Avoid The Pitfalls That Keep Your Employees From Managing Up To You

The traditional view of management is that managers lead down to their employees. Today’s best managers know that effective management goes both ways: down to employees, and up from employees to managers. Help your employees manage up to you by avoiding the four most common things that prevent upward management. Employees have been conditioned to take orders and not provide instructions to their manager. Employees are often fearful that there will be negative consequences if they manage up to their boss. Employees may fear that bosses will judge them unfairly. Lastly, employees often feel that their boss’ ego will prevent him or her from listening to employee suggestions and advice.

Source: Antonioni, D. 2008, January/February. Lead your manager. Industrial Management, 19-22.

Help Employees Feels Indispensable To Help Improve Work Group Performance

Employees in work groups are usually very aware of how much their individual work efforts add to the overall performance of the group. When individuals in groups believe that their own work efforts don’t help the group perform better overall, then employees can sometimes work less hard. However, today’s best managers know that when employees are helped to see how their individual work helps the entire group perform better, then job satisfaction and work performance can drastically increase. Help your employees feel indispensable and their work efforts might increase too.

Hertel, G., Niemeyer, G., & Clauss, A. 2008. Social indispensability or social comparison: The why and when of motivation gains of inferior group members. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38, 1329-1363

Help Employees Set Realistic Expectations For Pay Increases To Get The Best Job Performance

Unfortunately, merit pay raises may not motivate employees to work harder. This is because employees’ pay for performance expectations can interfere with the value of getting a raise. If employees have too high of an expectation that they will get a pay raise, then they may feel let down if their pay raise seems too low. Additionally, if employees feel deceived about expected pay raises, then they can seriously lower their performance levels in response. Today’s best managers help set employee expectations for pay raises so that employees won’t have overly high or overly low raise expectations.

Source: Schaubroeck, J., Shaw, J. D., Duffy, M. K., & Mitra, A. 2008. An under-met and over-met expectations model of employee reactions to merit raises. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 424-434.

Followership: How Followers Are Creating Change And Changing Leaders.

This book offers the first sweeping review of followers and examines how followers relate to leaders. The author remarks that the usual focus on leaders at the expense of followers has distorted the real dynamic between leaders and followers. The book describes five main types of followers: isolates, bystanders, participants, activists, and diehards. The book describes the range of followers from the completely withdrawn to the fully engaged. The book explains how followers, who seemingly have no apparent power, authority, or influence, have an impact on leaders.

Source: Followership: How Followers Are Creating Change And Changing Leaders. By Barbara Kellerman, 2008, Harvard Business Press, Boston, MA, ISBN: 978-1-4221-0368-5.

Add Self-Coaching Supplements To Improve Training Results On The Job

Organizations are spending a tremendous amount of money to improve employee interpersonal skills. Unfortunately, classroom training alone has not been shown to be a very effective way to teach these skills. Today’s best managers know that training results can be improved by adding self-coaching supplements to classroom training methods. Self-coaching is a three-step process that is done solely by an employee. First, employees complete a checklist assessing how much they use their new skills on the job. Second, employees reflect on how they perform during interpersonal incidents. Third, employees set goals to help them maintain and enhance their interpersonal skills on the job.


Source: Tews, M. J., & Tracey, J. B. 2008. An empirical examination of posttraining on-the-job supplements for enhancing the effectiveness of interpersonal skills training. Personnel Psychology, 61, 375-401.

Some Business Activities Can Now Be Done Effectively Off-Site Via The Internet

Today’s best managers know that the internet can help them redesign their organizations and dramatically improve their productivity. Many business activities can now be done in other places via the internet rather than in the home office. Creating a service-oriented architecture, or SOA, for your business is kind of like putting building blocks together. Instead of doing a process yourself, take out the block, and put in one where the activity is seamlessly done for you over the internet. The key to using internet-based software components relies on carefully redesigning your processes and operations and figuring out where internet-based activities can be plugged in effectively.

Source: Merrifield, R., Calhoun, J., & Stevens, D. 2008, June. The next revolution in productivity. Harvard Business Review, 72-80.

People Are More Likely To Help Individuals Who Are Like Themselves Versus Helping Groups

Today’s best managers know the importance of employees helping other individuals in the workplace. Unfortunately, employees may help those who are similar to themselves more often than those who are different from them. Indeed, employees may be more likely to help a single individual in need who is in their same demographic group than they are likely to help an individual who is different from them. Today’s best managers might get more helping behavior if employees are given opportunities to help individuals who are demographically similar to them.

Source: Kogut, T., & Ritov, I. 2008. “One of us”: Outstanding willingness to help save a single identified compatriot. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 104, 150-157.

