Your Career: How to cope with a colleague’s mass-email habit

What guidelines does your department follow to keep internal email communication healthy? ADVERTISEMENT [Your Career Logo]( Did someone forward you this newsletter? [Sign up free]( to receive your own copy. You can now read The Chronicle on [Apple News]( [Flipboard]( and [Google News](. What guidelines does your department follow to keep internal email communication healthy? As an academic administrator, it’s hard enough to deal with a case of inadvertent “reply all,” but things get even dicier when someone makes the sending of mass emails a passive-aggressive habit. Emails that should be directed to you as the primary decision maker and recipient are, for some reason, copied to a whole host of others. Folks who engage in this practice usually do so for one of two reasons: - The first — irritating at times, but fairly harmless — is akin to what some call “virtue signaling.” Say, for instance, “Professor Smith” is writing to let you know that the article he’s been working on for two years has been accepted for publication. Rather than letting the chair alone know — perhaps because Smith is not confident that you’ll do his bragging for him, as he thinks you should — this professor has not-so-stealthily looped in everyone else in the department on the news. It’s the sort of thing that, as chair, you may laugh and roll your eyes at privately, but then you can easily let it go. - Reason No. 2 is more troubling because it borders on a kind of soft bullying. In this case, our hypothetical Professor Smith sends a departmentwide email that says something like: “Hey Chair, Where are the CVs for our visiting job candidates that you promised to send?” This time, Smith is none too subtly letting you know that he thinks you’ve screwed up — and wants everyone else to know, too. Such mass emails are less about trying to solve problems, and more about undermining your leadership. Continue reading: "[Ask the Chair: When Is a Reply-All Email an Act of Aggression?]( by Kevin Dettmar Share your suggestions for the newsletter with Denise Magner, an editor at The Chronicle, at denise.magner@chronicle.com. If you’d like to opt out, you can log in to our website and [manage your newsletter preferences here](. ADVERTISEMENT UPCOMING PROGRAM [The Chronicle's Bootcamp for Future Faculty Leaders] [Join us in September]( for a professional development program tailored to the needs of midcareer faculty. 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