Tony Borkowski is an independent Chartered Occupational Psychologist, working on an on-going consultancy basis for the Good Boss Company wrote these articles:
Who would you rather have as a boss; a man or a woman?
In today’s world of equal opportunities, this may be a question one should not or indeed need not ask. At the end of the day a good boss is a good boss be they man or woman, old or young, of the same ethnic background or not, and so on.
On the other hand the issue of gender differences is never that far away as far as behaviour, or perceived behaviour, is concerned. So what does the psychology literature tell us?
The history of gender differences in self-perceived behaviour and personality goes back a long way, though how much of this is to do with social and cultural conditioning is another matter.
Looking say at the published data for widely used personality questionnaires, such as the NEO PI-R and OPQ32n, statistically significant differences in self-perception between the genders do show up even if the differences may not be so large in terms of “effect size”.
So taking the NEO PI-R, the manual reports significantly higher scores for women on the facets of Anxiety, Self-Consciousness, Vulnerability, Altruism, Compliance and Modesty. Looking at the OPQ32, the manual reports significantly higher scores for women on scales such as Affiliative, Caring, Behavioural, Rule-Following and Worrying. The patterns for both of these measures are similar, that is women see themselves as more anxious but also more agreeable.
But what does the research at GoodBoss tell us? Here one has to appreciate that the key source of gender differences arises from what reports say about their bosses not what bosses say about themselves!
So far our research at GoodBoss is rather limited in sample size and does not correspond to the samples of 1000+ quoted in the studies above. However, we looked at the differences achieved between men (n=67) and women (n=39) bosses as rated by their staff. Some significant differences did emerge as follows. Women bosses were more likely to be rated as higher on “Listener”, that is being more consultative, and checking that they have been understood. Women bosses were also rated higher on “Rewarding”, that is acknowledging and praising the work of their staff, as higher on “Personable”, that is being approachable and interacting more readily with others and as higher on “Balance Focused”, that is being more reasonable in their demands and maintaining an appropriate work-life balance.
A number of tentative messages seem to emerge from these initial results. It may well be that women bosses use a more people-based approach to management than men and that consequently women bosses may indeed motivate their staff better than men. (These 4 factors all correlate positively and significantly with Job Satisfaction.) Secondly, and more importantly, many men bosses may well find that their management effectiveness could be improved by adopting the more people-based approaches used by some women. Indeed, some women bosses could also benefit from this insight also!
What does it take to praise your boss?
Managers stand at the critical interface between employees and organisations. Effective manager-employee relationships create the environment whereby the aspirations of individual employees can be connected to the strategic objectives of successful employers. One of the real skills of talented managers is to help employees achieve meaningful accomplishments for themselves that also benefit the organisation.
So what are some of the characteristics of such an environment? What could a manager or boss do to establish the situations where not only are their staff comfortable working for them, but they actually start to praise their boss to others?
Although a lot of organisational research is directed at finding the behavioural factors that can disrupt manager-employee relationships, somewhat less is known about what behaviours can develop this to such an extent that staff actually praise their boss.
As part of our research at GoodBoss we asked over 200 staff whether they had, or had thought about, praising their boss to their colleagues. We then linked this to aspects of their boss’s behaviour using items taken from the Good Boss Questionnaire. Although the majority of boss behaviours did not have a statistically significant link to their staff praising or thinking about praising their boss, a key minority of behaviours did.
The main themes that seemed to emerge related to their boss’s openness and managerial effectiveness. For instance bosses who are “poor listeners”, “who fail to communicate their priorities”, or who “make little effort to share information with others” were very unlikely to win praise from their staff. Bosses who “lacked warmth” or who “delayed decisions until the last moment” were also very unlikely to get praised.
On the other hand, bosses most likely to receive praise were those who were perceived as “honest”, as “genuine”, and as “making communication a 2-way process”. Bosses who “defined objectives and milestones” and who “addressed problems promptly” were also more likely to get praised.
It is interesting to note that staff did not necessarily have to have a strong personal relationship with their boss to admire them by giving praise. It was more a sense of their boss’s being properly in control of situations and then keeping their staff informed in a genuine and open way.
How to retain your staff?
Many of us will have heard the expression “The war for talent”. It was apparently first proposed by a management consultancy who came to recognise that with the global dissemination of business methodologies and technologies, the companies that would best cope with the demands of the future were those who won “The war for talent”. At the end of the day when everything else is equal, the quality of your work-force may well be the only thing that sets your organisation apart from the competition.
This is all (or should be) common sense to any HR practitioner. Yet having worked hard to win the war for talent, what do companies do to ensure that they retain the talent they have worked so hard to win?
