Being a manager is challenging and stressful for even the most experienced leaders, but the emotional burdens leaders sometimes carry for their employees can have a lasting impact.
There are times employees may confide about a personal struggle or ask for advice on how to handle a difficult situation outside of work. Sometimes helping them with these extracurricular needs is no big deal; other times, it can compound stress for their supervisor. As a recent Harvard Business Review report shows, handling subordinates’ personal problems at the office can actually derail a leader’s productivity and mood for the day. Leaders should care about the people they are working with, but successful ones must strike a balance between caring and caring too much.
Managers spend roughly 2.5 hours weekly responding to personal requests from people they manage, according to HBR’s report. Issues run the gamut: problems with marriages, mental health, child care and more. Helping employees to work through emotional issues are a common experience among managers, says Laura O’Brien, operations director at Americana YMCA in Zachary.
“Really good managers care for their employees,” she says. “They carry that throughout the day.”
Harvard researchers conducted a study of leaders and their direct reports, and recently published their findings in the Journal of Applied Psychology. The researchers surveyed 43 middle and senior leaders and up to five of their followers each day for three consecutive workweeks. They asked the leaders to report their mood (positive and negative affect) at the beginning and end of each work day. Leaders also reported how often they responded to requests for support from their direct reports that day at work.
Researchers found that leaders’ negative mood increased on days when they helped direct reports with personal problems, most likely because those situations can be uncomfortable, sensitive, and or distressing. On very busy days, it could be particularly frustrating for leaders to have those additional demands on their time. On the upside, on days when leaders felt that their support with personal issues had a positive impact on the lives of their employees, their negative mood was less impacted.
Harvard Business Review recommends that, based on the study’s findings, managers recognize that grappling with personal problems will dampen their mood, and to be aware that it could impact their performance.
To help mitigate these types of situations as a leader at the YMCA, O’Brien, tries to connect others with outside support.
“We try to have resources available to steer them to,” O’Brien says. “I try to do that because if I look to help them personally, then you become concerned with what they’re dealing with and in your interactions might be talking with them about that instead of working on the business of the day.”
Phyllis Perron, who recently retired as founder of the political and governmental relations and association management firm Phyllis Perron and Associates, says that at the end of the day, personal problems at work are just part of the job.
“I’ve had a variety of experiences,” Perron says. “And the reality is that you do take it on, and you do see how it impacts yourself and your employees, but I think managers have to expect that these things are going to happen.”
