Anna Wintour's strategy for using email to get people to confront issues sounds terrifying. And effective.
- An effective boss empowers employees to solve their own problems.
- That's what Vogue editor Anna Wintour does, according to a New York Magazine article by Reeves Wiedeman.
- If an employee emails Wintour complaining about a colleague, Wintour will reply and copy the person they're frustrated with.
- Even if they don't replicate Wintour's email strategy, managers should (generally) resist the temptation to meddle in employees' conflicts.
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A recent New York Magazine article by Reeves Wiedeman tells the story of Condé Nast.
Once the arbiter of chicness and intellectual discourse, the media company - publisher of Vogue and The New Yorker - is now struggling to stay culturally relevant and financially solvent.
Nestled in the middle of the article is an anecdote about Anna Wintour, editor of Vogue since 1988 and Condé Nast's artistic director since 2013, and her management style.
From New York Magazine:
At the end of [Radhika] Jones's first year on the job [as editor-in-chief of Vanity Fair], a Vanity Fair editor, acting on the encouragement of a Condé executive frustrated with the magazine, emailed Wintour asking for a meeting, but Wintour replied by simply cc'ing Jones, according to multiple people with knowledge of the exchange. (Several told me this was a classic Wintour managerial tactic, meant to force colleagues to confront issues head-on.)
Presumably, this tactic terrifies both the original sender and the cc'd recipient. But it may also be effective in empowering employees to solve their own problems.
Wintour isn't known to beat around the bush
Wintour's email habit appears to fit the persona she's cultivated.
Wintour is generally known as a fearsome leader (nickname: "Nuclear Wintour"). Now nearing age 70, she was reportedly the inspiration for magazine editor Miranda Priestly in Lauren Weisberger's 2003 novel, "The Devil Wears Prada."
And in a MasterClass on leadership, Wintour told viewers that feedback is more effective when "it's fast, it's direct, it's honest."
At this point in Wintour's career, she's able to get away with pretty much anything. (Asked why she's frequently wearing sunglasses, Wintour has said, "I can sit in a show and if I am bored out of my mind, nobody will notice.")
Leaders should empower their employees and avoid micromanaging
The average people manager might not be able to pull off Wintour's email move. In fact, it might be inadvisable.
As etiquette and civility expert Rosalinda Oropeza Randall previously told Business Insider's Rachel Gillett, copying someone on an email without the sender's approval is typically a poor choice. "No one likes to have someone else decide to cc someone without being asked first," Randall said.
But as a broad managerial goal, encouraging employees to handle their own conflicts is a good one.
Case in point: About a decade ago, Google found that its best managers empower their teams and don't micromanage. Meaning Wintour is presumably wise not to meddle in the conflict between coworkers.
Meanwhile, management experts like Art Markman, professor of psychology and marketing at the University of Texas at Austin, advise bosses to avoid answering their employees' questions directly.
"By encouraging them to solve problems on their own before coming to you," Markman wrote for Fast Company, "you're developing them into more efficient, high-value workers and reinforcing the fact that you have your own priorities (which they should respect)."
To be sure, there may be times when it pays to intervene in a conflict between your employees - like if their hostility is interfering with the daily workflow.
In the Harvard Business Review, team productivity expert Liane Davey writes that managers can provide feedback when they see the tension playing out in real time (eye-rolling, for example). A manager can also remind each employee involved in the conflict that their coworker may be "trying to cope in the best way they know how" - even if that person's coping mechanism is driving them up the wall.
As for Wintour, it seems she'll be sticking around at Condé Nast for a while. She currently commands the largest editorial salary at the organization, Wiedeman reports.
Even if Wintour herself isn't certain what the next phase of her career will look like, she probably won't show it. As she told Alastair Campbell, former British prime minister Tony Blair's press secretary, the most important trait of a manager "is to be decisive and sure and to impart that to people working for you."