Invest In Employee Engagement, Health, and Well-Being, To Help The Organization Flourish

Employees who are engaged in their work feel energetic, dedicated, and are absorbed in their jobs. Employees who are engaged are also happier and healthier, which makes having engaged employees a sensible goal for managers. However, today’s best managers believe that having happier and healthier employees is a goal in and of itself, regardless of the impact on the organization. Improving employee health and well-being is no longer seen as a cost. Instead, it is seen as an investment in employees that will directly help improve the bottom line of the organization.

Source: Bakker, A. B., & Schaufeli, W. B. 2008. Positive organizational behavior: Engaged employees in flourishing organizations. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 29, 147-154.

Employee Attitudes Can Be Slow To Recover From A Company Financial Downturn

Managers would like their employees to be trusting, loyal, and committed to the organization. Unfortunately, many of today’s organizations are facing serious economic downturns which can have long-lasting effects on employee attitudes. Today’s best managers know that even if a company recovers from a serious down-turn and improves its economic performance, employee attitudes may suffer permanently and never fully recover. For example, even if the company returns to a previously solid state, employee attitudes, such as trust, loyalty, and commitment, may never recover from a downturn. Today’s best managers are aware of this phenomenon and work to improve employee attitudes long after they have helped a company to improve financially.

Source: Grunberg, L., Moore, S., Greenberg, E. S., & Sikora, P. 2008. The changing workplace and its effects: A longitudinal examination of employee responses at a large company. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 44, 215-236.

Manage Your Own Life Well So That You Can Manage Your Work Well

Today’s best managers know that if they can’t manage their own life well, then they probably can’t manage their own work well either. Managers who manage their own life well: 1) forge their own trail in life, even if it means going in the opposite direction from everyone else, 2) realize that there is a direct correlation between how they view their life and how they view their work, 3) don’t think of work time versus private time, but know that the two are integrated, 4) take time to step away from the difficulties of work to rest, renew, and recharge, and 5) put other people first, such as family, friends, and community, and build great support networks.

Source: Gergen, C., & Vanourek, G. 2008. Life entrepreneurship: Start being the leader of your own life. Leadership Excellence, 25/4, p. 9.

Sway: The Irresistible Pull Of Irrational Behavior.

This book examines a number of interesting psychological phenomena that influence human behavior in seemingly irrational ways. The authors discuss loss aversion, or how people go to great lengths to avoid losing. They discuss a diagnosis bias in which people make a diagnosis, such as they like someone, then go out of their way to support that conclusion, and are unable to reevaluate or change that incorrect diagnosis. The authors discuss the chameleon effect in which people behave like their labels, such as a woman described as beautiful acting more beautifully as a result.

Source: Sway: The Irresistible Pull Of Irrational Behavior. By Ori Brafman and Rom Brafman, 2008, Doubleday, NY, ISBN: 978-0-385-52438-4

Flexibility and Job Control Can Lead To Employees Having Good Mental Health and Low Absenteeism

Today’s best managers know that employees who have control over how their do their job can have higher mental health and lower absentee rates compared to employees who don’t have job control. Mental health and absentee rates can be even better for employees who have high levels of flexibility. Employees who are flexible have the ability to focus on the here and now, and to adjust their current actions in response to the present moment. Employees who lack flexibility tend not to “go with the flow.” Instead, inflexible employees try to alter, avoid, suppress, over analyze, or control their current situation at work.

Source: Bond, F. W., Flaxman, P. E., & Bunce, D. 2008. The influence of psychological flexibility on work redesign: Mediated moderation of a work reorganization intervention. Journal of Applied Psychology, 93, 645-654.

Employees Who Self-Enhance Their Knowledge and Abilities May Be Poor Team Performers

Today’s best managers know that employees may not often have accurate and realistic views of themselves. Some employees may exaggerate about their own skills and abilities to themselves and to others. This self-enhancement can lead to less career success for employees, but can improve employee health and well-being. Employees who tend to enhance their own views of themselves may not perform as well on team tasks. However, employees who tend to exaggerate their own belief about themselves may perform well on tasks that they can perform by themselves.

Source: Kwan, V. S. Y., John, O. P., Robins, R. W., & Kuang, L. L. 2008. Conceptualizing and assessing self-enhancement bias: A componential approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 94, 1062-1077.

Getting Emotionally Involved May Be A Better Way To Cope When Giving Employees Bad News

Sometimes managers must do things that hurt employees, such as firing them, demoting them, or giving them bad news. Managers used to believe that doing these necessary but evil activities required managers to be cold, emotionless, and to deliver company-written scripts in an almost robot-like manner. Today’s best managers know that it can be better to show one’s feelings and to identify with the person receiving the bad news, rather than to hide from those feelings. Sharing the bad experience with the employee may actually help the manager cope better when performing necessarily evil behaviors in the workplace.

