The members of your writing group need to plan and write a short report on successful strategies for the job search. Your group has had two meetings in Google Hangouts so far, after which members have emailed and Replied to All, with everyone getting lots of emails with long threads about the report.
Two team members, Jasmine and Malik, are responsible for strategies for LinkedIn. Jasmine did research on what employers look for on LinkedIn, and she emailed her research to Malik without copying the writing group. Malik replied to Jasmine to ask a question, and he copied the other group members. Jasmine replied to Malik—not to all.
Malik is annoyed with Jasmine. He says they should be copying everyone in the writing group on everything they do so that people are in the loop.
Jasmine thinks they are drowning in email. She says they should only copy the entire group when everyone needs the information.
With whom do you agree? Why? Discuss with those who comment on the post.
Photo credit: Detail from Gmail – Inbox by Gustavo da Cunha Pimenta on Flickr, used under a CC-BY-SA 2.0 license.
43 Comments
Personally, I agree with Jasmine. Replying all can be quite useful when you need to keep an entire group informed, but receiving countless unnecessary emails can cause a negative impact. She is absolutely right in saying on the necessary emails should be reply all. If everyone replies all like Malik would like, many group members may stop reading the emails as attentively and as a result, may miss the vital information. This is why I believe you must use reply all wisely. It can be quite effective in keeping everyone informed, but if used incorrectly it can hurt the group.
I agree with Jasmine as well, as well as with your points that replying all to messages can cause people to stop paying attention to the information in the e-mails. I think an effective strategy for communication would be that Jasmine and Malik correspond with each other about their portion of the report, and then one of them e-mails a summary of their findings out to the entire group.
I, too, agree with Jasmine and I think this example applies to all forms of group communication, not just email. For example, if you’re in a group message (like through Facebook, GroupMe, texting, etc) with your team members, it might be beneficial to start a separate thread with the people working on your specific part of the project. I also think this strategy helps to “divide and conquer” more effectively. Sometimes, if every member of the group is involved in every piece of the project, it’s easier to come across more contrasting opinions. By dividing the work and simultaneously dividing the communication, smaller sub-groups can make decisions about their portion of the project more productively.
Based on these set of circumstances, I also agree with Jasmine’s perspective. The point of a writing group is to divide up specific tasks for individual members to do, so that not every single person is responsible for doing everything. This is a wonderful example of how our own writing groups should work on projects in the near future. I this specific example, only Jasmine and Malik were tasked with formulating strategies for LinkedIn. With that taken into consideration, there is no reason to communicate their research with anyone else, but with each other. The only reason that they should share this information other than with each other, is if someone else in the group reached out to them asking them for their findings. Otherwise, they should attempt to not add more to their other group member’s plate by overloading them with unnecessary emails.
While I agree that getting long email threads about a part of the project that isn’t yours can be annoying, I still think that the information should be disseminated to everyone. So in a way, I guess I agree with both Jasmine and Malik. Instead of replying all to every email related to the project, perhaps each section of the group could maintain the information they find and a summary of their thinking in a GoogleDoc that the entire group has access to. That way, no one is getting bogged down with tons of emails, but each person can see the individual parts of the whole project, even if it’s not their respective assignment.
I completely agree with your statement. I had not considered the fact that people may miss vital information if they receive too many emails but I think that is a very good point. In addition to missing information, excessive emailing can lead people to get annoyed with their team members. Hostility between team members is never a good thing and should be avoided if possible.
I would have to agree with Jasmine on this. She and Malik are the ones working on the LinkedIn aspect of the report. So instead of bombarding the whole group with many emails on her findings about LinkedIn, she should just send them to just Malik because he too is working on that aspect. When Jasmine needs to send out an email to the whole group it should be more so when the email will relate to the report as a whole, and in that case everyone would need to know what she has to say. Because she emailed the research she did just to Malik, I feel like that was justified because they are working on a separate part of the report compared to everyone else. If the group kept sending out every email they had about their part to everyone, there would be too many emails in their inbox that they might miss out on the more important emails that are related to they part they are working on.
I also agree with Jasmine, the points you bring up are interesting regarding the other group members might miss emails in their inbox related to their assignments. Seeing an email that does not pertain to you could be misleading and could cause one to overlook other important emails. In some cases, however, I side with Malik. The whole team might benefit from the research the other two members were emailing about. All in all, this is a team assignments so maybe both Malik and Jasmine should ask the others what they prefer.
