Are you a manager or a leader?

What behaviour are you modelling for your team? Do you send many emails out of hours? Do you multitask in meetings? Do you project frustration and disagreement with C-suite?

Do your team copy you?

If you send emails that late, an expectation will be set that everyone needs to check, unless you are clear why. Tell them you have to leave a hour early to do the school run every day, so you do your emails after bedtime for everyone to pick up in the morning. Even better, write at night but don’t send until the morning. There are plenty of tools to schedule that for you.

If you’re not focussed on a meeting, how can you expect your team to be. If you don’t need to be there, don’t be. If you trust your team and you won’t add value, step back. If you can change the meeting so it’s not boring, do that. When you’re in the meeting, be present, even if it’s just too watch the body language, and engage with that, use that feedback.

Are your team frustrated by decisions and often blaming others? Is that because you do it too? You’re not going to agree to every decision, but if you were on the room when it was made, or it’s your job to disseminate it, be at peace with the decision. If you can’t live with it, there’s other channels, up to and including leaving, but on your team decisions should be respected. They can be debated, reviewed and changed when circumstances change, but if decisions can’t be respected collectively, you don’t have a team.

Are you being the leading the team in the way you want them to work?