The Mirror Effect
How and why your team copies your good and biased behavior. Leverage the mirror effect for bigger impact.
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I’m Mikhail and I'm excited to share my learnings to help you navigate the complex waters of product management, leadership, and corporate dynamics. Subscribe to unlock the full value.
I’m biased by academia.
It shows in my writing style - it’s often dry, detailed, and packed with scientific citations.
After failing to get the needed stakeholder engagement on a major project, I took action. My manager recommended a few great writing courses. Additionally, I’ve started a Substack blog. Over a year, I saw improvement.
My documents became less dense, less formal, more concise. It was all going smoothly, I thought, until I noticed something odd.
I manage a team and continuously review the PR-FAQs they write. A pattern stood out: Their documents mirrored my old style - dense, formal, and packed with citations.
The style I had a year ago seeped into my team and became a standard. In academia, this would be passable, but in a corporate context, it's supremely inefficient.
This wasn’t the first time I saw such effects in my team. This time, I decided to dig deeper to understand why this happens and how to reverse it if your biases have taken root in the team.
For simplicity, I’ve named this phenomenon “the team mirror effect”. Let’s dive in and figure this out together.
❓What is it?
The team mirror effect occurs when your direct reports start mimicking your attitudes, behaviors, and actions.
No matter if you’re a great manager or toxic, both your strengths and biases will trickle down to the team.
This is why I’m particularly conscious about culture fit and first-time managers.
Hiring a traditional corporate manager to lead a startup can make your company prematurely bureaucratic. This might happen despite the manager’s assurances of lean thinking and action bias. It’s not just about words and theories; the mirror effect feeds off attitudes and intentions.
First-time managers often don’t realize the power they have over the team. Many young folks start with either micromanagement or abandonment, which can be concelead as “empowering autonomy”.
It’s always a risky bet to let an inexperienced manager lead a mid-sized team. Biases that weren’t visible or critical as an individual contributor will amplify in a managerial role.
