When I am overtired, the filter between my brain and my mouth isnât functioning at peak levels. Not something Iâm proud of and definitely something Iâve worked on over the years because nobody likes working around me in that mode and itâs gotten me into trouble.
A mentor would say something in a meeting I disagreed with and out came a sarcastic replyâŚin front of everyone. A leader I knew would make a call I didnât love and Iâd tell them exactly what I thought about it, unedited, to a bigger group than I intended.
The five seconds it takes to clap back at someone usually feels good (sometimes SO DARN GOOD) in the moment. Iâve been there. But the five seconds, days, and years after that? Not so good.
Thankfully, the people on the receiving end of my particular brand of snark handled it gracefully (and I appreciate that about them). Some have even had the kindness to forget about the times I was a total brat to them.
But Iâm sure it didnât look great for my technical credibility and it definitely didnât build the kind of trust I wanted people to have in me.
Iâve reflected on those moments over the years as Iâve moved from being an individual contributor through various levels of people management, but it all rushed back again recently while standing in a hotel lobby, reading someone elseâs draft email on their phone.
How We Got Here
A manager in our ecosystem had sent an email that landed badly. Theyâd gotten worried that two teams (mine and an adjacent team) were leaving colleagues out of some shared work.
Thankfully, both teams were actively working to be inclusive but the manager had gotten nervous that it was happening later than needed. So the manager said soâŚwith high emotion. On a wide distribution list that included both teams, their management chain, and me.
The story that reached me was that the adjacent team felt theyâd been âyelled atâ in front of their own leadership. One engineer in particular was hurt and angry and drafted a reply to provide feedback about how they felt and what they wanted to change for the future. Before the email went anywhere the engineer shared it with a friend who read it and suggested they run it by me before hitting send.
Which is how we ended up standing in a hotel lobby during a trip with several members from both teams, when an engineer handed me their phone and asked: âShould I send this?âđĽ
What I Recommended
I started with: your feelings are valid. Your team was called out in front of your leadership for something that felt untrue and felt personal. Being angry or feeling hurt about that makes sense.
Then I told them I was reading their response with two things in mind:
1ď¸âŁ Does the content / tone stay within the bounds of our code of conduct?
2ď¸âŁ How likely is the receiving manager to actually absorb this feedback?
My answer to the first question (which admittedly, is subjective) surprised them, I think.
The email was direct. It was clear about impact and asked for a different response if it happened again. But it wasnât disrespectful and it wasnât a personal attack.
They were braced for me to recommend toning things down and instead I told them the wording was fine (in my opinion) to send as-is.
The wording wasnât the problem. The planned audience was.
The engineer originally planned to send the feedback via Reply All to the same broad list the manager had used to send the original email critique.
Which meant doing the exact thing we were asking that manager to stop doing and making it a lot less likely theyâd absorb any of the feedback.
Iâve also worked with this manager for many years so I had a sense for what kinds of feedback might actually land, but in this case it came down to:
Feedback in front of a crowd puts most people on defense. And feedback received on defense doesnât land.
So my recommendation was to send it to them directly.
This reinforced the best practice of giving praise publicly and giving feedback privately (or as close to privately as you can get).
How Power Dynamics Complicate Things
The engineer did not love these recommendations at first. Their reaction was basically: if this manager can blast feedback about me and my team to a big audience, why canât I?
Which is an understandable feeling. Iâve also been there.
Itâs also worth naming that power dynamics, across any part of who we are (role, seniority, tenure, identity), make these moments more complicated.
The person with less power in a situation is often the one being asked to âtake the high roadâ and that can feel like being asked to absorb the hit twice.
I donât think that tension fully goes away, and Iâm not going to pretend it does.
What I said was that their frustration was valid and also that the most reliable way to reinforce the behavior we want to see at work is to demonstrate it. Especially when itâs hard. Especially when the other person didnât. Doesnât mean it will feel as good as the clap back and DEFINITELY doesnât excuse / condone that personâs behavior.
Each workplace is different in terms of available corrective action processes and those should be deployed where commensurate with the action(s) being responded to. This helps ensure that we arenât asking someone to âtake the high roadâ as the only solution for behavior that is outside the boundaries of a workplace Code of Conduct (for example).
Getting back to the story, I offered a middle path for the engineer: send it to the manager directly, and cc your own manager and senior manager.
That gave the engineer documentation of the feedback.
It gave their managers a chance to offer support and, if needed, have their own separate conversation with the receiving manager.
And it let their leadership see them model exactly the behavior we were asking for, in a moment with a big power differential, while they were still upset.
The engineer sent it that way and the receiving manager acknowledged the feedback. Did it actually land? I donât know yet. Time will tell. But it didnât re-escalate and the next email in that thread wasnât another reply-all.
The Debrief After the Lobby
Later I debriefed with a team member who had also been on the email chain and heard my recommendations for the engineerâs response. This team member has told me before theyâre interested in management someday, so this felt like a good âwhat would you do when...â moment to talk through.
I asked what they thought about the conversation with the engineer and what questions they had about my reasoning or why Iâd recommended what I did.
What they wanted was my insight into working well with that particular manager (which ended up being the more advanced question). We talked about why modeling the behavior matters even when itâs tough and how both of us could keep helping the adjacent team build trust with that manager going forward.
And I told them the thing I most wanted them to hear: the best part of the whole situation was the demonstration of trust. The engineer trusted us enough to share the draft. That doesnât happen by accident. Thatâs trust somebody built, one positive interaction at a time.
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Bottom Line
I know the clap back feels good. Iâve been the overtired engineer with no filter in a crowded meeting and I remember that five seconds of satisfaction so well. I also remember the fall out afterward.
If youâre the one holding the draft email, the two lenses I used in that lobby work for anyone:
1ď¸âŁ Is it respectful? Direct is fine. Clear is fine. Personal attacks arenât.
2ď¸âŁ Who actually needs to hear it? Not who you want to witness it. Who needs it in order for something to change.
And if youâre the manager someone hands their phone to (in a lobby, in a hallway, in a DM at 9pm), remember what that moment is. Itâs trust. Donât spend it rewriting their feelings.
Validate the feelings. Edit the distribution list.
Iâd appreciate your support at any level - free or paid - as it helps more leaders find Altitude! Thank you for being a reader and part of this community. You mean a lot to me.
Iâd love to hear about your experiences with clapping back, reading someoneâs draft feedback email ahead of time, and the power of debriefing after making a recommendation / decision.
See you next Tuesday,
I loved this story. And point #2 "How likely is the receiving manager to actually absorb this feedback?"
I can def see how a message can be more powerful if the receiver isn't distracted by being pissed off / defensive / publically shamed