Well maybe not enough say some researchers. BlessingWhite Incorporated of the US has for the last 3 years completed a large multinational survey of employees and found that “over a third of respondents appear to be at risk for leaving their organisations in 2006”. In 2005, 40% of employees “indicated that they might leave or were definitely planning their escape”. (See www.blessingwhite.com).
Obviously moving forward in career terms was an important reason for many employees to change organisations, but BlessingWhite found that “my manager” was the third-most-common reason for leaving, something of little surprise to us at The Good Boss Company.
So what do our research findings suggest? We asked over 200 staff whether they had, or had thought about, leaving their current job. We then linked this to aspects of their boss’s behaviour using items taken from the Good Boss Questionnaire. Although the majority of boss behaviours did not have a statistically significant link to their staff leaving or thinking of leaving, a key minority of behaviours did.
For instance bosses who “keep changing their minds” or who “make unreasonable demands” increased the likelihood that their staff would leave. Other factors included a marked detachment from their staff, for instance “is only concerned to get their views across”, “lacks warmth” and “keeps their own motives hidden”. Other perceived boss behaviours, which contributed to staff leaving were “fails to acknowledge good work” and “Is only driven by self interest”. It seems, unsurprisingly, that staff positively look for engagement and recognition from their managers over and above any intrinsic satisfaction of just doing their job.
So what can bosses do to reduce the likelihood of their staff leaving? Well being better organised and more considerate helps, such as “makes effective use of time”, and “is reasonable in their requests”. The provision of regular positive feedback is also important such as “praises their staff” and “rewards good work”. Finally, the perception that managers are both “honest” and “genuine” reassures staff that they are working in an open environment, one that generates trust and hence long-term commitment.
Job Satisfaction and absenteeism
Despite new ideas and approaches, job satisfaction remains one of the key constructs for research in organisational psychology. A recent paper published in the Journal of Occupational and Organisational Psychology by Wegge et al in 2007, in relation to job satisfaction and absenteeism, testifies to the credibility of this statement. This article provides a brief summary of the results of this study as it impacts on HR practitioners.
Before looking at some details of this study, it is worthwhile re-emphasising the impact that good and bad bosses can have on the job satisfaction of their staff. As part of our research at Good Boss we asked 186 staff about their level of job satisfaction and then linked this to aspects of their boss’s behaviour using items taken from the Good Boss Questionnaire. The main themes that seemed to reduce job satisfaction related to their boss’s lack of communication (“Weak Communicator”) and general ineffectiveness (“Disorganised”). For instance bosses “who fail to communicate their priorities”, or who “waste time” and “fail to look ahead” were very likely to reduce the job satisfaction of their staff. Bosses who “made unreasonable demands” (“Work-Only Focused”) or who “humiliated others” (“Punishing”) were also very likely to reduce job satisfaction ratings. On the other hand, bosses most likely to raise job satisfaction levels were those seen to trust, encourage and support their staff. For instance bosses who, “praise their staff”, and “reward good work”, (“Rewarding”) “trust others to do a good job”, and “allow others the freedom to be creative” (“Empowering”) were all much more likely to engender higher feelings of job satisfaction.
The paper published by Wegge et al, took as their starting point the well established but only moderate relationship between job satisfaction and absenteeism. The major research of Hackett (1989) found a relatively small mean correlation of r = -0.23 between general job satisfaction levels and time lost through absence. That is, people with lower job satisfaction generally tended to take more time off work. (Our research at Good Boss, with approximately 200 staff, found a similar-sized correlation of -0.29 between these two variables). Wegge and his colleagues then asked the question as to whether there was another important factor that could come into play that explained this only moderate correlation. The factor they looked at was called “job involvement”, that is the extent to which staff felt that their work was important in their lives. For example, people high in job involvement would agree with statements such as “my work means everything to me” or “most of my life goals have to do with my work”. They then looked at two measures of absence, the number of absence events, and the total number of days lost from work. Taking as their sample 436 people working for a large public sector organisation, they measured job satisfaction and job involvement and tracked absence levels for a year. What they found was that people with both low job satisfaction and low job involvement were much more likely to be absent in terms of both frequency and total time off. It seemed that people who had high job involvement were more tolerant of having some job dissatisfaction although the people with least time off were not suprisingly those with high job involvement and high job satisfaction. The authors pointed out that their results had confirmed the results of three similar studies of this kind completed in the past (Blau, 1986; Mathieu & Kohler, 1990; Sagie, 1998).