I agree with you that Jasmine has the better approach on this one. Part of the reason groups divide up labor is so that there isn’t an overload of emails and information. Plus, I feel like Malik should of asked Jasmine first about whether or not they should be emailing the whole group before he did so. Personally I think only their final product of their section of the work needs to be sent to the whole group.
I think that if a group project has multiple parts, then every person should be able to see every part. It’s crucial to the success of a project that each member can tell what the other people are doing–it helps to avoid gaps and overlaps. But I don’t think long reply-all email chains are the answer. Another avenue towards shared information could help avoid the conflict between Malik and Jasmine while still allowing everyone to see everything, as I believe should be the way a group research project functions.
I think this is should be a group decision. In the workplace, its not uncommon to spend an hour every day just on emails. Communication is very important in the workplace because you may be working with someone in an office across the country. Sometimes it’s just nice to keep up-to-date with what is going on. I do not think that drowning in email is a good enough reason not to reply to all. However, if their group as a whole were to decide that they will only email the people that are necessary to email, then that is a fine strategy. Same for if they wanted to reply to all with every email. I looked that this issue by bringing it into the workplace even though it is college students working on one of their courses. But, college should be preparing you for the workplace/your profession.
You brought up a good point about how the group should decide on the issue. I never really thought of it that way, I just thought that either Malik or Jasmine were the right ones. Depending on what the group prefers as a whole is what they should go with when sending out emails. Maybe some people check every single email no matter how many they receive, so even if they get a lot of emails, they will at least know the progress of the other sections of the report. A benefit to allowing the group to decide is that maybe some people in the group will like to know the progress of each of the different sections of the report just to make sure that everyone is on track and working on their part.
I agree with this, I think that Malik was working in more of a professional mindset. If you’re working in a group it is important for all team members to be privy to and have access to all of the research and materials gathered regardless of if it isn’t directly under the portion of the project that they are working on. This ensures that all team members are able to answer any possible questions and if another member is not doing their part or has something come up that prevents them from finishing their work on the project it makes it that much easier for another member to step in and complete the task without having to redo all of the work the previous member did but possibly didn’t share. If someone really gets annoyed with emails then it’s very easy to turn off notifications or to wait and only look two or three times throughout the day so that they don’t feel like they are constantly reading the same information.
I have to disagree with this. In the workplace, your coworkers don’t need or (generally) want to know every little step that occurs. While it is important for every member of a group to understand the different aspects of a project, they are in a group for a reason. Often, groups will have specialists in every department needed. For example, an employer or superior wouldn’t expect a worker from the marketing department to be able to explain or replicate a code written by the tech department or a worker from the tech department to come up with a marketing strategy. One suggestion I would have for this group would be to have weekly update emails that ARE sent to everyone, so those interested could get a concise update on what everyone else is working on. Jasmine and Malik could also copy everyone once their research has reached a conclusion.
Yeah I like what you said about making it a group decision. I think Malik was handling it in a professional way and at least when the group is starting out, it’s important to be more thorough rather than leave information out. If they start with emailing about every single decision and later learn that the members prefer to just receive key updates then they should do that. I just believe that in a work-type situation I would rather have too much information than not enough.
I really like your opinion where you do not pick a side but try to rationalize the situations between both sides. This all can be settled earlier before starting the project by setting specific ground rules to avoid problems such as the ones in the above post. To make it simple, all of this would not be a problem in the first place if the group have decided earlier on that emails will only be sent to all if it requires work as a whole and if not then just communicate between the ones responsible for the workload. In the end, that is how a group should work by figuring out even the simplest stuffs from the start to avoid any misunderstandings in the group like the ones between Malik and Jasmine. It also may help to have a functioning group leader who can help settle any problems in the group while also ensuring the tasks are still going on smoothly despite any circumstances.
I think both Jasmine and Malik have a good point, but I personally see where Malik is coming from a little more. I think Malik has a good point of wanting to make sure that everyone understands what is going on. When he was asking a question and then copied everyone on the email, maybe he wanted to make sure if anyone else had the same question that it would be answered. I think in group settings when things can get confusing it’s important to have everyone in the loop about everything. On the other hand, I see what Jasmine is saying about only wanting to involve members on the important things and not have everyone listen to every question. Sometimes people are so busy that they don’t have time to read every single detail of a conversation and just want the highlights. It is common in the workplace to involve everyone in emails and when I had my internship two summers ago, I would have 20+ emails just from one conversation between a supplier and our ingredient manager. I found it helpful to be a part of all the emails just to know what is going on. I would have to agree with Malik on this situation, however I think he complicated it by copying members halfway through his conversation with Jasmine.
