When emails turn ugly: my response to a bully
Bullies rely on control, isolation, manipulation and intimidation. Here’s how I handled it.
Welcome to a free edition of Start Up To Grown Up: Your source for ideas, insights and tactics to take back control of your business and scale it sustainably and profitably by Heather Townsend, award-winning author of The Accountants’ Millionaires’ Club and Founder of The Accountants’ Growth Club
Yesterday I received an email from a bully.
It happens. (Particularly when you are a local councillor!)
It told me I had to formally apologise, remove myself from a facebook group and never be a naughty girl again. Well actually, not that last bit - I made that up. But the rest was absolutely true.
It also felt very similar in tone to a previous email from another bully which was actually a homemade SLAPP, a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation” and contained a Cease and Desist. It piled on the pressure by telling me I had 14 days to respond before they would take out a formal injunction against me. I’m still waiting for the formal injunction against me to materialise from the SLAPP. In fact, I’m still waiting for the promised version of the email to be delivered to me by post as the email promised. After all, the SLAPP was sent back in June 2024. Given they were too tight to spend the money on printing the letter and buying a large letter stamp, or paying to have it sent by recorded delivery, the cost to get a formal injunction against me with absolutely no grounds is probably outside of their means. I’m not holding out for the formal paperwork around this to arrive any time soon either…
As an aside: I’m still ridiculously proud that I’ve been seen to be enough of a threat to get a SLAPP. That’s probably not the effect they were looking for.
Anyway, back to the bullying email. It was marked as CONFIDENTIAL so I probably shouldn’t be talking about it here. Whoops… (Am I bothered??)
I deleted the bullying email and picked up the phone to them. Then left a message to say ‘let’s talk this over’. Since writing this, I have now cleared the air with the person who sent me this recent bullying email.
Whilst today’s article is based around a recent situation as a local councillor, being bullied by email is nothing unusual for a small business owner. It could be a former member of staff threatening you or a client making inappropriate demands of you and your firm. It happens in the world of business. If it hasn’t happened yet to you, it will do.
These sorts of bullying emails will - if you let them - consume a huge amount of your headspace. That’s why the focus of this article is to allow you to see them for what they are, and then how to sort it out. So you can get back to what really matters, growing and scaling your business.
How to bullies exert power and control in emails
Experience is a great teacher. Thankfully, my life as a small business owner and local councillor has given me ample experiences to see a bullying email for what it is. To be honest, I’m not sure that all the experiences were enjoyable at the time. However, they have taught me a significant amount about the tactics employed.
Humiliation
The email I received was kindly sent to 5 other local councillors, including my other 2 ward councillors. Nice. A wonderful manoeuvre designed to humiliate me. But it only humiliates you if you decide to let it. So, in my case I decided to not dignify the email with a response. I just pressed delete.
When we receive this stuff we are often worried about how our actions are being perceived by others. In these situations it’s not just our actions that are being judged. It is those of the bully. Funnily enough I received a few private messages of support telling me that the email was ‘OTT’ (over the top), pompous drivel and rather too officious. If you ever find yourself in this situation, think about how the bullies actions are being perceived or judged by those who they have copied in.
Isolation
My email was headed CONFIDENTIAL. In big bold letters - just in case I couldn’t read. It also included a sentence at the end asking me to keep this confidential between ourselves and the respondents of the email. This is a classic power play where they isolate and manipulate you. Their aim is to get you to stay quiet - after all, you should be embarrassed by your actions. Thankfully I saw it for what it is. And no, I didn’t agree to the confidentiality aspect of the email and am not bound by an NDA or any formal contract. I took the opportunity to let a few key stakeholders know about the shitty email and what it was demanding that I did. Then I wrote a LinkedIn post which inspired this article!
Exploiting a power imbalance
My bullying email was sent to all the ward councillors in Flitwick and Ampthill. (My town and the next door town) After all, let’s keep it within the family shall we? In this situation, the sender - whether consciously or sub-consciously decided to use what they perceived to be a superior position to intimidate me. But this stuff is a fairly common situation. Your email may not have the “Do you know who I am” written in it, but the sender will let you know about their perceived authority and stance in your world. Remember that this power imbalance is often only in your head. Whilst your bully will want to do the power play, they may not have any grounds for this.
Controlling you
My bullying email included a number of stated demands. Demands that felt almost like a step before legal action took place. Apparently, I needed to give a formal and public apology, leave a private facebook group and a few other things. This felt very similar to the SLAPP I received. The SLAPP similarly asked for a formal apology. But the SLAPP’s author wanted formal editorial rights over my content. Did I need to do any of this? Did I hell? Remember, if you are the recipient of this kind of email you don’t actually need to do anything that they are asking. You always have a choice.
