E-mail etiquette and the mailboxes of Sarah Palin, Mark Sanford, and Elizabeth Becton

Photo: Billy Alexander

We may think that our e-mails are relatively private and secure, but time and time again we have seen examples of how our inboxes can actually be publicly leaking sieves. This week, Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s e-mail power struggles with a McCain campaign aide were made public. Last week, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s sappy e-mails to his mistress were laughed at all over the Internet. And the week before that, Elizabeth “Don’t call me Liz!” Becton’s e-mail exchange with a McBee Strategic employee made her one of the most criticized people in the blogosphere. Although these tales of cyberspace woe are somewhat different, they all have a common theme: A little e-mail etiquette can go a long way toward keeping us out of trouble.

Soon after the “Don’t call me Liz!” e-mail exchange was reported on Politico, I spoke to e-mail etiquette expert Janis Fisher Chan—who authored E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide—about her impressions of the incident. While most people focused their attention on Becton’s misdeeds, Chan pointed out that the breakdown in communication was actually a two-way street and there were some definite problems with how the McBee Strategic employee handled the conversation.

1. The McBee employee did not read the signals coming from Becton. Chan said that the multiple apologies were only making things worse and it would have been more effective to take a step back from the situation to find out what was really going on with Becton.

   “You really only need to apologize once and if it goes any farther than that, something else is going on,” she said. “You need to be sensitive to what’s going on in an e-mail interchange, just as you would be in a telephone or face-to-face interchange. When somebody is upset and continues to say the same thing about being upset, then you need to take a step back, figure out what’s going on, and decide how to act.”

    

2. After a certain point, they needed to talk—on the phone. Although the McBee staffer may have thought that the problem with Becton could be resolved over e-mail, clearly that was not going to be the case. After a certain point, going back and forth was counterproductive and it should have been nipped in the bud much sooner.

   “You never go more than two e-mails on the same topic like that. It’s a waste of everybody’s time,” said Chan. “If I had been in that situation, I think I would have apologized once and I would have repeated my request. If I got back another note that said ‘I’m offended that you did this’, then I would either pick up the telephone and try to solve it that way or I would drop it and go on to something more productive.”

    

3. The McBee Strategic employee should not have been so informal in the first place. Although e-mail is a medium that lends itself to casualness, people tend to take liberties that are not appropriate in a business setting.

   “You should never address somebody you don’t know with that kind of informality,” Chan said. “You’ll find out soon enough if the person writes back to you and signs the e-mail ‘Liz’—then you know it is okay.”

Part Two: E-mail etiquette do's and don'ts

Related Reading:
Characteristics of e-mail communication
Don’t call me Liz!: Elizabeth Becton incident illustrates workplace communication breakdown

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