I agree with Jasmine on this issue. While reply-all can be useful in some situations, it can also be very annoying. As they were directly asking questions to one another that did not concern the rest of the group’s responsibilities, I would not have used reply-all in this scenario. Instead, I would summarize the situation in the next group meeting and present our resolution to any problems we encountered. That way, the group is still kept informed on the situation without having to filter through unwanted emails..
Occasionally, reply-all emails could be sent out by mistake instead of sending it to a specific group of people; therefore, one must make sure that the email you send should be directed to whoever you expect to follow up on it instead of annoying the other party with unnecessary detail. Group meetings are definitely the way to go to address solutions to whatever problems are being faced, as filtering wanted and unwanted emails are critical in this case.
Like most of the people that have commented, I agree that Jasmine has the better approach to this issue. Personally, I would be annoyed if I was continuously getting bombarded with emails that did not pertain to my portion of the project, especially in the early stages. Obviously at the very end when the final portions of the project are done, I would want to read over everything just to make sure there are no simple errors. I think Malik should have talked to Jasmine before copying everyone however, or even the whole group could have had a discussion about how to communicate. Maybe other members in the group wanted to see the progress and would like to be included in every email. Overall it should be a group decision, but on first glance I think Jasmine had the right idea.
I was torn between both options when reading this scenario. On the one hand, the group having all the information about the project could prove useful to the other members of the group in their specific parts. But on the other hand, the labor has already been divided so it isn’t entirely necessary to email everything to all the members of the group. I think Jasmine and Malik should send what they have done once their part of the project is complete. Their information could help the other members tweak their parts of the project, but ultimately if the labor is divided then that means the separate project legs could be completed independent of each other. They should all regroup once every group member is done to ensure that their project is presentable all-around.
That’s an interesting compromise, but I believe the scenario was presenting the idea that Jasmine had information irrelevant to the work of the rest of the group. Malik then asked her a direct question, letting everyone else know that he did, also including the previous email she sent him. I think it’s important to analogously look at what that would mean in a group chat application, like GroupMe. Imagine if she direct messaged him some information, and he asked her a question back, then took a screenshot and posted it back to the main group. It’d be awkward. It’s extremely passive aggressive and violating certain boundaries surrounding the idea of only messaging one person. Translating that analogy back to email is just a more formal setting.
Your compromise would work fine if that was agreed upon from the start, but the heat is already there. It’d require a little more remediation from someone else in the group to create a consensus.
Personally, I see where both sides are coming from. It can be frustrating to have to ask a million questions when they could have been answered if everyone was copied in the first place. It also is frustrating when you get too many emails and you read through them only to discover the same things you’ve already read or that don’t apply to you. I see where Jasmine is coming from a little more. This situation reminds me of my family group text in a sense. My one sister will directly ask my mom a question, then everyone else chimes in and within 15 minutes I have over 40 texts, none of which apply to me. Usually I do not respond anyway. I think that if you need to address an issue, only address it to the person directly. But I do see where Malik is coming from, however I think Jasmines viewpoint makes more sense to me.
This reminds me of my family group chat too! I thought that right away when I first read the situation and I was inclined to side with Jasmine. However, I thought about it a little more and I realized while the side conversations that arise in my group chat are not relevant to most members, that isn’t really the case with the group project. Each member should be involved in the individual tasks for the group project. Now, if they start straying off topic, then someone should address them and request they communicate via a private message.
I understand where both are coming from. Actually, I have been in a situation just like this before. From my perspective, I think it is important to lay out some communication ground rules before any team gets going on work and emails. Therefore, the problem wouldn’t have arisen. However, because it did, I would agree with Jasmine. Why? Compartmentalization. If the information isn’t needed by someone, they don’t need to be included in the conversation. In a work environment, I have found that a large number of emails flooding my feed has distracted me from what I needed to get done, and I know a few others in that environment that feel the same way.
