Receiving feedback on how individuals in a group are performing on can reduce your cognitive ability.

That’s according to researchers at Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute who used MRI technology to study how the brain was processing information about the group processes and how it effected cognitive capacity.

Researchers ranked  performances on tasks and then shared that information with the group. After the feedback some people’s problem-solving ability declined significantly and that was particularly true for women.

The researchers think that subtle social signals in group settings affect cognitive functioning or, as the Daily Mail put it: “being in a group lowers your intelligence especially if you’re a women”.

This is interesting because not long ago I posted on how adding women to your group raised its collective IQ. This was attributed to women having better social skills, or more social sensitivity (similar to emotional intelligence). Teams displaying social sensitivity would be more open to feedback and constructive criticism.

I wonder if in this experiment the sharing of feedback introduced an element of competition rather than cooperation and raised stress levels which impact on problem-solving ability. Other research has found that men are more competitive than women on the whole and this gender competition gap could explain why in this experiment giving feedback was not  an advantage for women and of course for the team as a whole.

Female managers are more critical of their bosses, less impressed by their boards, and see more conflict in the workplace than men.

It seems that female managers have higher standards and expect promises to be kept and people to be honest at work.

Of course it could be that as most top managers are men they are happy with the way things are – although that will change as more women fill senior and board level posts.

Previous research has found that most employees prefer male managers, even women, but also that many companies turn to women when the company is in crisis.

My readers come mainly from the UK, USA, and Canada, followed by India, Oceania and Brazil.

In 5th spot was: Most people prefer male bosses. Despite all the posts I’ve written about getting women on board!

In 4th spot, but with the most comments, was: It doesn’t pay to be too nice This was number 1 by a big margin in 2010 so it’s obviously still struck a chord with you all.

In 3rd spot was: Is social media the key to small business marketing? Seen by many as the answer to their marketing problems but it won’t completely replace traditional methods.

In 2nd spot was: No-one ones to be rated as average This was prompted by the poor reactions people have to performance appraisal systems and my experience in implementing them.

And in top spot was: Erotic capital, boobs and Botox. Making the best of yourself Carol Hakim’s work has obviously struck a chord – or perhaps readers wanted a bit of spice to brighten up their day? A page 3 of the management blog!

So thanks for reading my posts and I hope you have a prosperous 2012

You’ll find posts on work psychology and other business-related psychology topics at EI4U

Turnover rates ran at between 6 and 9%, and almost 30% in London,in 2009 according to an IRS survey.

Just over half of employers believed the impact of  economic conditions had been to reduce turnover.

There is some survey evidence that many employees are just waiting for the recession to lift before they jump ship – and not for more money. A CMI survey found that 50% of employees are dreaming about exploring new career development opportunities including turning their hobbies into a business.

As recruiters will tell you: people join organisations but leave managers. So the turnover figures could be much higher if the job market was better and in the meantime disgruntled employees will take off more time and be less productive.

Now 1995 might seem a long time ago but times were hard in the early to mid-90s too. The Audit Commission research found that only half of the labour turnover could be accounted for by market conditions and the rest was due to differences in employment practices. Would it be any different today?

The report found that in many organisations there was an induction crisis. When staff were replaced they often left in the first year due to poor induction and management not managing expectations (or overselling the job).

It’s common knowledge now that the first 100 days are the key to succeeding in a new job.

The report went on to suggest asking staff why they were leaving and offering more family-friendly working conditions such as job-sharing and career breaks. Exit surveys and the other policies are now fairly standard, at least in large organisations, but have they actually had an impact on employee engagement? World-wide there has been a decline in employee engagement for the second year running.

Because this is not about employment practices per se but about how people are managed. Why are employees in family firms more loyal than in other sectors? Because they feel more valued among other reasons. Companies bucking the trend in having engaged employees listened to employees and took action.

Managers have the prime responsibility for keeping staff engaged and motivated, even in difficult times. That’s what makes a good manager isn’t it? Unfortunately there are still too many ineffective managers. The CMI thinks that ineffective management is costing UK businesses more than £19 billion in working time lost through ineffective management.

Amongst the worst practices are poor communication, lack of support, micro-management, lack of direction, and discriminatory and bullying behaviour. Companies bucking the trend in having engaged employees listened to employees and took action.

And the most effective managers inspired confidence, recognised staff contributions, gave staff challenging work to do, and showed a sense of responsibility to employees and their community.

So if your organisation thinks it hasn’t got a turnover problem now, or that it can exploit employees who are in fear of losing their jobs and can’t get another at the moment; think about what you are doing. Times will change, good staff will leave anyway, less marketable employees will stay and be unproductive or even sabotage your business.

CMI research suggests that 50% of employees are thinking about exploring new career opportunities, many wanting to turn hobbies into businesses.

The same survey showed that 2 out of 3 people are “gripped with fear” over job security.

When I wrote about working from home last December we were in the grip of snow and bad weather and it seemed a good idea to stay at home, warm and safe.

This year there may be more people who have no choice after losing their jobs and either job-seeking or deciding they will have to work for themselves.

In either case it probably means having to set up an office at home.

New research from the Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York shows that people working from home find it difficult to switch off from their domestic life. You know the kind of thing: walking the dog, doing the shopping, preparing a meal.

