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CC'ing the Boss on Email Makes Employees Feel Less Trusted, Study Finds (hbr.org)
Do you ever loop your boss when having a conversation with a colleague when his or her presence in the thread wasn't really necessary? Turns out, many people do this, and your colleague doesn't find it helpful at all. From an article: My collaborators and I conducted a series of six studies (a combination of experiments and surveys) to see how cc'ing influences organizational trust. While our findings are preliminary and our academic paper is still under review, a first important finding was that the more often you include a supervisor on emails to coworkers, the less trusted those coworkers feel (alternative link). In our experimental studies, in which 594 working adults participated, people read a scenario where they had to imagine that their coworker always, sometimes, or almost never copied the supervisor when emailing them. Participants were then required to respond to items assessing how trusted they would feel by their colleague. ("In this work situation, I would feel that my colleague would trust my 'competence,' 'integrity,' and 'benevolence.'") It was consistently shown that the condition in which the supervisor was "always" included by cc made the recipient of the email feel trusted significantly less than recipients who were randomly allocated to the "sometimes" or "almost never" condition. Organizational surveys of 345 employees replicated this effect by demonstrating that the more often employees perceived that a coworker copied their supervisor, the less they felt trusted by that coworker. To make matters worse, my findings indicated that when the supervisor was copied in often, employees felt less trusted, and this feeling automatically led them to infer that the organizational culture must be low in trust overall, fostering a culture of fear and low psychological safety.
haha! suck it paranoid bastards!
Do you ever loop your boss when having a conversation with a colleague when his or her presence in the thread wasn't really necessary?
Them's fighting words!
BCC FTW
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have backups to corrupt.
... and I might provide some light entertainment for the boss.
And in other news... 'Water is WET'. Film at 11.
This is my sig. There are many like it but this one is mine.
That's often kind of the point isn't it?
You don't trust someone to do their job, possibly they've been screwing around or taking their sweet time.
A swift CC to the boss and a "hey, what's the progress on this?" is one way to get it moving.
On the other hand, doing it all the time is poor form if it's really a one to one conversation where escalation isn't needed.
Just assume that every single email that you send is eventually being copied to every single person in the company. Problem solved.
If metrics are poor, cc'ng the boss is the only way he will know what you are working on.
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Of course, it isn't meant to make them feel trusted.
99% of the time I cc' my boss it's because the co-worker is trying to get me involved in something I shouldn't be, or make a "end-round" my boss.
I don't have time for that shit.
>"Do you ever loop your boss when having a conversation with a colleague when his or her presence in the thread wasn't really necessary?"
Yes. It is rare, but does happen. And when it does, I usually will ignore the Email and delete it. It is usually when another Director/VP thinks it will motivate me to do something, and I quietly illustrate to them it has the exact opposite effect. If they later ask me about the Email, I will say something like "well, looked like you were trying to talk to the CEO and not me."
1. The first email is only between the two pertinent parties.
2. If there is no response, the second email has the other person's supervisor CC'd.
3. If there is still no response, the supervisor's supervisor is CC'd
4. Repeat until desired results achieved, or reprimanded. (I've yet to be reprimanded).
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Sometimes, like when there are competent people under him, the boss just wants to be kept in the loop. I work with a bunch of good people. We get things done and make things happen. If we didn't CC him he'd have no clue what we were up to and he'd be way behind real quick. Sometimes it takes a while to get something done and impatient people ask the boss, "What's taking so long?" He just doesn't want to look like an idiot and say, "Uhhhhhh....I have no idea what you're talking about." Makes him look incompetent. It isn't a matter of trust, it's just about CYA.
My boss gives me the freedom to handle clients as needed. He requests being kept in the loop for some of the more wealthy clients, but honestly I cc him most email correspondence.
CC'ing my boss ensures that my boss sees the ridiculousness from clients I have to deal with everyday.
I only include the "higher ups" if they specifically requested to be part of the update/email chain or if the person I am trying to contact has been unresponsive through multiple channels (email/phone for suppliers, face to face discussions for internal people).
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
The author of an email that cc's their boss should be more worried about the boss's perception than whether the coworker feels less trusted. Copying the boss on an email is often an attempt to create a CYA moment with, "Well, I told you about it," or a passive-aggressive way to tell on a co-worker without taking responsibility or a way of telling a co-worker, "You better do what I'm asking or mommy/daddy are going to come after you."
I used to get copied on stuff all the time and finally told those reporting to me, "Don't copy me on an email unless you expect me to take an action. If I need to be informed about something then send me a direct email with an explanation of why I need to know about it." For some, the directive didn't take until I started taking action based solely on the content of their email.
