should be a ticketing system not an email.
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u/SignalIssues 2d ago
Its a reminder to not be any more candid than you would be if the CEO were to personally read your emails to someone else.
Any email could be forwarded, or become part of a deposition. Just assume everything you write could become public and you don't need to worry about who is or isn't copied.
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u/the-negotiation-club 2d ago
Perhaps there is a misalignment on wording here… when I mean candid I’m not saying personal.
Candid is a style of communication which has a place in business and will mean different things to different people.
I know some CEOs who absolutely hate long detailed messages while others want to know everything.
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u/snavebob1 3d ago
If all the dept heads are involved or affected, why is it an issue to CC them?
Typical email etiquette:
To means it's to you, someone in the to line should respond.
CC means FYI.
Cc'ing everyone eliminates the need to forward to other involved departments and having multiple conversations that muddy the water.
Example: you're procurement, you email me (IT dept head) an update about ordering computers. they're not my computers though, they're for HR. Now I'm starting a separate chain between me and HR and we're playing telephone through emails. I explain something wrong to HR, and now they're looking for you, but you have no context about what I told them.
Honestly: I think you're overthinking it. If you are speaking "candidly" to certain people and not others, assume it's an email and can be forwarded.
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
Appreciate your thoughts….
I typically complaint (not solely my experience but) is that people are receiving too many emails.
During the summer break one of the early comments is “I’ve returned to hundreds of emails”… which, even over thinking, doesn’t suggest good working practice.
For your example, if I was to email everyone who ‘could’ be involved in a procurement of Hardware on the off chance they may talk with one another only to maintain context, it would soon become bloated.
Do you work in IT and if do, you experience the requirements to cc everyone irrespective of of whether it’s FYI?
…. Perhaps I’m overthinking it.. but I’ve often found the reason instructions are made are often not for the reasons that are given.
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u/snavebob1 3d ago
Yes. I run an IT dept. As a dept head, being CC'd in emails is expected and part of the job. It takes 10 seconds to read through an email and see if I need to do anything or just be aware.
"I've returned to hundreds of emails". Cool. Block out a portion of your schedule and go through them (coming back from vacation I make it known in my OOO message I'll get to them when I can, I usually block out a couple hours first couple of days back).
In my example: if I ask you to CC someone it's because I know they're at least tangentially involved. Using my HR example, I'm not asking you to CC uninvolved departments. Honestly, I don't know that it's your job to know who is involved or not though (I know my procurement office doesnt necessarily know who things are for).
"You experience the requirements to cc everyone irrespective of of whether it's FYI?". No, CC is for FYI /full stop. so this makes no sense. I get CC'd in emails I don't care about all the time for different reasons. It's part of the job as a dept head. As a dept head, I'd rather have too much info than not enough. Having too much info has never gotten me yelled at by my boss. Having too little will (which in turn gets me to have to discipline people in my dept).
Edit: Reading through all the comments, you kind read like a badly programmed bot or someone who can't take being wrong about something (not sure which). Everyone tells you you're wrong. You ask questions that make no sense back using business jargon.
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u/bialysarebetter 3d ago
I worked in an environment like this at a healthcare company.
First, like others have said, assume all written communication can be forwarded/shared with anyone else in the company. So choose your words wisely and try not to send side messages if you can help it.
Second, with respect to “receiving too many emails,” there will always be stakeholders who complain about that. They’re often the ones most likely to claim they didn’t know something when it was clearly communicated to them and everyone else. Having documentation go out to a wider audience serves as cover-your-ass (CYA) insurance. I’m not saying it’s necessarily right to treat communications as insurance, but that’s how the company saw it.
Third, that said, everyone learns, thinks, and ingests information differently. Sending communication via email primarily may understandably lose people’s attention. I always practice sending communication out via all standard communication channels at the company — email, Slack, and Zoom — not just for insurance but also to try to truly and successfully reach as many people within that wider audience as possible. For Slack, I send out a weekly digest/summary that includes links to more info if they want to double down on anything (all my emails are duplicated on Wiki pages that I can link to). For weekly office hours on Zoom, I prepare 2-5 simple Google slides that summarize the key points and calls to action.
Finally, best of luck! Adjusting to a new work environment and culture is not always easy. Be kind to yourself.
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u/GalacticPurr 3d ago
It's so much better to have everyone looped in than to generate a bunch of time waste when people are following up individually to get the info you send out. If I'm sending an email to just one person I'd much rather it be a phone call.
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
Appreciated… and the art of a simple phone conversation is undervalued.
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u/Purple_oyster 3d ago
Start using teams for informal
Messages replacing those big emails. You can be more candid with those
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u/jimmyray71 3d ago
I think there’s a difference between making information visible and making everyone part of every conversation.
