Tribalism – Is Your Email Making It Worse?

Neuroscientists have demonstrated links between the brain and the way we process empathy and its connection to what we typically refer to as tribalism.  That is, we tend to empathize more with people that we view as part of our ‘tribe.’  What is interesting is what qualifies as our tribe.  Some are obvious:  race, ethnicity, social status, religious beliefs are well-known ways in which we divide ourselves into groups.  But researchers have found that even when we are randomly assigned to groups, we quickly begin to empathize more strongly with those in our randomly assigned groups than those outside the group.  Crazy, isn’t it?  So, while it may be natural, we also only have to read the headlines to see the extremes to which tribalism can and has taken us in modern society.  Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld cover this in depth in The Atlantic via their article The Threat of Tribalism($).

Not only is the workplace not immune to tribalism, but it also often foments its own special brand.  Tribalism at work can take several forms.  Below are just a few examples:

·       Field vs. Corporate

·       Sales vs. Production

·       Management vs. Labor

·       On-site vs. remote workers

·       Legacy employees vs those gained through acquisition

Tackling tribalism in the workplace is a multi-faceted issue whose full scope is well beyond this article.  However, one way that we often unwittingly contribute to tribalism is through our communications.  It is this simple tactic that is covered below.

The way in which most of us contribute to an “us vs. them” mentality without realizing it is by unnecessarily narrowing our communications to only our team.  While this might seem efficient and even courteous given that most of us have inboxes overflowing with more email than we will ever read, we inadvertently or worse, intentionally, limit information flow to those on our team and thereby limit the effectiveness of our overall organization and contribute to the perception that information exists only in silos.  This further results in teams that are pitted against each other versus working in concert towards a common objective.

EXAMPLE:

From: VP of Services

To: Services Department Heads

Subj: New Services Policy

Team – we have too many customers with accounts over 90 days in arrears.  Effective immediately, we will stop work on any accounts when they are 120 past due.  Please ensure all project managers are aware of this change.

What’s wrong with this email?  For one thing, not only is some poor salesperson going to get an earful from his or her customer, the salesperson is going to be totally blindsided by the action as they were unaware of the new policy.  Why would the VP of Services leave Sales off the email thread?  Perhaps it was unintentional and a result of the person being so focused on getting the message out that it didn’t cross their mind.  While understandable, it’s still poor leadership.  Good leaders are thoughtful, even under pressure.  An even worse, and all too common reason, is that the sender knows that Sales may have an issue with the new policy and may be intentionally leaving them off the thread to avoid the inevitable objections.  Classic conflict avoidance.  Or, in this case, conflict procrastination, as the issue will eventually come to a head.

Whenever I lay out options for customers or business owners, I always like to present good/better/best scenarios.  So what would that look like in the example above?  Perhaps it might look something like this:

• Good:  CC: the Sales Department heads on the email thread

• Better:  Same as above, but give the Sales VP a heads-up prior to sending

• Best: Collaborate with the Sales VP on the new policy and then jointly announce the new policy with the Sales VP

Action

When you communicate with your team, always ask yourself if your communications need to be limited to just your team or if there are other teams that might benefit from the information or instructions you are passing along.  The simple act of adding others on the cc: line of an email can help remove a few bricks from the walls that divide tribes within organizations.  It’s not hard and it’s something that you can start today.  Ask yourself the following questions before clicking Send on your next email:

• Is there another group or groups that would benefit from knowing this information?

• Am I keeping a group or person off this thread primarily because I don’t want to deal with their potential criticism of or objection(s) to the content?

• Am I restricting this information to my team in order to gain a competitive edge over another team at the company?

• Am I leaving out someone or their team because I really just don’t like them?

Worried about “spamming” people with too much email?  It is true we all get too much email, but it takes less than a second for people to hit the Delete key if an email is truly irrelevant to them, but a high percentage will at least appreciate being included.  I have rarely heard complaints about leaders that overcommunicate, but leaders that keep people in the dark or only share information within their teams?  That particular complaint is all too familiar.  Don’t let it be said of you.

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What is Everyday Leadership?  Read the introduction in the first article in the series.