If I write you an email and Cc your boss, then you have done something that I believe needs to be corrected.
You are right to feel less trusted, that is exactly what I am attempting to communicate.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
I had supervisor who thought I tried to get the last supervisor fired because I documented everything — and refused to stop documenting everything when he told me to do so after he became supervisor. He told me to cc'd him on all emails because he didn't trust me. So I did. Unlike other people in the department, I had a lot of emails going in and out of my inbox. He got a flood of emails. Since he insisted on being cc'd to my emails, I kept deferring to him for decisions on everything. He gave up on the email and switched to a remote desktop monitoring program.
By the time you have to CC the boss about coworkers BCC usually works better.
It's not like this was the first time. What you want is for him/her to do his/her usual bullshit, but for all to see.
The fact that I'm CCing the boss says: 'I don't trust you' not 'you should feel less trusted'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Where did the money come from for this useless "study"? Everybody knows this. I only CC the boss when either I know he's watching the project, or the person I'm email needs prompting to get their shit done.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
Another argument for BCC.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
"Sponsored Links". That box is annoying AF. Dammit! Shrink the whole comments area or something! There's only a tiny vertical space where the comments are visible, because that box covers the whole right side of the comment content.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
http://bjk5.com/post/718871964... ... Anybody in the org can join any of these email lists. analytics-team@ is usually just team members, but analytics-blackhole@ has all sorts of lookie-loo subscribers who're interested in analytics happenings."
"Every team has two email addresses: one for team members and one for the team's "blackhole." [For example: ] analytics-team@khanacademy.org and analytics-blackhole@khanacademy.org.
The -team@ address is for emailing all members of the team. When you send email to analytics-team@, you expect everyone on the analytics team to read it. Subscribing to analytics-team@ means analytics-related email will land in your priority inbox as soon as it's sent, and you're expected to read it.
The -blackhole@ address is for anything else that has anything to do with analytics. When you CC:analytics-blackhole@, you don't expect subscribers to immediately read it. Subscribing to analytics-blackhole@ means you'll receive analytics-related email, but it'll get filtered out of your inbox and you're not expected to read it unless you feel like it.
The approach was derived from how Stripe does it: https://stripe.com/blog/email-...
So, given the original story, maybe this transparency approach has an extra side effect (perhaps unintended) of maintaining trust in an organization by avoiding the "directly CC-ing the boss" effect?
It's not quite BCCing the whole company -- like Tesen joked -- as it is more organized. But essentially the whole company could in theory read (almost) anything with that approach.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
One of the reasons you CC someone up the food chain is because you don't trust the person you're sending the email to to do their job.
Yeah, it's more about the sender covering their arse. It's one of the reasons I left my last employer.
That, and the practice of my boss' boss copying his boss in the CC, and using read receipts, and getting pissed off when people used the "don't send the read receipt" function in Outlook. Being management, his inbox limit was....large.....so he had a sub-folder for each and every employee he dealt with, above and below him, and a processing rule that put the read receipts into the employee's sub-folder, i.e. send an email to dwywit, and the read receipt would be placed into the sub-folder 'dwywit' (except I never sent them). Obviously this was his practice so that he could come down on staff who didn't read his emails. He came down heavy-handed on one of my underlings, accusing the kid of not reading his emails. The look on his face when I pointed out that 1. read receipts were optional, so there were probably a lot of people who chose not to send them, and 2. making read receipts non-optional acros the organisation would quickly fill up the mail server, was, as they say, priceless. Bonus, said underling was able to quote the email in question and answer its concerns.
Said manager was later named in an audit report - being named in such a report is one step away from being referred to the public prosecutor. He didn't last long after that.
And that's what happens when you promote an accountant beyond his competence, and put him in charge of IT.
They sentenced me to twenty years of boredom
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My UID is prime!
This shows the boss you are responsive, but also sends a subtle message (to both your boss and the co-worker) that you are above that game. As a boss, my opinion of any subordinate would go down if they resort to such demoralizing behavior. I don't want people like that destroying the morale on my team.
I would rather that I feel trust than you feel trusted, but that's a feeling only you can create by acting in a trustworthy manner and inviting accountability. I welcome the boss being CC'ed on all emails to me if it makes someone feel better about me.
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Fear and Low Psychological Safety is the the goal of many a corporation. I worked as a temp for many companies and.. sorry, this is the main theme of most. Management, in their twisted and convoluted minds, they think that somehow they will get more work out of you if you are sad and divided up. Maybe they think that brief socializing is "unproductive" and don't understand that friendly bonds that foster true team spirit are important for good mental health and working better together? Or they think that laughter is counter productive, and rush to see what the "problem" is the second you laugh? (P.S. Stay far away from people who gossip!, Or as you say C.C.)
