Does Your Company Culture Promote the Wrong Kind of Confidence?

Companies these days are pushing to make sure that their employees are engaged, enthused, and committed. It's a reasonable goal, but I'm seeing an unintended consequence of this drive to promote engagement. Corporate pride among employees is fine, but not when it leads to (or is accompanied by) individual arrogance. There seems to be an increase in self-important behavior on the part of too many individuals I've encountered lately. It's as if because they're proud to work for a well-regarded firm, they feel entitled to be haughty and disrespectful. Companies should take a moment to make sure that their employee engagement initiatives are not inadvertently sabotaging customer and vendor relationships.

The Kids Are Alright, Indeed!

Last month I was at a gathering of human resource professionals where the conversation turned to workplace differences between 25, 35, and 45-year-olds. People in the crowd noted recent studies showing differences in the character of Millennial workers vs. those of Generation X and Y. One voice of dissent exclaimed, “I don’t like being labeled as a Millennial.” At last, some critical thinking has emerged!

For the past several years I’ve doubted consultants who have proclaimed that there are profound and important differences among the generations in the workplace. They cite survey research revealing generational differences in attitudes toward work, what motivates people, and so forth. I’ll acknowledge that there may be some differences among the generations, but I’m suspect of the research. Most of it is cross-sectional – a technique that simply compares different groups at a snapshot in time. It reminds me of some of the studies done on aging fifty years ago.

In the 1960’s as our older adult population began to expand, researchers on aging tried to identify the average, expectable changes that occur as people get older. Much of the existing research was cross-sectional; that is, different age groups were compared to one another at a point in time. In a typical study, thirty year olds, fifty year olds, and seventy year olds might be compared to each other on various measures (e.g. memory, reaction time, verbal fluency), and the differences among the groups were thought to reflect fairly universal age-related changes (“age-effects”). Thoughtful researchers recognized that these changes might not be quite so universal. They suspected that future groups of 70-year-olds might not experience the exact same changes. They believed that a different research methodology was needed, one that recognized that with each decade or so, there was a new “cohort” of 70-year-olds who had lived through different experiences than the 70-year-olds who came before them. They developed a far more sophisticated long-term research methodology (called "cross-sequential") that allowed them to tease out which changes were truly age-related and which were more likely due to cohort effects.

Unfortunately most of what has been said about Boomers vs. Generation X vs. Millennial’s in the workplace is based on simplistic cross-sectional research. Those who promote this pseudoscience have focused on “cohort effects” while ignoring age-effects and the impact of the labor market. I predict that within a few years we’ll see that much of what has been hyped as true, enduring, and meaningful differences between the generations of workers – will be found to be nothing of the sort.

What You See isn't Who You Hire

Companies sometimes ask me to provide executive coaching to high-level individuals who don’t seem to be performing up to their potential. On more than one occasion the person’s supervisor has said “we were so impressed with this candidate during the interview process, but he/she has been a real disappointment.”

Candidates naturally try to sell themselves and this can indeed influence an interviewer’s perception and it can profoundly affect hiring decisions. A 2009 meta-analysis of studies conducted between 1929 and 2008 found that self-presentation tactics have a significant impact on interviewers’ ratings of candidates. Appearance (e.g. physical attractiveness, professional attire) had the strongest influence on hiring decisions, followed by impression management (e.g. self-promotion, ingratiation), and verbal/non verbal behavior (e.g. fluent speech, smiling). The analysis also showed that the less structured the interview, the stronger the impact made by self-presentation tactics.

When your business is hiring for key positions, it’s critical to make sure that what you see is what you ultimately get. Here are some things to consider:

• Subconscious processes have been shown to have a significant impact on decision-maker evaluations. For example, social psychology experiments demonstrate that people use facial appearance as a basis for interpersonal judgments after as little as 100 microseconds of exposure. When interviewing someone, keep in mind that the applicant can trigger your pre-existing internal beliefs and attitudes about the “right type” of candidate. If this happens, you’re liable to overlook important flaws.
  

• Be alert for instances in which the applicant shifts the focus from themselves onto you. Note whether these are appropriate or whether they reflect attempts to divert the discussion away from matters they’d prefer not to elaborate upon.
  

• Use a structured interview conducted by telephone as an initial first step. Ask job-related behavioral questions, ask them in the same order with all candidates, and use a standardized scoring procedure.

Commitment to Sunk Costs - A Real Waste!

For most business owners the current economic situation involves an extraordinary amount of uncertainty. Few of us want to rock the boat when the water is rough to begin with. Under the circumstances, we may prefer the devil we know to the one we don't. Humans typically prefer stability, even when change can be key to success. There are many reasons why leaders and managers cling to the status quo. A common reason involves an all-too-human insistence on seeing a strategy through to the end. When determining whether or not to change course (even when faced with disappointing results), people tend to place undue emphasis on prior costs. The greater the prior cost has been, the more likely it is that people will "stay the course." Consider this study by Arkes and Blumer (1985). Subjects were told the following:

"As the president of a company you have invested $10 million dollars of the company's money into a research project [a plane that cannot be detected by radar]. When the project is 90% completed, another firm begins marketing a competing plane that cannot be detected by radar. Also, it's apparent that their plane is much faster and far more economical than the plane your company is building. The question is: should you invest the last 10% of the research funds to finish your radar-blind plane?"

The authors found that 85% of the subjects in the study recommended finishing the airplane. However, another group, who was not told about the prior investment, overwhelmingly decided not to invest the money. For most people, making a prior investment (even though it was a mistake) becomes a justification for sticking to their guns. As Leahy (2001) succinctly put it, individuals often attempt to redeem themselves from sunk-costs by trying to make the unworkable finally work.

If you're finding it difficult to let go of a long-held yet disappointing strategy, consider bringing others (who aren't as committed to defending a lost cause) into your decision-making process.