Source: Margolis, J. D., & Molinsky, A. 2008. Navigating the bind of necessary evils: Psychological engagement and the production of interpersonally sensitive behavior. Academy of Management Journal, 51, 847-872.

Improve Customer Service By Making a Blueprint Of Your Customer Service Process

Today’s best managers know the importance of providing excellent customer service, and work hard to continually improve it. Unlike physical goods, services are made up of a series of events or steps that unfold over time. Today’s best managers know that it is difficult to provide customers with a unique, or hopefully transforming, customer experience. One way to help improve customer service is by making a visual representation of the steps in your customer service process, called a blueprint, and then working on improving each step of that process.

Source: Bitner, M. J., Ostrom, A. L., & Morgan, F. N. 2008, Spring. Service blueprinting: A practical technique for service innovation. California Management Review, 50, 66-94.

Motivate Employees By Helping Them Fulfill Four Drives

Today’s best managers know that employees have four main drives and employees rely on their managers to help them fulfill those drives. First, rewards should differentiate levels of employee performance from one another. Second, the culture should help create collaborative and sharing relationships and teamwork. Third, jobs should be meaningful and enable employees to contribute to the organization. Fourth, be fair in your processes and outcomes, and be transparent in your decisions. Employees will tend to rate a manager poorly if that manager does not help fulfill all four of the drives, even if three of the drives are fulfilled.

Source: Nohria, N., Groysberg, B., & Lee, L.-E. 2008. Employee motivation: A powerful new model. Harvard Business Review, 78-84.

Setting Goals Can Influence Employee Beliefs About the Reason For Their Success Or Failure

Today’s best managers know that employee participation in setting goals can influence employee beliefs about their own performance. Employees who participate in setting goals for their performance tend to believe that the cause of their performance is something outside of themselves, such as task difficulty, when they are successful. However, they tend to blame themselves when they are not successful at reaching their performance goals. On the other hand, employees who don’t help set their own goals tend to believe the opposite. They believe that success was their own fault and failure was the fault of something outside of them.

Source: Karakowsky, L., & Mann, S. L. 2008, February. Setting goals and taking ownership: Understanding the implications of participatively set goals from a causal attribution perspective. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies, 14, 260-270.

A Sense Of Urgency.

This book examines the importance of creating a sense of urgency in your employees. Something is urgent when it is critically important and is central to the success or failure of the organization. Identify critical issues and form strong teams. Teams with a sense of urgency feel the need to communicate relentlessly with other team members. Employees who feel the urgency will feel empowered to remove obstacles and find solutions. Some employees are urgency killers, and are more than just skeptics. Don’t waste time trying to win them over, but don’t ignore them. Instead, use peer pressure to immobilize them.



Source: A Sense Of Urgency.By John P. Kotter, 2008, Harvard Business Press, Boston, MA, ISBN: 978-1-4221-5230-0.

Help Employees Avoid The Four Main Types Of Negative Perfectionist Behavior

Today’s best managers know that employee perfectionist behavior can be positive or negative for organizations. Negative perfectionism results in employee behaviors that are compulsive and excessive and lower organizational performance. There are four main types of negative perfectionism: 1) compulsive behavior—repeats behaviors over and over because the performance doesn’t meet excessive standards set by the employee, 2) narcissistic behavior—attempts to reach impossible goals set by others and looks for constant positive feedback from others, 3) imposters—despite lots of evidence don’t believe that they caused their own success and continually have to prove themselves, and 4) neurotics—adopt impossible goals set by others and hold themselves accountable when they can’t reach the impossible goals.

Source: Leonard, N. H., & Harvey, M. 2008. Negative perfectionism: Examining negative excessive behavior in the workplace. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 38, 585-610.

Help Your Employees Feel Less Miserable About Their Job

Today’s best managers want their employees to be happy about their work. Unfortunately, many employees feel miserable on the job. Some of the main causes of employee misery are feeling anonymous, irrelevant, and as if their work can’t be measured. Typical managers don’t help employees because they: 1) keep employees at arm’s length and don’t get to know them, 2) worry about being too touchy-feely, so avoid human issues, and 3) stay too busy to take an interest and invest in helping their employees. Today’s best managers try not to make these mistakes and work hard to lessen the misery of their employees.

Source: Lencioni, P. 2008. Job anonymity: It’s a leading cause of misery. Leadership Excellence, 25, p.4.