Or, if you are asking a peer who you do not manage and has his own tasks, to do something you ask, you CC the boss who will resolve priorities. Or, if you talked to the boss and he asked you to ask peer to do said thing, you CC the boss. Generally I expect the boss to be controlling resources and managing priorities, he really ought to be copied on a lot of mails. If that peer is doing exceptional work that he doesn't even have to do, CC'ing the boss is also the way of making sure the boss knows said person is doing really well, I also CC the boss on that sort of thing. I want good people to be incentivized to stay every bit as much as I want to help identify bad people who can be incentivized to leave.
I was nervous about people CCing the boss when I was fresh out of college, but I got over it the hard way. The consequence of NOT CC'ing the boss, in my experience, is people not delivering and the boss blaming ME, and asking why he wasn't CC'd. So now any time I am making a request that involves real work, and asking someone to stop doing what they're doing, I CC the boss.
Honestly the only person with a legitimate reason to complain about CC'ing the boss, is the boss. That has never happened.
... I ever CC'd the boss was like:
To: asshole@suckycompany.com
From: Me
Subject: Your stuff still doesn't work ...
I know that you want to make my firm happy, and you know I do too.
So far, I'm the only one making any positive contributions, which results in your company's performance sucking big time.
Because you are incompetent, I am CC'ing my boss, your boss, and, to get the point across I'm CC'ing YOU.
Please fix this before end of work day Friday or I will be scheduling a meeting with you, me, my boss, and your boss on Monday.
Sincerely,
Me
CC: Me, You, My Boss, Your Boss
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
At more than one place I've worked, our higher-ups have told us to cc them on just about everything. I keep thinking I only need to pester them if we need their guidance or their resources, but I'm told over and over that management wants to have full awareness, and it's a mistake if I don't include them by cc. So it's not that I don't trust my co-workers, it's that my bosses want to be aware of all our interactions and I get in trouble for being discrete.
If people would pay attention and respond to emails without my/their boss CC'd then I wouldn't feel the need to CC him/her. Do your job and I don't have to go over your/our head(s).
because you're either blowing me off or screwing me over. If you see my Boss on an email chain then congratulations, you done fucked up son, and I'm comin' for ya.
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I hate having my boss looped in, because then he wants what I'm doing. I tell him, and even if it's exactly the same thing he told me to do last time, I get told "that's not what I want" and then ... it goes down hill. Despite the fact I love working for my boss, despite the fact I love working for this company, I decided earlier today that "it's time to move on". I've been in IT for multiple decades. I don't have any sort of diva pride - I just want to do the job my boss wants me to do, the way he wants it done. But a constantly moving goal post is a race that gets pretty old after two years, and I'm ready for a new kind of waltz. One where I don't feel like I have three left feet and one of them is in a bucket of cement.
Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.
When the sender CC's their own boss, it is usually one of four things:
Oh there is a fifth reason, although this could apply to both types: the sender is a complete douchebag.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
"Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams" explains how supporting true team spirit is a key aspect of a high-performance organization. You can find some good evidence in there for your point.
The authors also explain better ways to manage email. Here are subheadings from the book chapter:
Chapter 33: E(vil) Mail 199
In Days of Yore 199
Corporate Spam 200
What Does "FYI" Even Mean? 200
Is This an Open Organization or a Commune? 201
Repeal Passive Consent 201
Building a Spam-less Self-Coordinating Organization 202
In general, their focus on good use of email is on helping people in organizations self-coordinate. It is more a vision of the manager as supporting good communications within and between teams versus than a manager being a hub of communications. So, to them, lots of CCs on emails suggest the possibility of some sort of organizational dysfunction which could be corrected by training people to be more self-coordinating.
That book is the second item I list here in a curated reading list on creating and sustaining high-performance organizations:
https://github.com/pdfernhout/...
Another book by one of the authors (Tom DeMarco) is listed as the first item: "Slack: Getting Past Burnout, Busywork, and the Myth of Total Efficiency"
But, this is all easier said than done in practice.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
I haven't seen anyone mention this, but I will typically CC the boss if I'm asking for something that should be questioned. For example, if I'm asking for access to a system or application managed by a different team, or card access to a new building, or creation of a new vlan. Usually simply CC'ing the boss is enough to bypass any questions, but in case they do ask "is there approval for this" the boss is already on the chain to say "yes".