The choice I took? To delete the email and not respond. But I picked up the phone to clear the air and discuss the situation. Despite the bravado of this article, I am not in the business of alienating myself or making enemies of key stakeholders around me. I’m not stupid. But even when asked on the phone to apologise and acknowledge the email, I refused. After all, yet another power play on the bullies part. I had no desire to have my response documented for an audit trail if needed.
Gaslighting you
As a local councillor if I step out of line, i.e. break the Nolan Code of Conduct for those in public office in the UK, I will be reported to the council’s Monitoring Officer, which then could lead to me being up in front of the council’s Standards Committee. In my bully’s email they reference that they had discussed the situation with the Monitoring Officer. Thankfully I knew the Nolan Code Of Conduct and I hadn’t broken it in anyway. But mentioning they had discussed my conduct with the Monitoring Officer was designed to make me question my actions. A classic case of gaslighting.
Guilt-tripping you
You can often find you are being judged by their standards in these types of things. This is where they make you feel responsible for their behaviour or stance or try to manipulate you through emotional appeals. For example:
“I would have never done this personally”
“How would you feel if the roles had been reversed”
“Your actions were unprofessional”
In my own personal situation, I am aware that much of the motivation behind the email was nothing to actually do with me. It was about their story, their fears and their emotion. I was being scapegoated for some negative comments being directed towards them.
How to deal with this stuff
You may have noticed I am pretty blase about this episode. And no, this isn’t the sort of stuff that happens to me regularly. Thankfully. Although it happens a little too frequently for me in my role as a councillor. Sometimes you can’t just block and delete an individual.
The question is how to let it waft over you? Like the proverbial water over a ducks back. Because let’s be honest, this stuff is unsettling. I’d like to say, I wasn’t bothered. And no, I wasn’t really bothered. But it did unsettle me. And it’s still distracting me from the job at hand.
Don’t engage immediately
When the email hits, it can produce a mixture of emotions; from hurt, anxiety to anger. Responding whilst in the grip of these emotions is never a wise idea. Plus, when these emails are sent the sender is looking for a reaction. Making them sweat it out is something within your control. It also puts some of the control of the situation back in your court.
Before you engage take the time to consider what you want as an outcome. It would have been all too easy for me to play the injured party and ‘out’ the writer of this email. However, this would have made this admittedly mole hill of a problem into a mountain. Whilst it may have helped me win the battle it was going to lose me the war overall. My aim was to clear the air, not call up my reserve fighters and arm my tanks!
Don’t retaliate
It was suggested to me that I should openly publish the email I received. Whilst this may, for a fleeting moment, feel tempting; it would just take a difficult situation and make it a much harder to deal with. Not only did I have an individual who was really upset with me, I would could have potentially compounded their distress by pressing the nuclear button and openly talking about their conduct in this email towards me. Two wrongs don’t make a right. Being the trigger that starts a social media pile on that could be very personally upsetting to a well-liked individual could backfire on me.
When you have received a bullying email, the aim is to not prolong the battle into a deadlier war. The aim should always be to bring it to a swift and amicable conclusion. Yes, I know, I’m being boringly mature with this attitude. But no one wants to, either in their personal or business life, create enemies or feel like they need to hide in the washing powder aisle of the local supermarket when they see their protagonist there.
Discuss it with someone you trust
Remember you didn’t agree to the confidential nature of the email or letter. You are perfectly within your rights to talk it over with someone that you trust. Talking through the email can help you get much needed perspective on how to respond and what you want to happen as a result of the email.
Be prepared to apologise
You can be morally, ethically, financially and legally in the right and feel you have nothing to apologise for. However, an apology goes a long way to help resolving these antagonistic situations. I did in my phone call with the writer of the email apologise for hurting their feelings - and genuinely meant it. Did that mean I was going to put that apology into an email in writing? Hell no.
Get a dialogue going
A shitty email is never nice to receive. But it is an acknowledgment that someone is hurting and unhappy. Whilst they are in this state it is fertile ground for misunderstandings to take root. Ideally to prevent that from happening you want to have a dialogue. If they are happy to have a phone call to clear the air then you know they are open to resolving the situation. If they want to ‘only communicate formally via email’ (which happened to me after the SLAPP sender refused to have a phone call), it gives you an idea of where their position lies, and whether the situation is resolvable in the short term. If it isn’t resolvable in the short term, ask yourself whether this is worth you losing sleep over or spending more energy to de-escalate the situation.
Your action this week.
Reflect on a time when you’ve received that email from a bully. What could you have done differently to have a nicer or happier conclusion?