Mentoring Relationships Can Have Strengths As Well As Weaknesses

A mentor can be a great teacher for a protégé. However, today’s best managers are aware of potential problems that can occur between mentors and protégés. Three main categories of mentor-protégé problems have been identified: protégé performance problems, interpersonal relationship problems, and destructive relationships. Protégés have reported that their mentors neglected them, sabotaged them, and competed with them. On the other hand, mentors have reported that their protégés were: unwilling to learn, deceitful, jealous, and competitive. Today’s best managers balance the potential benefits with the potential weaknesses of mentor-protégé relationships.

Source: Eby, L. T., Durley, J. R., Evans, S. C., & Ragins, B. R. 2008. Mentors’ perceptions of negative mentoring experiences: Scale development and nomological validation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 358-373.

Motivation To Gather Information Results In Finding More and Better Information

Today’s best managers know the importance of information gathering for effective managerial performance. Managers who have access to more and better sources of information are better able to make sense of their environment, are more effective at spotting trends, and are more able to achieve higher levels of performance compared to managers without such information. The larger the social network, the more time managers spend looking for more information, and the more information they find. However, having a large social network is only helpful for managers who are motivated to take advantage of the information that is available from that network.

Source: Anderson, M. H. 2008. Social networks and the cognitive motivation to realize network opportunities: A study of managers’ information gathering behaviors. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 51-78.

Positively Coping With Change Can Lessen Employee Sick Time, Intentions to Quit, and Turnover

Today’s best managers know the importance of managing employees’ reactions to organizational changes. Sometimes employees view organizational changes as harmful and threatening. When employees have negative feelings about change, they can then have increased sick leave and higher intentions to quit, and can be more likely to leave organizations entirely. Today’s best managers discuss organizational changes with employees and that helps reduce uncertainty about change. They help employees to vent their feelings about the changes. They also show employees the positive side of changes, such as job security, and new opportunities for advancement, and that helps reduce negative employee reactions to change.

Source: Fugate, M., Kinicki, A. J., & Prussia, G. E. 2008. Employee coping with organizational change: An examination of alternative theoretical perspectives and models. Personnel Psychology, 61, 1-36.

The Six Characteristics of Great Executers

Today’s best managers know the six traits shared by people who are great at getting things done: 1) they carefully consider matters that come to them and make a decision, rather than avoid making decisions about difficult things, 2) they stay realistic about what they can and can’t accomplish with the time and money they have, 3) they set clear and accurate goals, 4) they reward people who perform well and don’t reward poor performers, 5) they coach and guide their employees, and 6) they know themselves well, such as what they can and can’t do.

Source: Bossidy, L. 2008. Executive orientation: Cultivate six characteristics. Leadership Excellence, 25/3, p. 9.

Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters.

This book explains how to create relevant brands and make your product matter. Relevance and success will come to those who listen more than talk, and who deliver more than just advertise their product. The author states that profit should not be your primary goal. Instead, make a relevant product and profit happens when you do everything else right. The book explains about relevant solutions, which are: insights, innovations, investment, design, experience, and value. The book describes how to control the conversation with customers, and provides an incredible amount of company examples.

Source: Relevance: Making Stuff That Matters. By Tim Manners, 2008, Portfolio, NY, ISBN: 978-1-59184-220-0.

Fair Processes and Focus on Others Can Motivate Employees to Take Charge at Work

Taking charge means to go beyond one’s job description and help bring about new and innovative change to an organization. Today’s best managers understand that employees who are more self-centered and strive to achieve tend not to take charge compared to employees who are less self-centered and less interested in striving to achieve. Also, when employees have a high sense of duty to help others, then they are more likely to take charge compared to employees with a low sense of duty. Employees may be more likely to take charge when they believe their organization uses fair processes to make employee decisions.

Source: Moon, H., Kamdar, D., Mayer, D. M., & Takeuchi, R. 2008. Me or we? The role of personality and justice as other-centered antecedents to innovative citizenship behaviors within organizations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 84-94.