Exactly this. As a "boss" I'm part of the team. My guys CC me on shit because they trust me and they value the 25 years of experience I have in our field. When shit goes down, it helps that the boss has been in the loop and has had at least the opportunity to weigh in before things go off the rails instead of being brought in after the fact to do damage control.
At the same time, I recognize that this only works if I'm treating this information flow as simply that. I usually skim most of the e-mail I'm CC'd on for potential issues (which I'll talk to people out-of-band, rather than in direct response to the e-mail) just to keep a general idea of where things are at. That's my job as a manager.
As a counterpoint, I've also seen managers who get CC'd on everything take that as an opportunity to micro-manage.
Yup, I feel I'm spending too much time sweeping up messes that could have been fixed by having some conversations weeks earlier. I'd much rather hear someone say that they might be late than for them to actually be late at the same time that I'm telling my boss that everything is going smoothly. I'd much rather critique in a design review than to find out in the code review that everything is done wrong, and yet the latter seems to happen more often. I have a few people that never send me ask questions in email or in person unless I'm walking past their cubicles. I don't necessarily think this is about secrecy, but some people seem like they don't like to communicate and just want to huddle up inside the cube.
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The paper is still under review, but our experimental studies on 594 samples of the substance found that liquid H2O becomes solid when cooled below this temperature. The presence of the solid state was confirmed by probing (poking) the substance with a sophisticated testing device (finger).
By testing with different temperature ranges, including randomized temperatures, it was confirmed that the transition happens at or close to zero degrees Celsius.
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The fact that I'm CCing the boss says: 'I don't trust you' not 'you should feel less trusted'.
This. I mean, whoop-de-doo, not trusting someone makes them feel less trusted!
Seriously. Nobody knew this?
I'll go a step further: You're no longer exchanging a view, you are tacitly indicating that the correspondance is now one way: "me (and the boss) to you". Cc'ing any senior means you are at best a 'toady' sucking up to the senior or a 'bully' using the senior's e-presence to quell any discussion.
The action also has side effects. It can clog a senior's inbox losing useful correspondance in the 'noise' of all the frivolous Cc's.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
It's SOP with my current boss. I CC him on all of my stuff to keep him in the loop. My previous boss didn't have that policy. And, when I CCd her, it was usually because things weren't getting done, and she could light a much hotter fire under that person's butt than I could.
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Unless it is a status email or email where the party I'm emailing knows the info has to go to the boss (as he may want say) I don't CC, but frankly over the years, I've done this when, frankly I _DON'T_ trust the person!
I've had more than one situation over the gasp 40 YEARS I've been working where you'd tell coworker X, and they would deny you did, and you'd have to jump through hoops to make your manager (and sometimes their manager) believe you
The problem is often solved by "CC:Their Manager, Your Manager"
Gee, you mean it makes the person say "CharlieG doesn't trust me" - well DUH.
I won't do it until the first time I'm under the bus because of you, but after that, I'm trying to not only cover MY ass, but also send the message "No, I DON'T trust you" - not only to you, but to my manager and YOUR manager that I no longer trust you.
BTW, there was also probably an email to my manager (in my case, my 'manager' is the CEO), and your manager about why they were being CC'd (aka how you threw me/the project under the bus) that YOU were not CC'd. When you get to the level I'm at, this is usually about a person who reports to a fellow manager, and the CC/BCC might even be going to the CEO/HR as part of a documentation trail
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
I do this a lot actually.
Its very rare that I do this because I want the boss person to get involved. I do to keep them from swinging by my office and interrupting whatever I'm doing so they can ask how that particular activity is going (at which point I have to dig up that exact email to refresh my own memory). It also keeps them happier with me, which in the long run keeps me happier.
If I want them to *participate*, I'll add them on the recipient list, not the cc's.
...never let your boss get blindsided by anything you are even remotely related to if you can help it.
If you have information, reservations, disagreements with anyone, co-workers, customers, no matter, loop your boss in on it. The Boss is there to coordinate and clear obstacles so that you can do your job and so the company can achieve its goals (at least in a healthy, sane organization).
There are always two sides at least to everything and each "side" will go up the other chain of command. If you don't keep your management involved, they will look like fools when asked about it in their meetings and they have no knowledge or response. That will then come back to you.
If your colleagues are professionals, they will understand and will do it themselves.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
Is this from the department "open doors"?
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Is what my lawyer father always told me...
In this case if he got those emails and disseminated the information to networkBoy *prior* to receiving HRLegal confidentiality training I'd argue it was of no fault of his own! :p