Positive Employee Moods in Groups Can Be Self-Reinforcing

When employees have positive moods and feelings (called positive affect) in the workplace, they tend to be better at helping others, solving-problems, and taking risks. When a group of employees has positive group affect, they tend to have more cooperation, less conflict, less absenteeism, and higher individual well-being than groups with low positive affect. Today’s best managers know that group positive affect can be contagious. Group members share their positive emotions and that leads other employees to feel more positive in return. Unfortunately, the positive mood can get much higher than it should, and that can hurt performance, so today’s best managers help employees keep a healthy level of positive affect.

Source: Walter, F., & Bruch, H. 2008. The positive group affect spiral: A dynamic model of the emergence of positive affective similarity in work groups. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 239-261.

Employees Who Help Others and Are Internally Motivated Tend To Have High Performance Levels

Managers want employees to be motivated to perform on the job. Today’s best managers know that some employees go above and beyond their typical job description and help others at work. Employees have higher levels of persistence, performance, and productivity when they desire to help others and when they have an internal drive to succeed. An internal desire to be successful can result in employees helping others more, and that enables higher performance in the organization. Today’s best managers can influence internal motivation levels by selecting applicants who have a passion for their line of work and a passion to work hard on the job.Grant,

Source: A. M. 2008. Does intrinsic motivation fuel the prosocial fire? Motivational synergy in predicting persistence, performance, and productivity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 48-58.

Reputations May Have A Weak Relationship To Actual Employee Behaviors

Managers know the importance of employee reputations. Reputations allow employees to find out about other employees’ performance, and help to reward good behavior and lessen bad behavior. However, today’s best managers know that there is often only a weak relationship between an employee’s reputation and his or her actual behavior. Reputations can be more accurate for employees who are more well-known and receive more social attention. However, reputations tend to be less accurate for less well-known individuals and those relatively unknown by others. Today’s best managers get to know employees personally rather than rely on possibly faulty reputation-based information.

Source: Anderson, C., Shirako, A. 2008. Are individuals’ reputations related to their history of behavior? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 320-333.

Employees Can Underestimate the Likelihood that Others Will Help, So Won’t Ask When Needed

Today’s best managers know that employees may be reluctant to ask others for help. This is because employees will estimate the likelihood that someone will help them before they ask that person for help. If the employees don’t believe that help will be given, then they never ask for help in the first place. Employees tend to underestimate how much others are willing to help them, sometimes by as much as 50%. Today’s best managers work to reverse this trend, and establish a trusting environment where everyone is comfortable asking for help when they need it, and providing help to others when they can.

Source: Flynn, F. J., & Lake, V. K. B. 2008. If you need help, just ask: Underestimating compliance with direct requests for help. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 128-143.

Watch Out For and Stop Corruption in Your Organization Before It Becomes Unstoppable

Corruption is an undesirable behavior where an employee willfully perverts rules, order, ideals, and trust in an organization. Today’s best managers keep an eye out for corrupt practices and stop them before they get out of hand. If corrupt behaviors are not stopped, then they can grow like a virus and can infect a workgroup, or even an entire organization. The result of unchecked corruption can be an organization with a culture of corruption that is deeply imbedded and transcends every process, and is extremely difficult, if not impossible, to stop.

Source: Ashforth, B. E., Gioia, D. A., Robinson, S. L., & Trevino, L. K. 2008. Re-viewing organizational corruption. Academy of Management Review, 33, 670-684.

The Reasons Why So Many Newly Hired Executives Fail

Today’s best managers know that the failure rate of new executives is roughly 64%. Newly hired executives fail due to: expectations about the job don’t match reality, changes in the direction of the company caused by leaders who leave, dependence on old skills that were successful at their former job, failure to find out what is required in the new job, not finding out what the new company culture is all about, and not establishing relationships early on with key people in the new organization. To combat the failure rate, today’s best managers know that coaching new hires about the new company is vital.

Source: Butterfield, S. 2008. Onboard coaching: New leaders can contribute faster. Leadership Excellence, 25/3, p. 14.

The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask Your Organization.

This book explores five important questions to ask yourself if you want to transform your organization. A transformation means to move from where you are now to where you want to be. The five questions ask you to define your mission, customers, customer values, your results, and your plan. Your mission should be short enough to fit on a t-shirt. The mission should reflect your opportunities, competences, and commitment. Everyone in your organization should know your mission. The mission drives your goals, then your objectives, then your action steps, then your budget, then your appraisal process, which then drives your mission.

