The Dilemma Debate

In this edition, I would like to bring up few dilemmas which a lot of early career professionals go through and might appear very trivial – but when they all sum up as a whole, becomes a part of the personality of a professional and consequently the culture of the organization.

Should I copy my Manager on my mails or not ?

Copying our manager in our mails gives us a sense of confidence that we have a safety net around us as the manager is already in loop and that they are informed, and we are covered in case of any issues. Consider that your Manager has a team of 10 people under him/her and if each one of you get 10 emails a day and you cc your Manager in your responses, the Manager would receive (10 X 10 = 100 emails). Do you think that the Manager will even have the bandwidth to read all of them and respond ? The problem occurs when your Manager overlooks even an important mail from you, just because they are flooded by emails from you. Again, the situation cannot be generalized as each manager is different. Hence, it might be prudent to check with your Manager on the communication protocol. Most of them would like to be looped in only in case when there is an action expected from them OR If the assignment is critical and could potentially result in escalations in case of any missed actions, and the Manager needs to keep a close watch on it. Copying your Manager does not shift your accountability. You are still ACCOUNTABLE for your work. Next time think about your email etiquette and see if you need to course correct.

Should I do a 'Reply All' to a congratulatory mail ?

Let’s say that the Manager shares a congratulatory email for a team member with the entire team. You are generally tempted to do one of the three things:

a)      Do a ‘Reply All’ so that the entire team knows that you have also responded

b)     Do a ‘REPLY’ just to the individual with Manager on cc – so the Manager knows that you have responded

c)      Do a ‘REPLY’ just to the individual

In the cases (a) and (b), you are again contributing to a series of emails which ideally will then be moved to the ‘Recycle Bin’. Do you think that your team members and your Manager are maintaining a Diary which maintains a log of who all congratulated this person in response to the Manager’s mail and will use it in your favor or against you during your appraisal?

Again, I am not being prescriptive here but a food for thought – what might be most appropriate? Probably a private response to the individual with a personalized touch might help you STRENGTHEN YOUR RELATIONSHIP with them.

Should I acknowledge general messages from the Manager on whatsapp groups ?

 A lot of teams today have an informal whatsapp group primarily meant for more general communication or discussion. Let’s say the Manager shares an “interesting” article on the group. There could be a few scenarios:

a)      You did not read it as you did not have the time OR the subject matter is not an area of your interest

b)     You read it but found it just Ok – nothing great about it

c)      You found it insightful and liked it and wanted to share your thoughts as an addendum to it

d)     You found it insightful and liked it, but that’s it – you don’t have anything to add to it

Suddenly, you see that your other colleagues start posting their “Likes” and “comments” on it. Now, there’s peer pressure and a dilemma – what if I post – will I be perceived as a suck-up ? What if I don’t – the Manager might think that I do not care about them. There is a FEAR OF BEING LEFT BEHIND.

Let me tell you that this is just the beginning, you will have this dilemma throughout your career until you fix it and how do you fix it? Be true to yourself and respond to this situation just in a way you feel like doing. There is nothing official about it. If you show the COURAGE today and respond based on your natural inclination, this will become a part of your personality and you will find it easy to manage such situations, else this could lead to a lot of stress even outside of work. If your Manager is someone who gets upset about these things, then you are working for the wrong person. Time to move !!

I have meetings set up during my non-working hours/ Conflicting Meetings. What should I do?

I believe all of us have heard of “Work Life Balance” and each one of us have our own definitions of it. By God’s grace, the creators of the Calendars have given us few options when a Meeting request comes in our email – we could ‘Accept’, ‘Decline’ or ‘Mark Tentative’. We also have options to block times for ourselves on our calendars as ‘Busy’ and ‘Out of Office’.

Most of us work in global organizations covering multiple time zones with our counterparts in different parts of the world. Trust me – if you do not respect your time, no one else will. Block your calendars appropriately marking times when you need to be out for your lunch, coffee breaks, travels along with your non-working hours so that you do not receive Meeting Requests/calls in the middle of your night. It might not necessarily be fair to call out others as insensitive to your time zones – it could just be that they might have got it wrong because they see your ‘online’ status on your messenger all the time.

I had the same problem during my initial years until one of my Hungarian friends said to me that if I am important for the meeting, then people will schedule based on my availability. If I am not, then do I need to even be on that ? That’s so true – there are so many occasions when we think that we are required for this meeting else we might miss on something important (though a lot of times we are not contributing to it – just listening in). I agree that at times, we can make exceptions, but “Exceptions” cannot become the new “Normal”. If you are finding yourself in such a situation – I would recommend considering 3 options :

(a)   Ask yourself if you are really required for this. If yes, request to reschedule – maybe propose a time yourself (Calendars offer that functionality as well). Unless you ask, you won’t get.

(b)   Do not expect someone else (including your manager) to come to your rescue. If you cannot stand for yourself, no one else will. If you let it happen to you today – this will happen with you tomorrow. You need to take charge of your work timings, don’t let others take charge of it.

(c)    Request a colleague to cover for you (and you can catch up the key messages from them later). Divide and Conquer – and remember to reciprocate that to your colleague when they need you.

When you have Conflicting meetings, it would be superhuman for you to be present in all of them at the same time, ask to reschedule one of them or send a proxy. Do not try to be everywhere to please everyone – you are probably doing more harm in such case because you will not be able to do justice to either of them.

Also – most of the times either by default we choose to “Accept” all meetings or we “Do not Respond” to a Meeting Invite and then leave it up to the last minute to either show up or not show up for the meeting. Generally, it feels uncomfortable to “Decline” a meeting. Always remember, that by not responding to the meeting, you are doing more harm as you have left the meeting organizer in a fix till the last moment. Remember that in a work environment, you are expected to behave professionally. There is nothing personal about declining a meeting. If you respond to the meeting and provide a rationale as to why you cannot make it at a certain time or you are probably not required for the meeting, you are just making it easy for yourself and others. The sooner you realize this and get into this habit of responding to Meeting invites, the better you are making it for yourself and others. It might also help you reclaim your “Work-Life balance”

If you liked this, then do let me know and I can continue to pen a lot more of such dilemmas in the subsequent blogs.