Every now and again, someone more senior will write an email for you.
Not suggest a few changes. Not give you some pointers. Actually write the email, then ask you to send it from your account with your name at the bottom.
For an innocuous email, maybe you don’t care. They know what they want said, they’ve saved you ten minutes, job done.
It gets more interesting when the email is contentious.
Maybe it’s pushing back on something. Maybe it’s criticising somebody’s work. Maybe the tone is stronger than you’d have used yourself.
That’s when I’d be careful.
Nobody receiving the email knows your boss wrote it. They see your name.
As far as they’re concerned, those are your words. And if the email pisses somebody off, you’re the person they’re going to associate with it.
I’ve no problem with a manager helping somebody draft a difficult email. I’d actually expect a good manager to do that when it’s useful.
But there’s a difference between helping you write something and writing something for you to send as if you wrote it yourself.
If someone gives me a draft, I need to be comfortable putting my name on it. If I’m not, I’ll change it.
And if changing it means it no longer says what they want it to say, then we need to have that conversation.
That can be awkward, particularly when the person giving you the email is your boss. Still less awkward than dealing with an email you never wanted to send in the first place.
There’s another reason to be careful. You don’t always know everything going on around the message.
Maybe there’s history between the people involved. Maybe the wording means more to the recipient than it does to you. Maybe you’re stepping into the middle of an argument you didn’t even know existed.
You don’t need to become paranoid about it.
Just remember whose name is at the bottom.
Get help with the email. Ask for edits. Take advice. Let someone tear your draft apart if that’s useful.
But before you hit Send, read the final version as if it came entirely from you.
Because that’s how everyone else is going to read it.
If you send it, you own it.