It can feel like an impossible trade-off. Protect your focus, and you risk being seen as inaccessible. Stay constantly available, and meetings, emails and messages soon cannibalise your week.
A recent Harvard Business Review study explored what the highest-performing teams do differently. They researched more than 6,000 knowledge workers across industries, including law, finance, healthcare and technology.
The researchers found that “superteams” consistently shared three characteristics. They:
- Get more done by managing time, energy and attention more effectively
- Actively make one another better, and
- Continuously strive to improve.
The best teams are intentionally choosing productivity AND people. One of the simplest ways to do that is through office hours.
What are office hours?
The concept comes from universities. Lecturers set aside regular times each week when students can drop in with questions. No appointment needed.
Leaders can borrow the same idea. Instead of responding to every Teams message, email or “Have you got a moment?” as it arrives, you create a predictable window where your team knows you’ll be available.
Why do office hours work?
Office hours protect focus and build a stronger team by:
- Reducing interruptions to your workflow (and curtailing time confetti)
- Eliminating the back-and-forth of scheduling meetings or answering questions by email
- Creating dedicated time for personalised, collaborative conversations, while protecting focused work
- Encouraging better thinking.
When people know there’s a set time to ask their questions, they often work through the issue on their own first. Some questions resolve themselves. Others lead to richer discussions once people have had time to think them through.
How to set up office hours
1. Choose a cadence
- Some roles and teams benefit from daily office hours. Others find one or two longer sessions a week are enough.
- Estimate how much time you spend each day responding to email, Teams, and phone calls from your team. The goal is for office hours to save you time and improve the quality of your responses.
- As a guide: if you’re spending two hours a day on Teams messages, try a 45-minute daily office hour instead.
- Review the questions you’re answering. Would delaying your response by a day cause a genuine bottleneck, or could it wait? If things can’t wait, then start with daily office hours.
2. Structure your calendar
Schedule both:
- Office hours for collaboration
- Focus blocks for your highest-value work (ideally 90–120 minutes at a consistent time each day).
Treat both as equally important.
3. Set expectations
Explain to your team why you’re trialling office hours. Encourage people to keep a running list of questions rather than interrupting immediately.
Manage your own expectations too. Some initial resistance is normal. People are used to firing off questions the moment they arise and working right up against deadlines. Give the new rhythm a few weeks to stick. Your team will take their cues from you. If you expect them to batch their questions, make a habit of batching your own non-urgent requests as well.
4. Mentor and coach, don’t rescue
When people arrive:
- Give them your full attention
- Ask open questions
- Help them think rather than simply providing the answer
- Make sure ownership of the next step stays with them.
Embed office hours and you’ll notice the difference. More focus. Better coaching conversations. A team that’s increasingly confident solving problems on its own.
Great leaders aren’t available every minute. They’re intentionally available at the moments that matter most. Office hours naturally reinforce the three characteristics of high-performing teams.
- Better use of time, energy and attention.
Everyone enjoys better boundaries and the whole team’s attention becomes less fragmented.
- Team members make one another better.
Collaboration expands across the team, the leader stops being the bottleneck.
- Continuous learning.
Conversations become coaching rather than reactive problem-solving, building confidence and judgement over time.
Keen to read more? These two articles offer complementary insights:
- The Quiet Protocol: Lift Productivity By 65%
- Time Confetti is Ruining your Focus (here’s how to fix it!)