Improving Perceived Customer Value Is The Key To Innovation

Managers used to believe that improving product value was the key to innovation. Today’s best managers know that altering value as defined by the customer is the new key to innovation. For example, recognize that when customers buy new software, they are taking home a CD, but what they are really getting is a new way to perform a desired task. Today’s best managers focus on improving customer value of performing the task and not on improving the value of the CD itself. Find new ways to identify and co-solve customer problems. Customer value is realized, or brought out, in the use of the product.

Source: Michel, S., Brown, S. W., & Gallan, A. S. 2008, Spring. Service-logic innovations: How to innovate customers, not products. California Management Review, 50, 49-64.

Employees Process Positive Information Faster Than Negative Information

Today’s best managers know that employees can process information at varying speeds. For example, employees will process, or think through and make conclusions about, information that is positive faster than they will process negative information. This happens because employees have much more positive information about themselves stored in their brains than they do negative information. When employees hear positive information, then this new positive information quickly matches up with the positive information that is already there. This employee tendency helps explain why employees rapidly absorb positive feedback, but then take more time to process negative feedback.

Source: Unkelbach, C., Fiedler, K., Bayer, M., Stegmueller, M., & Danner, D. 2008. Why positive information is processed faster: The density hypotheis. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 36-49.

Sharing Expectations About Communication Can Improve Employee Satisfaction

Today’s best managers know that effective communication is important for employee satisfaction. When employees have similar expectations about the communication process, then they tend to have higher levels of satisfaction. For example, when employees understand how polite and how efficient communication should be, then they tend to be more satisfied on the job. Polite communication refers to being considerate and respectful of one’s co-workers. Efficient communication refers to how truthful, clear, and relevant someone is when they communicate.

Source: Park, H. S. 2008, February. Communication Research, 35, 88-108.

Establish a Plan That Measures Employee Performance

Today’s best managers understand the need for a plan that measures employee performance. The plan should help communicate the vision, mission, strategy and goals to employees. The plan should help define desired performance, motivate employees to perform, and help employees achieve their performance goals. An effective plan should: 1) identify and explain the performance criteria, 2) accurately measure actual employee performance, 3) be continually re-evaluated and updated, and 4) clearly let employees know what is expected of them.

Source: McCoy, J. 2008, July. Align performance with your strategy: Choosing the right team matters. Leadership Excellence, 25, p. 17.

Focusing On Implementation Activities Can Help Employees Make Sense Out Of Change

Today’s best managers want employees to react positively to organizational changes. One way to help make that happen is to involve employees in the change process. Letting employees participate in the change can help them make sense out of the chaos that can happen during large-scale changes. Having employees help create actions plans can get employees involved. However, limit the number of tasks to a few, such as helping with implementation activities, to keep employees focused, and to avoid creating even more chaos. Employee participation in plans that involve trial and error can be even more effective in helping employees make sense out of organizational changes.

Source: Stensaker, I., Falkenberg, J., & Gronhaug, K. 2008. Implementation activities and organizational sensemaking. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 44, 162-185.

Creating Magic: Ten Common Sense Leadership Strategies From A Life At Disney.

This book examines the leadership strategies that made Disney great. According to the author, creative leadership leads to employee excellence, which leads to customer satisfaction, which leads to a strong business. The book offers many excellent Disney strategies, such as RAVE, which stands for respect, appreciate, and value everyone. Managers should treat their employees as they want them to treat customers. Managers should live their values, make their people their brand, eliminate hassles, learn the truth from their employees, create magic through training, and stay ahead of the pack.

Source: Creating Magic: Ten Common Sense Leadership Strategies From A Life At Disney. By Lee Cockerell, 2008, Doubleday, NY, ISBN: 978-0385523868.

Build Teams That Can Better Withstand Downsizing

Unfortunately, in organizations today layoffs and downsizing are often everyday events. For example, team leaders may be laid off and teams are left to fend for themselves. Today’s best managers know that some teams can cope better than others when team leaders are let go. Teams that are emotionally stable where team members are typically calm and even-tempered will perform better after a team downsizing. Also, teams where members have positive interaction, exchange information, and cooperate with each other will survive a leader layoff better than teams that don’t behave. In other words, create teams that are emotionally stable and extroverted and they may better withstand the loss of a team leader.