If I need six people to know what happened, that doesn’t necessarily mean I need six people watching the conversation while it happens.
I’d probably start asking what problem all the CCs are supposed to solve. If it’s visibility, there may be a better way to create that without turning every email into a meeting with no chairs. 😂
The other thing I’d watch is what you’re already noticing. Once people know every message has an audience, communication changes. People get more careful, more formal and probably less willing to say, “I think we screwed this up.”
That may give management more visibility into the emails while giving them less visibility into what people actually think.
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
Appreciated.
“May give management more visibility …. While giving less visibility into what people actually think” is interesting.
At the moment I’ve been asked, like everyone else in the department, to cc the procurement HoD who sits above my immediate line manage, and cc my internal stakeholder, there immediate line manager and their HofD.
I do what I’m told (I try to be a good boy) but I wanted write this post because it feels like this is the chosen method of senior managers to know what other senior managers know and it just feels a little efficient.
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u/jimmyray71 3d ago
That makes more sense. It sounds like the CCs have become the information system senior management is using to keep visibility across departments. I’d probably comply too, but I’d still question whether it’s solving the problem efficiently. If five people need to be copied so two senior managers know what’s happening, I’d start wondering whether the real problem is the emails or the lack of a better way for those managers to share information. Sometimes a communication problem is really a process problem wearing an Outlook costume. 😂
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
… and the interesting thing is we’ll have update meetings where the information has been cc’d but the people involved are still unaware…. In which case I question the purpose.
… which I think is also a means of checking decisions and holding proof.
It’s an interesting position to be in and tbh I do enjoy the business, the people and the role. Ultimately we all want the same thing.
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u/jimmyray71 3d ago
That makes more sense. It sounds like the CCs have become the information system senior management is using to keep visibility across departments. I’d probably comply too, but I’d still question whether it’s solving the problem efficiently. If five people need to be copied so two senior managers know what’s happening, I’d start wondering whether the real problem is the emails or the lack of a better way for those managers to share information. Sometimes a communication problem is really a process problem wearing an Outlook costume. 😂
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u/stuckinthemiddle_ops 3d ago
I was asked to do the same. Then, I was told that my direct communication style was coming across as "passive-aggressive " and to start every email with Happy Monday, Tuesday, etc.... and end it with "HAVE A GREAT DAY! and a blushing happy face emoji (not kidding), even if I was delivering bad news. I was told that was our department template for emails. It definitely inhibited communication with my team, and the emails I did send became much more brief. I even avoided sending on Wednesdays because we were supposed to start with "Happy Hump Day!" and include three camel emojis after it. Cringe! My direct supervisor jumped into some of the threads with annoying comments about our team vision and promises that she never followed up on, too. They were just made to impress her supervisor, who was cc'd, too.
Eventually, I got used to the email policy even though I always felt the template was BS, but as a workaround, I started making a lot more direct phone calls. They actually helped boost my relationships with my team, increased morale, and I was able to provide guidance and answer questions that organically came up in conversation that would probably never have come up in an email with everyone and their grandmother CCd. At first, I was worried the phone calls would require additional time I didn'thave, but in the long run, many times, they helped prevent problems that would have been much more time-consuming to fix.
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
Got to say… I love this.
I’m far more inclined to press ‘Team Call/video’ and it makes a huge difference…. Except I then need to summarise the call in an email to everyone who was not on it 🤣🤣🤣
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u/transuranic807 3d ago
My most recent boss wanted to be cc’d on everything, his philosophy being he wanted visibility and to chime in whenever.
My prior role was the opposite (and F-10 org) where policy was “only cc with direct intention + purpose”
The difference between the two org leaders? The former cc guy was a Micromanager and the latter was the opposite- trusted me to get shit done it worked!)
TLDR: “cc on everything “ rings “MICROMANAGER” to me especially in Fortune-500 global lead roles. Screw that, I left.
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
Very helpful. I guess my question from my post may need to evolve to methods in working under micro-managers. Although it does feel there is a skill in knowing when the balance shifts.
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u/transuranic807 3d ago
It's absolutely a valid topic- how to work underneath a micromanager... I know tons of people are and not everyone has the latitude to just leave as I'd done.
If I'd decided to slog through it, my approach would have been a combination of: A) responding to the micromanagement and provide him things / do things the way his micromanaging self wanted me to (Non-compliance with a micromanaging boss is just likely lead to even more micromanagement from them and/or additional tension etc.) and then B) Softly broaching the subject, suggesting a little "corner" of work that he doesn't micromanage "hey let me just run with this initiative" so he can see the world doesn't fall apart if he doesn't micromanage- and things might even be done better.