While I believe we need to know a bit more about the situation and what the other group members are working on to make an accurate judgement on this issue, the way this article is written presents an obvious bias towards Jasmine’s side. However, I do agree with her opinion on this matter. To further back up my argument, I did a bit of research and came across an article by Business Insider that listed some common bad email habits and how to avoid them. Sure enough, “Replying All” is on this list. As Haefner states in the article “If you’re responding to an email sent out to a group, be sure you are only hitting ‘reply all’ if your reply is truly necessary for everyone to receive.”
http://www.businessinsider.com/unprofessional-email-habits-2017-2/#-4
Both sides have valid arguments. Replying all on emails can be an effective strategy to get information across to a large number of people very quickly. This will keep everyone up to date and informed on the progress, as well as allow the rest of the group to use the information in the email. On the other hand, the information does not necessarily pertain to the rest of the group, only to Jasmine and Malik. This could annoy the other members of the group with unnecessary information, as well as cloud their inbox and hide other important emails. I think it is important to lay out some ground rules regarding communication at the beginning of the project to avoid conflicts like this. If I had to chose a side, I would side with Jasmine because I think the information only concerns her and Malik, not the rest of the group.
I agree slightly with Jasmine, but I can see where Malik is coming from. Since the LinkedIn portion of the project only involves the two of them, it makes sense that the correspondence about that subject should only be between the two of them. Perhaps they should be using a separate email thread, however, to keep more strictly on the subject matter. In general I think that the more information that is provided to everyone, the better, so I agree with Malik on that point, but since the LinkedIn stuff isn’t strictly necessary to everyone, they should move that discussion into a different email thread.
I agree with Jasmine. Although some may think that an overload of emails is a bad thing, I believe that it keeps everyone in the loop with what is going on. Althought it may not directly involve some of the group members, it still instills that everyone in the group is a team and should behave as such. More importantly, it also makes everyone accountable for the information. If everyone is included in the email, no one has the excuse that they never receive the info or never saw it. Therefore, everyone can be responsile if he/she does not get something done.
I am siding with Malik. As someone who is very serious about school work, I would want to know how each task is being accomplished in a group project so that I can ensure we will be getting a good grade. Instead of sending constant emails to check on a group members progress, I would prefer I just check my email to see what they are working on. I think not sending these emails would actually lead to more emails! Additionally, I think it is beneficial to have an idea of every aspect of the group project. This task may be assigned to just Malik and Jasmine but originally the team received the project as a whole. Imagine your boss asking you about the budget on a project YOU are working on and yo responding with “I don’t know, it wasn’t my job.” In a work environment, you should know everything about a project you are working on, including background research, finances, logistics, etc. If I was in this group, I would want to double check Jessica’s work to ensure it meets standards. Plus, seeing every piece of the project helps you better understand the project as a whole – and you might learn something from her research. If it is a group project, the group should be included.
I agree with you. This is a group assignment, so the other members should have a say on iffy courses of action happening in every part of the project. In group projects, people usually split up the work, but everything needs to be cohesive. Even though one may not be the main person in charge of a task in a project, it does not mean one should not care about that part of the project either. A group is responsible for everything as a whole. In this case, Jasmine sent her research only to Malik which is fine. But, in terms of the question that Malik asked, he purposefully replied to everyone in the group… Why else would he change from a private message to public? This probably means it is a question that he wanted the group to see and know the answer to. I agree with the fact that this could cause even more emails because people will ask even more questions that could have been avoided if they saw Jasmines reply.
I definitely agree with Jasmine. If there’s a subject that only concerns one person, there’s really no to copy everyone else on the conversation. Even in a group project, if it’s not relevant for everyone to see they shouldn’t receive emails about it. When using a group chat application, it’s a more appropriate environment to always address everyone. When using email, it’s more important to focus on who the necessary recipients are.
Further, sending an email to someone directly is private enough to respect that choice. It’s analogous to a direct message in a group messaging app. If you wouldn’t copy a private conversation back to a group conversation, then it’s certainly rude to do so in email.
I agree with Jasmine that you don’t have to copy an email to everyone in the group. If the information is not relevant to them then it just takes up space in their inbox and they are likely to delete it anyhow. I understand that Mailk wants to keep everyone in the group informed, but I don’t think that should come down to every last little detail. If the question he is asking is only for his benefit or only related to his part of the project then I think keeping it between him and Jasmine is okay. If the question is one that he thinks that the entire group might have or pertains to the group as a whole then it’s okay to copy to everyone else.