Source: DeRue, D. S., Hollenbeck, J. R., Johnson, M. D., Ilgen, D. R., & Jundt, D.K. 2008. How different team downsizing approaches influence team-level adaptation and performance. Academy of Management Journal, 51, 182-196.

Problems Caused By Employee Generational Differences May Be More Hype Than Reality

Managers tend to believe that employees may have different views, values, and/or differences in behavior due to their generational differences. Today’s best managers know that employees of all ages have more in common than they do differences. For example, some managers believe that older employees tend to work harder, be more loyal, and are more willing to pay their dues to the company than are younger employees. However, employees of all ages tend to agree that working hard is how people get ahead in companies today. Also, employees of all generations tend to agree about what they want, think, and believe in the workplace.

Source: Renn, M. T. 2008, March/April. Debunking generational differences. Leader In Action, 28, 23-24.

Knowing Who Your Employees Are And What They Do Can Increase Desirable Job Behaviors.

Some employees feel that they have no identity at work. This means they believe that nobody at work really knows who they are and what they do. Today’s best managers know that knowing the identity of your employees can help increase their performance, their creativity, their satisfaction, and lower their absenteeism on the job. Getting to know an employee’s identity means knowing things like their ethnic background, where they grew up, and what they do when they are away from work, such as serve on the Parent Teacher Association at their child’s school.

Source: Thatcher, S. M. B., & Greer, L. L. 2008, February. Does it really matter if you recognize who I am? The implications of identity comprehension for individuals in work teams. Journal of Management, 34, 5-24.

Turn Your Posers and Paupers Into Performing Employees

Today’s best managers know the importance of having the right people in their organization. There may be many great employees out there, but they may not have the right knowledge, skills, and abilities for your organization. There tend to be three types of employees: 1) performers are employees who love their job, have the right skills, and are effective and engaged in their work, 2) posers are mediocre employees, but they are very skilled at looking like the employee that different managers want them to be, and 3) paupers are neglected employees who feel alienated, cynical, and rejected.

Source: Lakhani, A., & Gazzara, K. 2008. People alignment: Throw the seats off the bus. Leadership Excellence, 25/3, p. 8.

Backing-Up Behavior on Teams Can Sometimes Help and Sometimes Hurt Team Performance

Many teams have someone who backs up or assists another team member when they need help to accomplish their tasks. Today’s best managers know that backing up another member of your team could be helpful or hurtful to the team’s effectiveness. When team members have uneven workloads, then the costs of backing up a team member when needed are not high. However, when team members have even workloads, then the costs of backing up a team member are high. So, be careful when assigning a backup for tasks where the workload is roughly equal for team members, as this may actually hurt, instead of help, team performance.

Source: Barnes, C. M., Hollenbeck, J. R., Wagner, D. R., DeRue, D. S., Nahrgang, J. D., & Schwind, K. M. 2008. Harmful help: The costs of backing-up behavior in teams. Journal of Applied Psychology, 92, 1299-1319.

Create Anti-Corruption Entrepreneurs In Your Company To Find and Destroy Corrupt Behavior

Managers know that most attempts to curb organizational corruption begin with enthusiasm and end with cynicism. Today’s best managers know that fighting corruption begins by getting rid of employees who guard the status quo to prevent change to the old corrupt way of life. Create anticorruption entrepreneurs in your company to help curb corruption. Give the entrepreneurs support and resources to help them create a new culture that seeks out and destroys corrupt employee behavior. Help entrepreneurs use economic, cultural, social, and symbolic resources to help change current corrupt employee mindsets.

Source: Misangyi, V. F., Weaver, G. R., & Elms, H. 2008. Ending corruption: The interplay among institutional logics, resources, and institutional entrepreneurs. Academy of Management Review, 33, 750-770.

The Encore Effect: How To Achieve Remarkable Performance In Everything You Do.

