IDEAWATCH Reviews from HBR

Music. Welcome to the Manager Lab, where we delve into the increasingly dynamic world of talent management.

In each episode, we will unravel key insights, break down the most relevant books and articles, and provide actionable tips to optimize your approach in developing and retaining top talent. Stay tuned for a deep dive into the art, science, and strategy of unlocking your team's full potential. Let's enter the Manager Lab. Welcome to the Manager Lab, and today we're going to be taking a look at about four different little articles that come from IdeaWatch.

If you've heard me in the past, you know that I love IdeaWatch. They typically are four or five paragraphs that focus on one skill or one concept, and they really, really hit home. I love these. And so I went back from September of 24 up to February of 25. And there's four really good idea watches here to share with you today.

First one is on the concept of managing people, the power of eye contact. So if you've been in any management trainings that focus on body language. We know how important eye contact is. It builds trust. It builds rapport. Conveys confidence. And so the article here comes from a research out of 2024 from the Journal of Business Research called Eyes That Lead.

And this study looked at graduates of three European business schools, 72 managers in all, completed questionnaires on whether they maintained eye contact with employees when they were talking with them. They were also asked to evaluate their own, let's say, charisma or leadership ability, and then to give two direct reports that they frequently interacted with and assessment to fill out. So they were going to do research on this situation.

The assessment asked about the manager's charisma and whether people made any extra effort when working for those managers. What the employees rated, how much they agreed with statements like this, my manager regularly motivates others to accomplish more than they have to. I volunteered for extra work assignments, or I spent some of my break time working to complete projects.

The results showed that managers who frequently made eye contact were perceived to be more charismatic and more competent, both by themselves in the self-rating and by their direct reports, and how charismatic the employees perceive their managers to be in turn influence their willingness to put in extra effort. You know, we talk about Gallup. They talk about really the very definition of engaged employees or those employees who give of their discretionary time.

This is exactly what this study found, is that if you as a manager make frequent eye contact with your people when you're talking with them, it leads to a better sense of competency as a leader, as a manager. And it promotes extra discretionary time that your employees will actually give you if you manage them. So the importance of eye contact, very important. Obviously, you can't go too far with it though.

If you go too far, then it's awkward and it can be perceived as a natural, maybe even confrontational. So there's a fine line there. You have to decide where you do that. But If you're someone who doesn't make a lot of eye contact when you're talking with your people, maybe it's time to increase that.

Okay, next little idea watch is called New Hires Psychological Safety Fades Over Time. So they looked at 10,000 employees in very large U.S. Organizations, and they looked at psychological safety over time. Interestingly enough, the highest psychological safety in this study was during the new hire process, like day one. Then it gradually fell till about, it hit its low point at about the three-year mark. And then it gradually starts to go back up. Now, isn't that interesting?

So psychological safety starts at the very highest when employees are hired, falls to its very lowest within three years. So then what can we do as managers to improve psychological safety during that time? We can improve our onboarding process. We can provide mentors or buddies for people. We can be more transparent with our communications. We can increase the level of interaction that we have with our employees. And it's really important for those new hires to make sure that we do all those

things. Because again, if we can kind of arrest that fall from the very beginning, then we're going to be much better off over time. So very interesting study on psychological safety. It comes from Amy Edmondson at Harvard, who's the, you know, she is the biggest name in psychological safety. Okay.

Another really kind of interesting, quirky study that I found interesting, it's on which employees are more likely to quit. And it's based on a series of either Zoom or Microsoft Teams research. And just interestingly enough, and you're probably not going to be very surprised by this, but the research looked at 40 million virtual meetings from 11 different organizations. And what they found is that non-participation at small meetings was rising.

Their analysis showed that employees who stayed muted or stayed off camera were more likely to leave an organization within a year than those employees who were more active, stayed off mute. Stayed on camera, that kind of thing. Now, they didn't police this. They didn't mandate one or the other.

They just looked at those employees who were more likely to stay off of mute, more likely to stay on camera, we're very much more like almost twice as likely to be with the organization in a year than those who were not. So again, not surprising, but interesting that the research kind of backs up what intuition would tell you. We've all been in those meetings where we know that people are, they've got their camera's not on, they're on mute, They don't say anything the entire meeting.

You can just kind of sense that their engagement is not nearly as great as others who are participating, got their camera on, they're tuned in, and it's just interesting to see it now in print.

Okay, final one. This is under the title, introverts are just as enthusiastic about their work as extroverts are. Well, I think this really caught my attention because I am a introvert. I'm really highly introverted. And so I really wanted to kind of basically look at this. And essentially what this research showed was that when you ask managers who manage both introverts and extroverts, the manager's perception is that extroverts are much more engaged than introverts are.

And of course, the research did not bear that out. Not only did the introverts say they were much more passionate than their managers gave them credit for, in fact, their passion was actually higher than the extrovert's passion in this particular study. So basically, the managers were wrong about introversion, and it doesn't really correlate with whether or not you're passionate in the job. I'm an introverted person, but I'm really passionate about my job.

And so there's no correlation there. So just be careful. If you're a manager, the bottom line is get to know your people. Get to know what drives each of them, whether they're extroverted or introverted, and you'll be a much better manager for that. All right. That's today's Manager Lab. And until we meet next time in the laboratory, do good work. Music.