Three Email Habits That
Kill Your Whole Team's Productivity
The way managers
communicate sets expectations for how everyone on staff communicates.
Eric, a client of mine, owned and ran a successful service firm
with sales of $3.5 million per year and a healthy profit margin. But, he told
me, "We’re bursting at the seams. I’m working six or seven days a week,
putting in 70-plus hours a week, and my team are all regularly working 60-plus
hours a week. Is it that I just need to hire more staff?"
He didn't think so, but wasn't sure what else to do. "We’ve
got a solid team here, and I don’t want to make it any more complicated,"
he added. After hashing things out together, it became clear that the overload
Eric and his company were experiencing wasn't just a staffing issue. It was
more likely a productivity one, starting with how Eric communicated with his
staff. Three of his bad email habits were trickling down to everybody else,
undermining the entire team's working methods.
The faster you reply, the more
responses you'll get.
Make no mistake: They're widespread
in other companies, too. And especially when leaders misuse email,
the negative consequences for others can quickly become magnified. Here's what
to watch out for.
If you're constantly checking your inbox—or even worse, getting
push notifications that prod you to—chances are you aren't using email very
effectively. Over time, that makes email itself a source of anxiety. My client
confessed to feeling uncomfortable as a result of simply not knowing what was
in his inbox, and he worried that if he didn’t stay on top of it, he would
drown in it.
These are fallacies that can
quickly become self-fulfilling prophecies. First, it means your attention is
constantly getting pulled from higher-value activities so you can handle an
incoming message—often a trivial one. As UC Irvine researcher Gloria Mark discovered, it takes the average office
worker 20 minutes to return from that interruption to whatever they were doing
before.
Hyper-responsiveness to email doesn't just chop your day into a
series of small slivers of work punctuated by distraction, it also increases
the volume of email you're likely to get. And if you're a leader, that can
magnify your entire team's email load proportionately. Think of it this way:
The faster you reply, the more responses you'll get in. If you write a total
three notes to a team member about the same project in the space of an
afternoon, that means they've likely written three, too—one of theirs
alternating with one of yours—for a six-email thread. But if you'd just waited
to check in until the end of the day or the following morning, you're only
writing one note apiece.
One of the best ways to reduce your total email load is to let it
"age"—in other words, simply waiting for an hour or two before you reply,
or holding your reply for the next day. This allows you to "batch"
your time spent responding to email during defined periods, then ignore it the
rest of the time so you can focus on other things.
When leaders do this, they give their teams tacit permission to do
the same. But it helps to be explicit about it: Discuss hyper-responsiveness
with your team and make it clear you consider it a risk to avoid, not a bad
habit to indulge.
"Eric, how often do you handle an email that is so important
that it couldn’t wait until the next workday to respond to?" I asked my
client.
"Rarely," he said.
"But I like staying on top of my email. I want to know what’s in there.
And it’s easier to send the response right then and there versus having to
reread it a second time the next workday." That meant Eric was checking in
on his messages after-hours and on weekends, which put pressure on his team
members to do the same. Over time, this became part of the company’s culture,
leaving no one with truly uninterrupted downtime to recharge
away from work.
Cutting back on this habit wasn't
going to be a cold-turkey kind of thing, I realized. Understanding that Eric
felt compelled to check his email and respond immediately, I
suggested he start writing his replies right away but use the "delay
delivery" feature so the email gets sent the next workday.
My client confessed to feeling
uncomfortable as a result of simply not knowing what was in his inbox.
If you’ve had a history of late-night emails to your team, you
need to acknowledge it first to yourself and then to your team members. Since
it affects them, too, it isn't just a personal quirk you can deal with solo.
Bring it up at your next team meeting. Come clean with them about the bad habit
and discuss it candidly: When do you and they feel it's important—for the
company—for everyone to be available by email? Just make sure you can clearly
define the business goals you're serving by whatever timeframe or regularity
you agree to; if you can't, think again.
"Eric," I said, "I noticed on the agenda I emailed
you for this call that you cc’ed two of your team members. May I ask why?"
"Oh, you had asked for some information in advance of our
meeting, and I was delegating it out."
"Okay," I said,
"That makes sense, but why two people?"
"I always send administrative tasks to two people," he
replied. "That way I know at least one of them will handle it."
In your company, do people often feel they have to cc multiple
parties, even on mundane emails? Do you notice that people who are only
tangentially affected get copied in on the responses to a cc’d email?
You may think you're just keeping
folks in the loop. But remember that every email has to be opened, read,
mentally processed, and then "handled," even if that just means
moving the email to an archive folder or deleting it. Be intentional about when
you do and don’t cc someone, and work with your team to determine what
situations warrant cc'ing and which ones don't. Here's a good rule of thumb: If
you want someone to do something with the information you're
sharing, include them. Otherwise, think twice.
Your team members may share these email habits or even exhibit
some of them that you don't. But as a leader, the way your whole team
communicates starts with how you communicate with them.
DAVID FINKEL
https://www.fastcompany.com/3064695/work-smart/three-email-habits-that-kill-your-whole-teams-productivity
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