This book examines moving from routine performance to remarkable performance. Remarkable performance can result in money, influence, opportunity, recognition and exposure. Employees should work on becoming both a remarkable person as well as a remarkable performer, as they can’t do one without the other. Every remarkable performance results in other employees moving in positive ways to better places than they were before. The book describes the steps in the Pyramid of Possibility: potential, purpose, passion, principles, persistence, and personalization. Personalization is the highest expression of being remarkable. Employees should be the performance and connect with their audience if they want to perform remarkably.

Source: The Encore Effect: How To Achieve Remarkable Performance In Everything You Do. By Mark Sanborn, 2008, Doubleday, NY, ISBN: 978-0-385-51905-2.

Self Versus Team Assessments Of Employees Can Improve Diverse Team Performance

Today’s best managers know that managing diverse teams can be especially problematic. Traditional team-building activities tend not to work for diverse teams because they don’t handle the unique qualities and differences among diverse team members. Today’s best managers know that 360-degree feedback can help diverse teams improve. Compare team members’ assessments of themselves with the teams’ assessments of them. When using this approach be sure that teams have coaching available to help them. Without someone to guide and counsel team members, this approach can uncover old team wounds, and that could hurt, rather than help, team performance.

Source: Polzer, J. T. 2008, July-August. Making diverse teams click. Harvard Business Review, 20.

Seek Out New Methods and Take Advantage of Current Competencies to Be The Most Successful

Managers used to believe that companies could only be successful if they followed one of two learning activities. The first is called exploitation, which means to take advantage of abilities that the organization already has. The second is called exploration, which means to be adaptive to change and to seek out and discover new methods for the organization. Today’s best managers know that the most successful organizations follow both approaches, which means that they follow an ambidextrous approach to organizational learning.

Source: Raisch, S., & Birkinshaw, J. 2008, June. Organizational ambidexterity: Antecedents, outcomes, and moderators. Journal of Management, 34, 375-409.

Monitor and Address Complaints Quickly To Keep Employees From Quitting

Today’s best managers know how to avoid a stampede of employees leaving the company. A mass exodus can happen when two or more individuals make a complaint to their manager. The manager then does not adequately address or resolve the complaint. Then, the problem escalates as employees continue to discuss the complaint with each other, and the problem becomes more serious than it was at first. As a result, a large number of employees then leave the organization. Today’s best managers know to monitor and address employee complaints quickly and thoroughly, so that things don’t get out of hand, which helps keep large groups of employees from quitting the company.

Source: Bartunek, J. M., Huang, Z., & Walsh, I. J. 2008. The development of a process model of collective turnover. Human Relations, 61, 5-38.

Pay Satisfaction Can Be Low For Employees Who Compare Themselves to the Highest Paid Employees

Employees tend to compare their pay levels to other individuals in order to decide whether they are satisfied with their pay or not. Employees tend to be dissatisfied when they are paid less than the highest paid individuals in their same field with the same level of skill and experience. Interestingly, employees also tend to be dissatisfied when they are paid more than the lowest paid individuals in their same line of work who have similar skills and experience. However, the level of pay dissatisfaction was much lower when compared to the lowest paid employees versus comparison to the highest paid employees.

Source: Harris, M. M., & Anseel, F., & Lievens, F. 2008. Keeping up with the Joneses: A field study of the relationships among upward, lateral, and downward comparisons and pay level satisfaction. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 665-673.

Mutual Contributions To Team Success Can Result in Team Members Contributing Even More

More and more organizations are requiring employees to work together in teams. Team success often depends on how well team members cooperate with each other. Today’s best managers know that some team members may not contribute, but instead may ride on the efforts of other team members. To decrease this problem, managers can help create a feeling of reciprocity, meaning that team members see how much everyone is contributing and benefitting in return. When team members perceive a reciprocal relationship, then they contribute even more and overall team performance will continue to rise.

Source: Biele, G., Rieskamp, J., & Czienskowski, U. 2008. Explaining cooperation in groups: Testing models of reciprocity and learning. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 106, 89-105.