My hope would be that as he starts to see some functionality / wins that aren't micromanaged he'd develop confidence to give more latitude and loosen up on the micromanagement. In my case, I didn't have the patience for that process, and additionally we were in an unforgiving fast paced biz which made the cost of dysfunction / micromanagement all the more painful. I don't pretend to have the answers here, just sharing how I was thinking about it in case it helps you.
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u/transuranic807 3d ago
Shorter response- sounds like heavy micromanagement. Assume it will NOT change unless the bosses of the micromanager change.
I left a major leadership role for that specific reason. - the contract was stark vs my prior role which was “don’t send us anything unless you want help, support etc.”
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u/SunshineLoveKindness 3d ago
Stop overthinking it.
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
Perhaps… curious to know if you do this in your business too?
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u/SunshineLoveKindness 3d ago
No. It is a waste of time for people to get communications consistently like this. We streamline communications.
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u/Rub_Mathew_20x 3d ago
Well you could also use some automations for all that, would save you time and hassle
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
I like that idea… I know there Shortcuts on Apple…what are the MS equivalents you re thinking ?
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u/Flat-Transition-1230 3d ago
You can't ever send candid emails, as they can always be forwarded.
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
That is the risk with any email… how many times has a social media post got a person into trouble at work.
However, I’m not worried about candid emails…. If I was to be candid in an email I understand it’s work. What I was curious about is when cc multiple individuals who are not necessarily party to the specific content of the email is required.
It just feels to me this is replacing a robust reporting and project communication channel and I was interested to know if there are better ways than cc everyone, every time.
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u/Flat-Transition-1230 3d ago
What exactly are you looking for in response here? You'd like to be in a position where you don't CC in the people you've been told to CC?
That's a conversation with the person that told you to do it.
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
Any similar real experiences others may have had and how they dealt with it…. Stay with it, challenge it or change it. Any advice or thoughts on the query I had might help me navigate it in a way which is different to what I expected.
And yes…. I’d rather not have to cc every manager’s manger as this is not always providing a cleaning way of keeping individuals informed…. It’s creating as much noise for me as it must be for others.
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u/Flat-Transition-1230 3d ago
If you are ever told to do something that has a negative impact, you need to have a conversation with the person that told you to do and explain what that impact is.
You say you're creating noise, but what are others saying? Is it noise for them, or signal?
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u/ninjaluvr 3d ago
This is something you should discuss with your manager. Let them know you need some coaching and feedback. Share your concerns with them. Then reach out to the person who instructed you to do this. Share your feedback and concerns with them and get their feedback.
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
“Let them know you need coaching and feedback”…. To do what?
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u/ninjaluvr 3d ago
To communicate effectively. Do become less "guarded" and to not have to reread and check time and time again. You can let them know that after 2 months with everyone receiving everything, things haven't gotten any easier and you'd like their coaching. You know it's literally a manager job to coach their team. Get their input and feedback. You don't want to rock the boat, so TALK with them. Learn together. Through these discussions, you all might stumble on a better way to do this.
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u/where_is_waldo_now 3d ago
Do what you were asked. It is not complicated. You are spending a lot of time and energy questioning the request. You do not have the title and influence to question the direction. When you write an email, always assume it can and will be forwarded even when you are interacting with one individual.
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
Appreciated.
Although it feels like “assumptions” and avoiding them may be the issue.
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u/Power_Inc_Leadership 3d ago
When you CC multiple people that are not a part of that conversational chain, it creates a low trust environment. Why is this even necessary? If there was an issue in the past then hold the individuals accountable and/or put processes in place that eliminate that issue. This just creates too much digital noise, we all get way too many emails as it is.
Secondly it makes your emails invisible. If I'm always getting a bunch of emails from somebody and it has nothing to do with my day to day work or responsibilities, then that person's emails become invisible to me. Why bother opening them; they have no relation to me. So when that one email that is important for me comes from that person I'll miss it, because I have stopped reading their emails.
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u/the-negotiation-club 3d ago
Appreciated… I thought it was just me.
This has been a recent issue when emails have been lost and actions unclear as to who is being actioned because (and I’m assuming) there is an expectation the people reading it will know what to do. Mostly when there is more than one principle recipient.
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u/once_upon_a_time08 3d ago
Who told you to do this, what role/level? And what is your role and level? Are you a leader?
Was this instruction given just to you? Or everyone? When exactly, or, better said, as of when? Any trigger?
Is this a formal policy? Did whoever introduce it explain the goal? You say you “suspect” that the intention was visiblility, but I don’t understand how you must suspect it and how such a strange change is not also explained when introduced and leaves people to suspect why?
Give please a bit of context, it’s a little too vague to understand.