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If only it were Surprisingly Obvious. IME there are a large number of emotionally stunted middle and upper managers that could use a pedigreed reminder that being a jerk at work is not good for anything in the end.
Would the people who need such a reminder actually accept the research, and change their behavior? Are they even aware of the effects of their behavior?
This seems obvious but I guess needs 'official research' to register. A quote I remember from a coleage - 'They wouldn't give me a pay rate rise, so I gave myself one, by working less hours in a day'
It'll never register, lol. It'll end up being a tick box moment in some Friday after 5 minute management training document that got completed while thinking about what to do over the weekend.
Which is why people do it.
You get fired if you just stop showing up on Thursdays, but not if you start reading comics on your phone for the first hour of every workday.
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Yup. We just lost our "slightly below average" developers, but he was a nice guy and tries to deliver. But they have been slow to replace him, and now we are likely looking at 3 months before a new hire will just be in place, plus the new hire will not have the three years worth of experience the other guy had, so their project will likely be slower than at it already was for the rest of the year.
I’d take “slightly below average but is generally good to work with and tries hard” over “genius asshole” almost any day. Few projects require the latter. There’s also the problem with how useless so many are at their jobs with no way to be sure until its too late.
I'd take either before the utterly dangerous "below average hard-working asshole" which tend to quickly rise to managerial positions and cause untold damage with their ineptitude.
"I distinguish four types. There are clever, hardworking, stupid, and lazy officers. Usually two characteristics are combined. Some are clever and hardworking; their place is the General Staff. The next ones are stupid and lazy; they make up 90 percent of every army and are suited to routine duties. Anyone who is both clever and lazy is qualified for the highest leadership duties, because he possesses the mental clarity and strength of nerve necessary for difficult decisions. One must beware of anyone who is both stupid and hardworking; he must not be entrusted with any responsibility because he will always only cause damage."
— Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord
I'm really good at my job, and a few years ago i became a supervisor. But not because i was good with people, simply because i am technically competent. My company was (and still is) rather small (less than 20 on the technical side, but almost 200 overall) and there was no one else remotely apt for the job. I was always a 'cold' person, didn't care much about closeness at work, didn't cared about birthdays, company parties (people absolutely love those where i work, and the company spends a good money on it), and i had to make an effort to remind myself to say 'Good morning' to everybody, because it didn't felt necessary. While i treated everybody with the same respect i wished for myself, eventually i found that that wasn't enough. Fast forward a few years i got better at the basics, but I'm still struggling on the people aspect of it. My team's productivity is good and so is mine, everybody receives good pay and they are happy on that aspect. The only reason to why my team may not have fallen apart, is probably because we still closely interact with other people from other teams, who are way better at this.
> "An easy place to start is simply acknowledging what’s important to people outside of their jobs: birthdays, graduations, marriages, a new baby, death of a loved one, or religious observances. Doing so makes them feel valued as human beings, not just human capital."
For a long time i never considered others would find that important, not at the workplace anyway. When you don't care about that stuff yourself, caring for the sake of work feels fake and people can spot it which may backfire. Is it a case of "fake it until you make it", or just brute-force until you get better on it? I admit it is exhausting. I love my work and what i do on the technical side, and i cannot complain about the company or the pay, but i do sometimes regret accepting that offer.
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> When they tell their base managers to crack the whip and force them to give the whole “you are not working hard enough, tighten up. Shorter lunches, clock in 5 minutes early, etc” speech to the base employees, they will absolutely feel resentment and do LESS work, not more. The most influential question from team lead trainings over the years has been: Do you trust your employee to want to complete the task and pur…
> In a lot of cases, there will be something going on in their private life they are struggling with. If you help them with that, or at least help them navigate work around this, you will end up with a great team member. Note that there already has to be a pretty high level of trust between that employee and their manager for this to work; if I don't feel like I can trust my manager, I will absolutely keep my lips zi…
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Have we got to the point where we need an article telling us that slighting people doesn't help their motivation? Perhaps the answer is yes when we also compare a worker's motivation to a dog's motivation seemingly without irony.
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Thank You
The big concept which needs to be included in this discussion is "payslope" --- for an excellent article on this, and an example of a company which handles this well, see: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/time-to-lead/h... I have never regretted a purchase from Lee Valley, and highly recommend all of their products.
Of course a small company of under 1000 employees is going to have a lower executive pay and therefore lower pay gap/ratio than a Fortune 500 company. As someone who has a 401k, I certainly hope that the CEOs of our biggest companies are more highly compensated (~competent) than the CEO of Martin's Chicken Shack.
Doesn’t this general climate disproportionately advantage the well connected, the insider traders?
And as a citizen of a given jurisdiction, even if you are doing great in the capital markets, is it worth the living in an increasingly enshittified society?
> the retail chain, which has a well-established policy that managers hand-deliver a card and small gift to each employee on their birthday. > The faux pas was never intentional; the managers who were late said they had other priorities. If it's such a well known company policy and you forget that, it is not a small slight at all.
There's a lot of jeering, I suspect at the headline more than anything, but having documented research can be helpful in changing management behavior. The changes in employee behavior documented here are not ones that managers would easily connect to their past behavior, such as a late birthday recognition. When you train a dog, you have to give a reward very soon after the desired behavior, otherwise the dog won't a…
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