When you get a chance...
Exploring the bias that can creep into a team's beliefs about responsiveness
It’s Sunday night. You want to jump start your week. You open your work laptop and fire off a dozen missives. After about an hour, you’ve knocked dow your to-do list by half. What a rush.
Tomorrow’s going to be great. Except — you’ve just inadvertently stressed out your entire team before the week has even started.
Unless you set clear expectations about responsiveness with your team, they’ll find it challenging to step away from work, even during off-hours.
I hear from friends and colleagues about this all the time. Many feel like they can’t turn off their technology for fear of missing a message or task. Others become overwhelmed if they don’t keep up with incoming pings during the evenings and early mornings. All of this “work watching” during off hours typically reduces a person’s performance and engagement overall.
HBR wrote about this problem and Adam Grant tweeted about it, citing research from Giurge and Bohns that found the following:
However, the news isn’t all bad.
You can create clarity for your team by being explicit about how and when you expect a response.
While it might be obvious to you that you are sending out those Sunday night messages so people can see them on Monday — it probably doesn’t feel obvious to your team. Perhaps you occasionally mention that you don’t expect people to check into work on the weekends. Good! But, you’ll need to reinforce that often, especially if you’re violating the norm yourself as the team lead.
And if you’re worried that setting boundaries will slow things down, being clear about your expectations actually tends to speed up work. When people can accurately assess the urgency of a task, take the breaks they need to recharge, and prioritize the right items — things tend to get done faster.
3 questions to ask yourself as a leader
If I asked everyone on my team how fast they need to respond to a ping from me, what would the answers be like?
There’s a power dynamic between a manager and their reports that affects how task urgency is assessed. Do I explicitly state the urgency of a request when I make it? Do others?
Do I know the preferred working hours of each person on my team? If not, how can I learn it?
2 things to try with your team this week
Explicitly include the urgency with requests you make. Try saying something like, “Before my meeting with Jane on Thursday could you please pull the bug count for her team?” and avoid phrases like “when you get a chance” or “ASAP.”
Empower team members to set their own deadlines. I’ll often ask: “Given what you have going on, what’s a reasonable deadline for this task?” This helps team members feel agency over their work and it also help you understand their prioritization system.
1 way software can help
Normalize setting a status in calendar and messaging apps across your team. When people can proactively communicate how fast they can response, it gives them permission to step away. If you’re a Slack user, I detailed a few specific ideas about this here.
