Managers have hard jobs. They coordinate the work of their teams, align this work with company goals, serve as a primary source of professional development for their employees, deliver results, and many other critical tasks (all while keeping people engaged). We’ve previously written about what great managers do differently, but even great managers are not fully aware of how their work habits can impact those they supervise. Our latest research allows us to begin quantifying how these habits can cause significant — and often undesirable — ripple effects.
If You Multitask During Meetings, Your Team Will, Too
Managers have hard jobs, and often they are not fully aware of how their work habits can impact those they supervise. New research shows how two habits in particular — emailing during off-hours and multitasking in meetings — can cause significant and often undesirable ripple effects among a leader’s team. Anonymized and aggregated data from meetings, email, HR, and other sources show that, when a manager emails their team on Sunday evenings, team members are more likely to be online then too (even if a manager’s intention isn’t for people to read the email until Monday morning). In addition, the data shows that leaders who email during meetings are 2.2 times more likely to have direct reports who multitask in meetings. Luckily, there are steps managers can take to curb their own behaviors before they rub off on their teams.