What Your Direct Reports Say About You at Dinner

Why your impact on the people who report to you reaches well past the office, and how to choose which way it goes.

Every person who reports to you talks about you at home.

Most days.

Dinner is one place it comes up. So is the drive home, the walk on Saturday morning, the phone call with a friend.

You already know this is true. Think about how well your partner feels like they know your boss.

They might have met her once, or never. They still feel like they know her well, because they hear about her almost every day, the good and the bad.

I made this point on a call this week. I could see this “clicked” for the person I was talking to. His reply: when people vent at home about work, it's almost always about their boss.

Once you see it, you can't unsee it.

What they're saying

So the real question is what they're saying.

When your direct report talks about you tonight, is the story mostly positive or mostly negative?

Do they feel supported? Trusted? Empowered, and excited about the work?

Or do they feel micromanaged and not trusted? Angry? Disrespected? Worried about where their job is headed?

Whichever it is, that's the story they're telling day after day.

Your impact is outsized

Here's why that story matters so much. Your impact on each person who reports to you is outsized.

It reaches past the office, into their evenings and weekends. A peer or teammate doesn't have that kind of impact. A skip-level leader can have a significant one, but it's different. You're the person they answer to every day.

The research lines up with this. The Workforce Institute, a research group at the HR software company UKG, surveyed 3,400 people across 10 countries for a report released in 2023. 69% said their manager impacts their mental health. That's the same share who said it about their spouse or partner. Fewer said it about their doctor (51%) or their therapist (41%).

And 71% said work stress has a negative impact on their home life.

That impact is outsized good or outsized negative. That's what you get to choose.

Why managers miss it

Most managers miss this. You rarely get much reaction from your team, positive or negative, so it's easy to assume a moment didn't land at all.

For example, consider these two moments with the same person.

You ask her to lead a project, including creating the plan. She says yes and gets to work. You head into your next meeting and don't think about it again.

For her, it's a big moment. Someone finally trusted her to use her brain and her experience, and to own something. She takes it on with pride and a real sense of ownership.

That night at dinner: "I had a good conversation with my boss today. I'm leading a new project, and I get to build the plan."

A few weeks later, she gives an internal presentation. She spent hours preparing, and she pushed through the discomfort of presenting. You're rushing to another meeting, so you give her harsh feedback on the spot, in front of others, with little care.

In your head, the corrective feedback needed to be given, you didn't want to delay it, and what you said was true. So you said it and moved on.

She feels disrespected and embarrassed. Now she's worried about her job.

How does her conversation at home go that night? What's her mood when she walks in the door? Is she in a position to be a caring, empathetic, supportive partner and parent tonight?

That's where the downward spiral outside of work starts.

At work, you saw almost no reaction to either moment. Both of them went home with her.

Same person, different manager

I've seen how far the outsized good can go.

I once hired a woman from another organization inside my company. She was smart, she had great ideas, and she knew how to get things done. In her old org, most of her ideas fell on deaf ears. She wasn't allowed to own a piece of the business.

On my team, we agreed on the outcome I needed, and I gave her a tremendous amount of freedom in how to get there.

She crushed the objective. Along the way, she created new ways of working that others on the team adopted.

In less than two years, another company recruited her into a leadership role.

I'm not the big hero in this story. She is. She did the work, and the talent was there before she ever joined my team.

The difference was her manager. Her old manager was having an outsized negative impact on her career, and likely on her life outside of work.

Awareness, then intention

You're having this impact on every person who reports to you, whether you realize it or not.

In that same UKG survey, 1 in 3 people said their manager fails to recognize the impact they have on the team's mental wellbeing.

Awareness is the first step. Once you have it, you can be intentional about which way your impact goes.

Think about your team one person at a time. For each one, ask:

1. Where are you holding them back?

2. Where are you making them feel disrespected or undervalued?

3. What talents do you see in them that they may not see in themselves?

4. What opportunities could you give them that might launch a new period of growth in their career, and in their life?

Tonight, every one of them will tell someone at home about their day.

You'll be in that story. You have more say in how it goes than anyone else at work.

Best,

Jeff

P.S. If you've taken over a team and you're not sure what each person on it is saying about you at home, let's talk. Book a Strategy Session and we'll look at where you might be holding people back, and where more trust and ownership could change the story they tell. You will meet directly with me. Here's a link to my calendar.