In a Newsweek article titled “E-mail: The Future of the Family Feud,” (December 18, 2000), a young woman described her first e-mail argument, a disagreement with one of her relatives, in which “our barbs zapped through cyberspace.” She didn’t realize how common e-mail fighting is — until she mentioned it to friends, who “readily confessed their own online tiffs.”

In the old days, family members duked it out over the dinner table. Friends confronted one another by telephone or through snail mail. And business associates squared off in the boardroom or at the water cooler. These venues still provide ample opportunity for hand-to-hand combat, but there is an emerging area for conflict: e-mail.

In 2002, the U.S. Postal Service handled 203 billion pieces of mail; the same number of e-mail messages was sent in about six days! By 2006, the total number of e-mails sent daily is expected to top 60 billion or roughly 22 trillion a year (Chuck Martin, “The E-Mail Challenge: Could You Go a Week Without?” Darwin Magazine, August 2003).

Given its enormous popularity as a means of communicating with business contacts, family and friends, e-mail presents a huge potential breeding ground for conflict. As Michael Eisner, chief executive officer of Walt Disney Company, puts it, “E-mail’s very virtues also make it dangerous — it is instant, global, quick and easy. It becomes easy to be rude, easy to use language incorrectly, easy to make stupid mistakes, easy to do irreparable harm” (“E-Communication,” Executive Excellence, November 2000).

E-mail as a Lethal Weapon

Consulting work with senior executives reveals that six characteristics of e-mail sow the seeds of conflict and discourage people from dealing with conflict in a healthy, overt way.

First, e-mail encourages disengagement. Sending e-mails back and forth doesn’t feel the same as confronting someone face to face. For a conflict-averse person, using e-mail is a lot easier than having to sit down and engage in a discussion. E-mail is a one-way tool; you don’t have to listen to the response. Nor do you risk revealing your emotions as your voice rises, your face turns red and perspiration runs off your brow. The sender feels a lot safer.

Second, e-mail encourages subterfuge. More than a few executives agonize over an e-mail response, editing and reediting it, secretly circulating the e-mail or intended response to colleagues — often in breach of confidentiality — for feedback, guidance and perhaps even a little old-fashioned character assassination. E-mail also makes it easy to put forward hidden agendas, such as the need to sing one’s own praises or make another person look bad.

Third, electronic communication popularizes a new sport: tag-team e-mail. With the availability of e-mail, enlisting supporters for one’s own point of view has become easier than ever. One individual receives an e-mail, then forwards it, with editorial comment, to one or more colleagues. They respond to the sender, usually with their own editorializing, and copy in a few more people while they’re at it. Susan Fullman, corporate vice president and director of customer solutions and support for Motorola, describes such tag-teaming as exponential dysfunction: “Where you could have included one or two people, now you are including four people on the e-mail, and now you get four times the dysfunction. On several occasions I’ve seen dozens of people copied, and most of them didn’t know anything about the subject that was being discussed.”

Fourth, e-mail engenders bravado. There may well be some deep psychological connection between e-mail and road rage, since both automobiles and computers appear to encourage risk taking and aggression. In the case of e-mail, the remoteness of the communication process may explain why “scud e-mails,” as one executive termed them, are launched with such great frequency. Freed of their usual inhibitions, normally nonassertive people may voice their opinions too forcefully or include caustic remarks about others in their e-mail messages.

Fifth, e-mails can’t be taken back. Who has not hammered out a stiff response to a pointed e-mail message from a colleague and pushed “send,” only to develop an immediate case of remorse? Before electronic communication, anger was often vented on paper and then the memo was put in a desk drawer overnight. After a good night’s sleep, it was either torn up or softened considerably.

And, sixth, e-mail neutralizes people’s listening skills. Being a good listener is key to getting along with others. Unfortunately, studies have determined that e-mail has caused executives’ listening skills to languish by creating a physical and psychological chasm between them and their colleagues. These studies also suggest that, while users of e-mail have more relationships and contact with people inside and outside their organizations, these contacts are not as strong, nor are they as committed.

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Toward E-Mail Rules of Engagement