Fight, flight or do nothing...

11 pm, Friday night. Just reached home after a long flight and a long drive from Bangalore airport to home. Physically exhausted, but playing catch-up with emails in the car left me awake and alert. Phone pings, another mail lands in the just cleared in-box. Picked up the phone and what do I see? A long, vitriolic mail, from Amal, a regional head of sales. This gentleman has been my nemesis, someone who always gets my goat without fail. His management style is 'seat-of-the-pants', and so his region is invariably lagging behind on key quality and process compliance parameters.

Every fortnight, when Raj, my head of process quality sends out the report indicating a 'red' he retaliates with long, nasty emails, with me and everyone he can think of - from his boss the business head to my boss the CEO, on cc. Amal points out gaps and mistakes (real and imaginary), refers to changes in the metric/target (that were never discussed), and generally makes Raj look bad and incompetent.

The past few times, Raj has been responding with facts and denying allegations, and mail chains follow. I too intervened and added my response to these mail chains. After all, he was making Raj and my team look bad - and unfairly so. What will his boss, my peer think? What will the CEO think? If I don't add to the mail chain, Raj will feel let down.

So the moment I saw Amal's mail, I saw red. I typed out a long email in response - marked to him, his boss, and the CEO. I quoted facts, I wrote about how unacceptable his behaviour was, I told his boss and the CEO that the Quality team should be treated with respect...

Rangaraj noticed my frantic typing, knew the background and suggested I not send the mail out just then. I was furious but agreed to wait till morning.

Come morning, I open my mailbox, and find that Raj has typed out a mail in response, Amal has replied - the chain had grown. I opened my draft emails, and re-read my response. Tweaked and edited it, and made sure I gave as good as Raj got (maybe better, my vocabulary is superior!) Hit 'send', and continued to simmer and boil all day and all of Sunday.

Monday came, went, and the whole week went - neither Amal's boss - my peer, nor my boss, the CEO did anything about it. They did not write on the mail chain, didn't talk to me about it, and didn't address Amal or Raj. By now I was feeling wronged and as was my practice, marched into the CEO's office, demanding we speak about this.

He sat me down, ordered our favourite filter coffee, forced me to sip it, and asked me a simple question - 'Why do you stoop to his level? What have you achieved? Is the problem solved?'

I was very upset - shouldn't he be supporting my team? What should I have done differently? Grin and bear it?

Summarising his advice to me, it has stood in good stead for over a decade now. I can deal with vitriol at the workplace in meetings, and on emails, more smartly and professionally.

Step back, and rein in your emotions. Emotional responses make you look unprofessional. You lose, even when you are right. Especially on mails, where your response is right up there and the triggers are way down in the chain, it is only your words that get noticed.

Stop the urge to respond immediately. Whether it be meetings or emails. You need to win the war, even if it means losing the battle.

Understand that senior leaders have bandwidth issues. Petty quarrels are ignored. When you have a pattern of responding to every negative message and comment, you are seen as engaging in a petty quarrel. You are ignored. You lose a bit of your professional credibility. When you don't, it is the other person who is noticed - for the wrong reasons. Your non-response shows your dignity.

He isn't your peer. If he is causing harm to your team, or behaving in an unacceptable manner, speak to his boss. Peer to peer, outlining facts and quoting instances, in a calm, professional manner, and as far as possible, face to face. These are tricky conversations, you don't want to get into a 'your team vs my team'. So prepare well.

Pick your battles wisely. Is the issue critical enough that you need to get involved? Is it going to impact deliverables? Team morale? Reputation? Dispassionately evaluate this, again, sans emotions. If the answer is 'no', just ignore it. Right data doesn't become wrong data just because someone says so.

Counsel your team member - in this case, your head of quality, to side-step, to break the pattern. Tell him to stop responding on emails about the allegations and to call for a meeting if it is critical. Ignoring the mail might be the best signal he can send.

Last, most important - don't miss or ignore genuine feedback that is conveyed badly. If there is a mistake, accept it. Calculation error-correct it.

So folks, am sure you have had these experiences too. What did you do that worked? Do share.