I tend to side with Malik in this case. I believe when you are in a group, any communication done between group members should have all other members copied as well, just so they know what is going on as well. When individuals start to leave group members out of the loop, there tend to be communication issues that can then lead to more problems. I just believe that including all group members in all communication that happens is the most efficient and respectful way for a team to cooperate together successfully. Keeping information, and sometimes even keeping secrets from other group members can cause real discord between members and cause the value of the work to decrease because of these communication errors.
I tend to fall somewhere in between depending on the person. I have found in my professional experience that some people prefer to be included in all emails so they can stay in the loop. I think the best decision is to ask if the person would like to be included, but if in doubt I would default to reply-all, as the individual is always capable of deleting the emails.
I really appreciate all of the comments above, as it gives me an idea of what others might prefer.
I mostly agree with Jasmine, but I think this is a false dilemma and would prefer a third way.
My preferred way to deal with email (and snail mail for that matter) is by taking the “what can they do to me?” approach. I destroy anything I receive that I can ignore without consequences (which is most of the email and snail mail I receive). The only email I care to spend time on is that which either is demanding that I do something or providing me with information that I need to know. The former I think is the best possible use of email. The latter is what the situation in this post is about.
While on it’s face it’s better that emails are only delivered to those who need to know the information, the problem with Jasmine’s rationale is that determining who needs to know certain information can actually be pretty hard. For that reason, I would instead recommend some other sort of communication medium altogether for this type of information. Specifically, one that doesn’t require one person to determine who does or doesn’t need to know something, and actively alerts those who very likely need to know the information while passively providing access to those who have an unclear or unrealized need for it.
We have many such communication tools in the form of things like project management software and even threaded forums. Such systems allow people who discover a need for certain information to elect to enter the conversation about it through some sort of subscription mechanism. And anyone who participates is automatically subscribed (and can opt to unsubscribe) under the assumption that participants are very likely to need to know how that conversation progresses. It eases the burden for determining who needs to know information off of the information producer and onto the information consumers, where it’s much easier to manage.
I agree with Malik. Even though only Jasmine and Malik is responsible for this specific assignment, the results of this assignment would affect the entire group; thus the group member should be notified whenever they are discussing. The information that Jasmine decided to be not important to the group member may sometimes be essential to some of the group members. Jasmine should let the group member decide the information is needed or not.
I agree with Jasmine because it’s really annoying to receive emails that are not in my interest.
For examples, I use Piazza for almost all of my programming classes and I get annoyed by all the questions that people ask on Piazza because all asked questions are sent to me via email. However, I allowed those emails only for my benefit since I did not want to miss any information about any projects and assignments. This is a special case. So I agree with Jasmine.
I agree with Jasmine in this situation because the information that they are discussing pertains only to the work that they are working on associated with LinkedIn. If they want to see what other group members think then they should share their conversation with the group, but because they are the only ones discussing that part of the assignment they do not need to include everyone. If one of them could not answer the original question, then they should share their conversation with the entire group.
I agree with Jasmine in this situation. Since both Malik and Jasmine are both working together on LinkedIn strategies, they should just communicate between themselves for their task. When the group comes together to share their findings, then they could compile all the research they found and present it together to the rest of the group. Since they divided up the tasks in that situation, I’m sure the rest of the members of the group have to work on their part. Having to answer questions about Malik and Jasmine’s part would just be extra work.
I agree with Jasmine. I understand Malik’s point of view since he was trying to share everything within his group and collaborate ideas with everyone. On the other hand, I have been in group chat such that when two people are talking about the their own topics, and I got so many notifications that I did not need. Also, the size of the group would be another factor we have to consider before we decide. If the size of the group is enormous, the conversation between Jasmine and Malik would not be essential for entire group, and just short summary should be sufficient. On the other hand if the size the group is small as there are only few couple other members, all the conversion will be useful for everyone in the group.
I do agree with Malik in this case. In working with a group, it is necessary to keep conversations opened so that all team members can well understand what is going on. Even though both of them are responsible for the research, it a good idea for the entire group to see their progress. Yes, receiving long thread group messages can be annoying, but at the end of the day, it does not cost anything to send or receive the information. Some people within the group may find it helpful.
In this situation, I am torn. I believe that it is important for all of the group members to have the information as it pertains to their discussion. However, it is especially annoying to receive tons of emails that are directly to only one individual and therefore irrelevant to the rest of the group. To satisfy both parties, email could be restricted to communication only and they could create a group document or chat to exchange research and information pertaining to the topic.