Want to be a better leader? Check your email less often.

Research from Michigan State University shows that keeping up with email traffic places high demands on managers, which prevents them from achieving their goals and from being good leaders.

When managers reduce their leadership behaviours, their team’s task performance, work satisfaction, organizational commitment, intrinsic motivation and engagement all decrease, and staff stress and negative emotions increase.

The moral of the story is that managers need to set aside specific times to check email. This puts the manager in control -- rather than reacting whenever a new message appears in the inbox, which wrestles control away from the manager.

It takes time and effort to transition between email and work tasks, so minimizing the number of times they have to make that transition is to their benefit.

As a leader or manager yourself, does any of this resonate with you?