Employees Can Fake Emotional Intelligence So Use Additional Measures When Making Decisions

Today’s best managers know the importance of being able: 1) to recognize one’s own emotions, 2) to manage those emotions, 3) to recognize the emotions that others are experiencing, and 4) to manage our relationships with others based on those emotions. The ability to do these four behaviors is called emotional intelligence or EI. Today’s best managers don’t hire, fire, or promote an employee solely based on emotional intelligence because it is possible to fake being emotionally intelligent. For example, employees may work extra hard to make a good impression when they are being evaluated, but then may not act this way normally on the job.

Source: Day, A. L., & Carroll, S. A. 2008. Faking emotional intelligence (EI): Comparing response distortion on ability and trait-based EI measures. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 761-784.

Ahead Of The Curve: Two Years At Harvard Business School

This book examines the author’s two-year experience as a student at the Harvard Business School. He is happy that he went to Harvard, but is critical of the experience. He says that HBS is about making money, not about changing the world. The two main foci of the curriculum were to make money and to give back. He wonders why his classmates pushed so hard to get jobs after they graduated where they knew they would be miserable. He wonders how he can succeed financially without losing his soul in the business world. In sum, he says that Harvard Business School should produce more problem-solvers and fewer wind bags.

Source: Ahead Of The Curve: Two Years At Harvard Business School. By Philip Delves Broughton, 2008, Penguin Press, ISBN: 978-1-59420-175-2.

The Need to Change Organizations Can Decrease Over Time

Mangers used to believe that organizations changed more and more often over time. It was thought that change was like a snowball rolling down a hill that got bigger and bigger. The amount of organizational change increased as managers improved their skills at making effective changes and saw change as an effective way to improve their organization. However, today’s best managers know that successful organizational changes can lead to less and less need for more change. The more that you successfully help change an organization, then the less likely that you may have to help change that organization again in the future.

Source: Beck, N., Bruederl, J. & Woywode, M. 2008. Momentum or deceleration? Theoretical and methodological reflections on the analysis of organizational change. Academy of Management Journal, 51: 413-435.

Giving Employees A Voice When Giving Them Negative Feedback Can Bring Benefits

Managers say that giving negative feedback to their employees is one of their least favorite activities. As a result, they tend to avoid or delay doing it. Today’s best managers know the best way to give negative feedback to employees. The most effective way is to: 1) give employees the opportunity to rate their own performance, 2) give employees some positive feedback along with the negative feedback, and 3) allow employees to respond to your negative feedback of them. Using all three of these feedback methods may be difficult to do, but can be more effective and less risky than not using them.

Source: Lizzio, A., Wilson, K., & MacKay, L. 2008. Managers’ and subordinates’ evaluations of feedback strategies: The critical contribution of voice. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38, 919-946.

Overall Performance Ratings Can Incorrectly Label Employees

Performance evaluations usually end with employees receiving a single overall performance rating, such as “below expectations” or “exceeds expectations”, etc. Today’s best managers know that overall performance scores can incorrectly “label” an employee and can overlook employee strengths and weaknesses. An overall performance label can hurt employee self-esteem and lower motivation. To help solve this problem, some companies are avoiding overall ratings, and giving employees only scores for specific job performance skills that could be improved or changed. This approach can lead to higher job performance and higher employee self perceptions.

Source: King, J. F. 2008. How managers think: Why the mediated model makes sense. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1, 180-182.

Team Conflict Should Be Managed Rather Than Ignored

Today’s best managers know that conflict can escalate as employees become members of teams with increasingly diverse individuals. Some employees may try to avoid or ignore conflict on their teams, but that strategy won’t be effective. Today’s best managers need to show employees how to cool off when they get into heated team conflicts, then how to slow down and focus on solving conflict problems. Managers need to show employees how to solve the two main types of conflict: task conflict and relationship conflict. Relationship conflict is more likely the cause of conflict that leads to poor team productivity compared to task conflict.

Source: Flanagan, T. A., & Runde, C. E. 2008, May/June. Hidden potential: Embracing conflict can pay off for teams. Leader In Action, 28, 8-12.