“I’m not asking you to work at night” — when leaders set norms by example

Late in the evening, at 10:48 p.m., Anna emails Maja and adds: “You don’t need to reply now.”

The next day she asks:
— Maja, why are you still working after hours? I genuinely don’t expect that.
— Because I can see what the person setting the standard here actually does.

Anna sees her own preferred working rhythm. Maja sees the behavior of the CEO, which may communicate more than the official message.

What really happened

Anna may sincerely believe that working late is entirely her own choice. She is not ordering anyone to do the same, she does not ask in the morning why Maja failed to answer at 11 p.m., and she may even consciously tell people to rest. Maja is observing something else: the person at the top regularly works late and sends messages at that time. To her, that behavior is information about what commitment really looks like in this organization, even if the formal rule sounds more relaxed. Power means that a personal habit can start functioning as an informal standard.

What the research says

People learn organizational norms by observing the behavior of people with status and power—a social-learning mechanism long studied in organizations (Manz & Sims, 1977; Belschak & Den Hartog, 2026). Research also maps closely onto this exact scenario: recipients of non-urgent after-hours emails overestimated how quickly senders expected a reply, while senders underestimated the stress their messages created—a pattern described as email urgency bias (Giurge & Bohns, 2021). Other work suggests that informal expectations of constant availability, rather than policy alone, are strongly linked to pressure to respond quickly, often discussed as workplace telepressure (Barber, Santuzzi & Hu, 2026). A leader does not need to issue an instruction for their behavior to create a norm.

How to handle it

If Anna prefers working at night, she does not have to change her own rhythm, but she can change the signal she sends to others. The simplest option is to schedule messages for the morning or write: “I’m sending this now because this is when I work. I do not expect a response before tomorrow.” Even more important is what happens afterwards: do not reward late-night replies or treat permanent availability as evidence of commitment. The general rule: people watch what leaders do more closely than what they declare. If your personal style is not meant to be the standard for everyone else, you need to actively mark the boundary between your own habits and the organization’s expectations.

How Empatyzer and Em can help

Empatyzer can help Anna see that employees learn expectations not only from what a leader says, but from what they repeatedly observe. Her profile may support high drive, control and a willingness to respond late, while some team members may have a much stronger need for a clear boundary between work and private time. Before she communicates, Em can suggest going beyond “you don’t have to reply” and adding a behavioral signal: scheduled send, a clear “for tomorrow” label or an agreed response-time norm. At team level, Empatyzer can also show how varied preferences around pace and availability are. Micro-lessons remind leaders that their personal style becomes a model even when they never formally impose it.