Source: The Five Most Important Questions You Will Ever Ask Your Organization. By Peter F. Drucker, Jim Collins, Philip Kotler, James Kouzes, Judith Rodin, V. Kasturi Rangan, and Frances Hesselbein, 2008, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA, ISBN: 978-0-470-22756-5.

Voluntary Following Of Ethics Policies Is Better Than Forcing Employees To Be Ethical

Managers used to believe that compliance officers were required to enforce strict fairness and ethics policies. Managers used to spend large amounts of money on surveillance and oversight mechanisms to ensure employee compliance. Today’s best managers know that voluntary employee compliance is a better strategy, and more cost-effective approach. The same processes that managers need to use to obtain voluntary employee compliance also tend to result in higher levels of employee extra-role behaviors and citizenship behaviors, which is good for the company.

Source: Tyler, T., Dienhart, J., & Thomas, T. 2008, Winter. The ethical commitment to compliance: Building values-based cultures. California Management Review, 50, 31-51.

Ways To Make Employee Performance Evaluations More Accurate

Today’s best managers know that there is a weak relationship between actual employee performance and performance evaluation scores. Managers have tried to improve performance ratings by creating better rating scales, helping raters avoid making evaluation errors (such as rating everyone harshly), training raters to be more accurate, and using 360-degree feedback approaches. Today’s best managers know that the best way to help make performance ratings more accurate is by creating an environment where raters are fair, accurate, and neutral evaluators of employee performance.

Source: Murphy, K. R. 2008. Explaining the weak relationship between job performance and ratings of job performance. Industrial and Organizational Psychology, 1, 148-160

Only You Can Make Yourself A Success

Managers used to believe that their company or their managers would make them happy and successful. Today’s best managers know that they alone are responsible for their own career success. You start managing your own career by careful introspection that uncovers your passions, strengths, and weaknesses. Forget conventional wisdom and forget the path that everyone else is taking. Don’t worry about jumping hurdles that others have set. Instead, set up your own, unique hurdles for you to jump. Have faith in yourself, and have faith that your hard work will pay off.

Source: Kaplan, R. S. 2008, July-August. Reaching your potential. Harvard Business Review, 45-49.

Information From Personality Tests Found to Be A Valid and Reliable Employee Decision Tool

Some managers believe that employee decisions should not be based on personality measurements. These managers feel that personality tests can be faked, and don’t provide accurate, valid, or reliable information for managers to use. However, today’s best managers know that there is considerable evidence supporting the use of personality measurements for understanding, explaining and predicting employee work attitudes and organizational behaviors. Employee faking does not seem to ruin the validity of personality tests. In addition, today’s best managers use personality tests completed by employees and tests completed by observers of employees to get even better information.

Source: Ones, D. S., Dilchert, S., Viswesvaran, C., & Judge, T. A. 2008. In support of personality assessment in organizational settings. Personnel Psychology, 60, 995-1027.

Develop Your Employees Through Consciousness-Raising Experiences

Today’s best managers know that employees need to: develop their social awareness and interpersonal skills, work more effectively and sensitively with people of various backgrounds and ethnicities, and work more effectively in an ever-changing global environment. One way to help employees do these behaviors is through consciousness-raising activities. These activities raise employee consciousness of themselves, and deepen their understanding and awareness of others. Not all employees may be ready to have their consciousness levels raised as experiences are not what happen to employees, rather, they are what employees do as a result of what happens to them.

Source: Mirvis, P. 2008. Executive development through consciousness-raising experiences. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 7, 173-188.

Coach Employees To Help Improve Their Job Interview Performance

Today’s best managers are seen as individuals who want to help their employees succeed, such as by getting promoted. One way to help employees move up to better jobs is by coaching them to perform better in job interviews. Managers can help employees prepare for interviews, practice how to answer questions, and provide feedback about interview performance to further improve an employee’s chances for getting promoted. Coaching helps employees get better jobs and also helps the manager get better performance evaluations, which is a double-win situation.

Source: Maurer, T. J., Solamon, J. M., & Lippstreu, M. 2008. How does coaching interviewees affect the validity of a structured interview? Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 355-371.

It’s Our Ship: The No-Nonsense Guide To Leadership.

The author describes his approach to leadership from his many years of experience in the Navy. He offers many sound words of advice, such as the following. Train employees to go full speed ahead. Spend time in the sewer system and show every employee that no matter what job they do that they are vital. Be friendly, but don’t be a friend to your employees. Focus on what matters and ignore the rest. Sail close, and take the right risks. Disagree without disrespect. Love what you do, and be out front. Put your crew’s interests first. Hand out medals whenever you can.

