Bad Managers Create Disgruntled Employees

Set a clear path to bring disgruntled employees back into the fold.

• Encourage me more. When we asked the unhappy 16% to name the skill they thought was most important for their boss to demonstrate, the top response was "Inspire and motivate others." Too often, managers take a negative tone with disgruntled employees. Expecting that efforts to motivate will be ignored, none are proffered, and the expectations become self-fulfilling but data suggest managers should take the opposite view: Work harder to inspire this group. Keep the conversation positive. Plan for, and expect the best, not the worst.
• Trust me more. It's probably not surprising that both parties — unhappy employee and bosses alike — distrust each other. The key to restoring trust is to operate with the belief that the other party can change. We encourage the manager to make the first move (cause that's your job) by making the effort to understand the employee's problems. Then, as both parties work on their relationship, they must strive for consistency —that is, the manager must strive to treat all employees equally, and both parties must strive to simply do what they say they will do. Over time, trust will grow.
• Take an interest in my development. If a person works hard and gets a pay check he has a job but if a person works hard, gets a pay check, and learns a new skill, she has a career. Career development should not be focused only on the high-potentials. As counterintuitive as it may seem, don't leave the underachievers out when distributing stretch assignments.
• Keep me in the loop. Communication is fundamentally a core management function, so this responsibility rests squarely with the managers. Great communicators do three things well. First, they share information and keep everyone well informed. Second, they ask good questions, inviting the opinions and views from others — all others. Third, they listen to everyone, not just the people they like.
• Be more honest with me. People want to know how they're really doing on the job — and the one's not in favour perhaps even more than the one's feeling the warm glow of approval. They want to know why they're falling short. They want a chance to improve. Too often, though, the bottom 16% feel their bosses are shirking their responsibility by not giving honest feedback, glossing over problems with comments like "You're coming along fine," when clearly they are not. Alarmingly, many reported promises being made ("if you finish this project on time then...") that were not kept. Honesty is the bedrock of good relationships.
• Connect with me more. Anything managers can to do improve their relationship with the disgruntled employees will have a significant positive influence. Here's where favoritism takes on its most concrete form: managers go to lunch more with people they like, our data show; they talk with them more socially (about children, sports, etc); they know them more personally. This is natural (and unprofessional), but so are the feelings of exclusion it creates among the less favoured. A small effort by managers to spread their attention around more broadly can go a long way here.

As a bad leader, your knee-jerk reaction to unfavoured (and disgruntled) employees is often — "It's their own fault!" Research shows this is not the case and that it is the result of shallow and unprofessional management, which begs the question "Who's managing the managers?"

Before you settle for letting your dissatisfied people go and cost your organisation thousands in employee turnover, take a moment to consider how these performers need and should be treated.

Humanizing Computer Aids affects Trust and Dependence

Computerized aids that include person-like characteristics can influence trust and dependence among adults, according to a Clemson University researcher.

A recently published study by Clemson University psychology associate professor Richard Pak examined how decision-making would be affected by a human-like aid.

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The study focused on adults' trust, dependence, and performance while using a computerized decision-making aid for persons with diabetes.

The study is one of the first to examine how the design of decision-support aids on consumer devices can influence the level of trust that users place in that system and how much they use it.

Richard Pak

The design and look of an aid are important elements for designers because of the potential dangers associated when users trust unreliable decision aids or lack trust for reliable aids simply because of the their appearance.

"Just as trust is an important factor in how humans deal with other humans, it also can determine how users interact with computerized systems," Pak said. "Trust can be influenced by the aid's reliability and level of computerization as well as the user's experience and age."

Many people interact with computerized decision aids or automation on a daily basis, whether they're using smart phones, digital cameras or global positioning systems. When automation is only reliable sometimes, a person's level of trust becomes an important factor that determines how often the aid will be used.

"Figuring out how trust is affected by the design of computerized aids is important because we want people to trust and use only reliable aids," said Pak.

Pak's research findings have revealed that the inclusion of an image of a person can significantly alter perceptions of a computerized aid when there is no difference in the aid's reliability or presentation of information.

"Humanlike computer aids provide a reduced decision-making reaction time for adults," said Pak. "A plausible explanation is that the increase in trust led to an increased dependence on the aid, which led to faster performance."

Pak's future research will examine the specific aspects of the aid that affect trust in different age groups and gender.

He also is studying the affects of the aids on users when faced with decisions that have either a high consequence, such as making health decisions, or a low consequence, such as deciding what type of computer to buy.

Pak's study was published Tuesday in the journal Ergonomics. The journal article was co-authored by Clemson researchers Nicole Fink, Margaux Price, Brock Bass and Lindsay Sturre.

Asking favours: One can lead to more

The nature of collaborative and cooperative behaviour in business is that we need to persuade or motivate other people to do things. These are generally people we do not know, thus, adding to the difficulty.

Imagine you are a sales person who wants to close a big deal but first the sales clerk needs to persuade computer support to modify her computer, slightly.

Intitially, our first instinct in difficult situations is avoidance. Rather than being direct we avoid asking for too many favours. We don't want to turn them against us, do we?

After all, the only thing worse than being asked for a favour is being asked for multiple favours, right? Unfortunately, the obvious and logical conclusion is wrong.

Behavioural research now shows us that sometimes asking for one small favour first, can greatly increase the probability of success with subsequent favours. This may sound counterintuitive but it is true.

During a recent research activity, a researcher asked passers-by for complicated directions. Not surprisingly, not all subjects bothered to help. The second approach was different. Some subjects were asked first for an extremely small favour: the researcher inquired as to the time of day.

Virtually all of the passers-by checked their watch and provided the time. Subjects that complied with the small request were much more likely to respond positively to the request for complicated diretions.

The psychology seemed to be a sort of subconscious feeling that having granted one request, it would be inconsistent not to grant a somewhat bigger one.

Podcast: Richard Bradley on Understanding Decisions

Zoeken philosophybites UPC

Podcast by Richard Bradley on Risk based behaviour and Decision making theory - This discussion, hosted by Philosopy Bites, draws somewhat from the tragic figure of UK polymath Frank Ramsey

Retro-Sexual Behavour on Facebook

As Facebook users have begun to skew older ”the website is now as popular with 30-, 40- and 50-somethings as with the college students who pioneered it”

They have found ways to reconnect with one another and who better to get in touch with than an old flame?

"Facebook makes it easier for you to take that first step of finding someone again," explains Rainer Romero-Canyas, a psychology research scientist at Columbia University. "It has finally provided a way for people to reach out to someone without fear of rejection." The Boston Phoenix even coined a term, retrosexuals, for people who are taking the plunge into recycled love.

"It was like opening a time capsule," says Drew Peterson, a 34-year-old former IT worker from Long Island, New York. Peterson's retro-sexual experience occurred a few years ago when he found his high school girlfriend on MySpace”

"You know, before it became the cyberghetto of the Internet." The two dated during junior and senior year of high school; the last time the two saw each other was on the day they graduated. Sixteen years later, they exchanged MySpace messages, and then Peterson flew from New York to San Francisco to see what had become of the woman who had once captured his teenage heart.

"I knew it wasn't going to turn out like some Jennifer Aniston romantic comedy," Peterson says. "I just wanted to see her again." The pair still got along, although this time just as friends.

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