The implications for HR practitioners of these results are actually very interesting. Basically, for staff who have high job involvement, then the absence of job satisfaction, say due to bad boss behaviour, may not have so much of an impact on absenteeism. However, in those industries and sectors where work is not especially rewarding, involving or engaging then positive job satisfaction, say because of good boss behaviour, is likely to have a marked affect (reduction) on staff absenteeism. Or put another way, where work is unavoidably mundane, unchallenging, or unengaging, then the behaviour of bosses is crucial in keeping absenteeism down to manageable levels.
Self perception - do bosses know themselves better than their staff?
"Know yourself" is one of the most common themes promoted by management trainers when they go about trying to encourage people to grow, develop and change.
Most managers will have quite clear views on themselves in terms of their own strengths and limitations, and these views often form the basis of what is discussed at the manager's annual review. Typically managers will recognise what their positives and negatives are and will commit to some kind of development that builds on their perceived strengths and reduces their perceived limitations. That being said, it is always interesting to see just how accurate a manager's self-perceptions are, especially when it comes to dealing with their staff.
Our most recent research using the Good Boss Questionnaire has highlighted some findings which challenge the accuracy of a typical manager or boss's self perception. There are two main sets of findings which highlight potential shortcomings in a manager's self perceptions when tested against the views of his or her subordinates.
The first finding highlights the point that managers or bosses typically rate themselves higher on their behaviours than their staff do. For instance, of the 14 scales that make up the Good Boss Questionnaire, bosses rated themselves significantly higher on Strong Communicator, Listener, Open, Rewarding, Balance Focused, Team Orientated and Self Aware. With their own apparently exaggerated scores on these scales, bosses may potentially underestimate the negative impact that they have on their reports.
The second finding relates to the consistency with which bosses rate their own behaviour. Each scale on the Good Boss Questionnaire is made up of 4 "negative" behaviours and 4 "positive" behaviours. When bosses and their reports were asked to rate boss behaviour on these scales, it was quite apparent that reports were more consistent in their assessments of their bosses than bosses were of themselves. Using a statistic called Cronbach's alpha, it was seen that for all 14 scales, reports were more consistent in their assessment of their boss than bosses were of themselves. Bosses were least consistent in their self-perceptions on the scales of Empowering, Listener, Open, Balance Focused and Self Aware.
An alternative way of looking at the consistency of boss self-perception is to examine the degree of agreement reached between bosses and their reports. Of the 14 Good Boss scales making up the questionnaire, there was statistically significant agreement on 8 scales. However, when we looked at the agreement of two reports to the same boss, there was statistically significant agreement on all 14 scales. In every case the degree of agreement between raters to the same boss was higher than that achieved between a boss and one of their reports.
The implications of these results are quite clear. Although we can never prove that bosses know themselves better or less well than their reports do, the evidence leans very much in favour of the assessments made by reports. These assessments are typically less exaggerated and more consistent, and emphasise beyond doubt the potential of 3600 instruments like the Good Boss Questionnaire.
Reward or punish - which gets the best out of staff?
Most managers who work in organisations regularly have to face the question of how to reinforce or extinguish the positive or negative behaviours that they see in their staff. Most of the time this is not a major issue given that all staff will have some set of given tasks and procedures to perform, and targets and objectives to meet and, with suitable support, guidance and training, will work to achieve these.
On the other hand, it is quite clear from our research at Good Boss that some managers have a particular style or approach when it comes to interacting with their staff in terms of reward and punishment. At the top end of the Rewarding scale one can identify the behaviours of "acknowledges and praises the work of their staff, treats their staff with care and respect". At the opposite end of this scale one sees the behaviours "Intimidates others to get results, fails to acknowledge good work, uses sarcasm, openly criticises staff". The question is which is the best approach to use to get results?
As part of our on-going research we asked 224 staff, who had a range of perceptions about their particular manager's rewarding or punishing style, a series of additional questions about the impact of this behaviour on them. The results were very interesting.
In all instances staff who had bosses who were more punishing than rewarding said that they were much more likely to think or act in the following ways:
Take fake “sick” days
Work less hard than I could have done
Look for another job
Resign
Complain about my boss to my peers
Complain about my boss to his or her superiors
Complain to my boss about his or her behaviour
In looking at more positive criteria, staff who had bosses who were more rewarding than punishing were much more likely to think or act in the following ways:
Praise my boss to other colleagues
Let my boss know how happy I am to be working for him or her
It was most interesting to see that the criterion "Work harder than strictly necessary" did not seem to be affected by positive good boss behaviour. (The correlation here was actually zero). Maybe this was a issue that reflected more on the character of the staff themselves, for example, the extent to which they were "Conscientious" or not, as measured by the "Big Five" personality construct.
The main conclusion is therefore that being a Rewarding manager isn't necessarily going to increase the level of additional work completed, but will stop staff from taking such destructive action as taking off fake sick days, or looking for another job and/or resigning.