Source: It’s Our Ship: The No-Nonsense Guide To Leadership. By Captain D. Michael Abrashoff, 2008, Business Plus, NY, ISBN: 978-0-446-1996-7.

Treat Employees Fairly To Help Improve Their Desirable Extra-Job Behaviors

An employee who is a good organizational citizen is one who does extra things beyond their job description to help the organization succeed. These extra behaviors include being courteous, being a good sportsman, and being conscientious on the job. Today’s best managers know that treating people fairly can increase good citizenship behaviors. Managers can improve feelings of fairness by treating employees with dignity and respect when interacting with them. Also, managers can use fair processes when allocating resources, such as pay decisions, to improve perceptions of fairness, and in turn help increase good organizational citizenship behaviors.

Source: Fassina, N.E., Jones, D. A., & Uggerslev, K. L. 2008, April. Relationship clean-up time: Using meta-analysis and path analysis to clarify relationships among job satisfaction, perceived fairness, and citizenship behaviors. Journal of Management, 34, 161-188.

Employees Who Are Loyal, Help Out, and Voice Their Views Often Get Higher Performance Ratings

An employee’s job performance should be related to that employee’s performance evaluation score. For example, the highest performing employees should receive the highest performance appraisal ratings. Today’s best managers know that items other than job performance can influence an employee’s performance evaluation. Employees who go beyond their regular job description to help out other employees may receive higher evaluations than employees who don’t help others. Employees who voice their views and offer good, constructive criticism, and who are loyal can also receive higher performance appraisals compared to employees who don’t voice their views, or who aren’t loyal. Today’s best managers use all of this information when evaluating their employees.

Source: Whiting, S. W., Podsakoff, P. M., & Pierce, J. R. 2008. Effects of task performance, helping, voice, and organizational loyalty on performance appraisal ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 125-139.

Monitor and Reduce Subtle, Selective, Uncivil Behavior In Your Organization

Today’ best managers are aware that underlying biases and prejudices may still exist in organizations, and that employees may express these views more subtly nowadays. Employees may be selectively uncivil, which means to cut off others mid sentence, ignore or overlook others, categorize or stereotype others, expect lower behavior from some groups, and to hold other employees at lower levels of esteem or status than they deserve. Today’s best managers educate new employees about civil behavior to all employees, emphasize that unacceptable behaviors include both obvious and subtle actions, and set good examples of civil behavior for others to follow.

Source: Cortina, L. 2008. Unseen injustice: Incivility as modern discrimination in organizations. Academy of Management Review, 33, 55-75.

Help Employees Express Their Needs Then Help Them Fill Those Needs

Today’s best managers know that successful organizations meet the psychological needs of their employees. Companies that encourage their employees to express their needs and help them find ways to meet those needs will be more successful than companies that don’t. Examples of employee psychological needs include: feeling included, being appreciated and recognized, being challenged to achieve, feeling trusted, being able to grow, and having meaning and purpose. Help employees to express their needs and take responsibility for meeting their own needs. Specifically hire employees who are needs-intelligent, and celebrate when employees meet their psychological needs.

Source: Glaser, J. E., & Jones, C. 2008. Meeting people’s needs: You can create a needs-intelligent workplace. Leadership Excellence, 25/3, pp. 13-14.

Compensation Is Still Important For Motivating and Satisfying Employees

Today’s best managers know that compensation is important, but that money is not the most important motivator for employees. Financial security is also important to employees. Employees tend to care about: their base rate of pay, getting pay that is competitive in their local marketplace, having opportunities for variable pay based on performance and merit, and getting stock options to supplement their income. Interesting, variable pay is often seen as more enticing and motivating to younger employees with less seniority in their companies compared to older employees.

Source: HRfocus. 2008, August. What do employees value in compensation? Page 4.

Problem- And Emotion-Focused Coping Can Help Employees Lessen Job Demands

Today’s best managers know that having control over one’s job helps employees to buffer difficult demands of that job. Employees tend to cope with their job in two ways: problem-focused coping and emotion-focused coping. Problem-focused coping involves solving difficult job problems. Employees would be problem-focused coping if they had the power to rearrange a lunch breach in order to meet a strict deadline. Emotion-focused coping refers to regulating emotional distress and discomfort and seeking emotional support. Expressing emotions and feelings to others can lead to empathy and support, which can help employees cope with difficult job demands.

Source: Daniels, K., Beesley, N., Cheyne, A., & Wimalasiri, V. 2008. Coping processes linking the demands-control-support model, affect, and risky decisions at work. Human Relations, 61, 845-874.