All that can make domestic disputes worse. The “you’ve been at home all day and the dishes are still in the sink” scenario.

So although working from home seems the easier option people can feel more stressed than if they had commuted to work. The more work and family demands competed the more exhausted people felt.

Professor Golden, who led the study of 3,000 home-workers, said; “those with already high levels of work-family conflicts suffered higher exhaustion when they spent extensive time working from home”.

People with low levels of work-family conflict seemed to be better able to cope with working from home.

Working from home, or teleworking, is on the increase in the UK and the Telework Association believes that it’s a win-win situation for both employers and employees as they say it improves both productivity and work-life balance.

The productivity argument is probably true as tele-workers work harder so as not to be seen to abuse the system. However the work-life balance is harder to achieve.

It comes down to whether or not you can create boundaries between work and family, either physically eg working in the garden shed or equivalent, or psychologically being able to switch attention and focus on the work when needed.

Of course some people go to work to get away from problems at home and vice-versa.There will always be people, usually those who are more extraverted, who prefer to work in the presence of others for a variety of reasons including the social aspects.

Five years ago that number had doubled. Last year 1 in 4 employees reported seeing workplace rudeness on a daily basis.

And it isn’t just rudeness between co-workers. 25% of customers reported rude behaviour from service providers. Half said they saw colleagues being rude to each other, half said  they saw customers being treated rudely, and 40% said they experienced rudeness on a monthly basis.

Of course it goes both ways and customers and the public can be just as rude to service providers’ front-line staff.

Research shows that rudeness has detrimental effects on a business. People on the receiving end report losing focus and even having time off or thinking of leaving. They also begin to avoid the perpetrators.

Rather than rely on subjective self-reports (after all one person’s rudeness is another person’s bluntness) researchers Christine Porath and Amir Erez designed a series of experiments to study the effect of rudeness – both indirect viz being rude about the participants’ reference group, and direct by being rude to participants personally.

They found that people treated rudely only once, and in an indirect and impersonal manner, were less able to perform simple cognitive tasks. And the same applied to those who were only asked to visualise such a situation. Both groups lost focus and their task performance worsened.

For those subject to direct personal rudeness the effects were much worse. They were less creative on a “uses for a brick” test and their ideas were less diverse and more routine eg build a house.

Creativity, which requires the juggling of ideas old and new and the integration of possibilities, was impaired and so was helpfulness.

People treated uncivilly are less inclined to help others. In one experiment helpful behaviour occurred between 75% and 90% of the time  but when the experimenter was rude about the group as a whole helpful assistance dropped to 35% and when insulted personally by a stranger it dropped to 24%.

Overall they found that even mild forms of rudeness, whether delivered by an authority figure or a stranger, whether direct or indirect or just imagined, had an impact on performance, creativity and helpfulness.

The researchers don’t think this effect was because of the desire to retaliate or strike back but perhaps because the targets of rude behaviour either shut down or use their cognitive assets to make sense of the behaviour rather than using them to learn and complete the tasks.

They also found that just witnessing rude behaviour was enough to make people perform tasks less effectively and less creatively as well as making them less likely to be helpful. It could also provoke them into acting more aggressively.

And rudeness in organisations can mean a range of behaviours from taking credit for others’ work, ignoring messages, not asking politely or saying “thank you”, to having temper tantrums.

Unfortunately in organisations it’s been found that rude, arrogant, managers are often perceived as powerful and effective decision-makers. However the truth is that rudeness not only impacts on employee engagement but on the bottom line.

Porath and her colleagues estimated it cost the US economy $300 billion in lost productivity when they were researching their book “The Cost of Bad Behaviour: How Incivility is Damaging Your Business and What to Do About It”.

Extraverts may have a natural advantage in leadership roles

They tend to be the centre of attention and take over discussions and are perceived as more effective by both supervisors and subordinates.

In the US only 50% of the population is extraverted, despite what you might believe about Americans, but 96% of managers and executives display extraverted personalities (the percentages showing high levels of extraversion increase from 30% of supervisors to 60% at executive level).

But people can learn extravert behaviours. In fact I remember some research which showed that when introverts were taught extraverted behaviour they could behave in more extravert ways than natural extraverts. And most managers have to learn to stand up and deliver presentations and run meetings.

However work by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Harvard Business School, and North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School, shows that in some situations an introvert may be a better leader than an extravert without having to change their behaviours.

It seems that in a dynamic, unpredictable environment introverts are often more effective, particularly if they have proactive workers on the their teams who are prepared to put forward suggestions to improve the business.

This type of behaviour can make extraverted leaders feel threatened (I think especially so if the leaders are narcissistic). Whereas introverted leaders are more likely to listen carefully and show more receptivity thus making them effective leaders of more vocal teams.

Putting extraverted bosses in charge of talkative teams isn’t a good recipe. Extraverts seem to do better as  bosses of teams that perform best when they do as they are told!

To succeed as leaders  introverts have to overcome a strong cultural bias as in America at least two out of three senior executives viewed introversion as a barrier in a 2006 survey. And in politics highly extraverted Presidents are seen as more effective.

Source: HBR December 2010

It doesn’t mean however that you will be seen as powerful.

The evidence suggests that it is the rude and arrogant person who is perceived as being a powerful decision-maker.

A paper published earlier this year in Social Psychological & Personality Science; ” Breaking Rules to Rise to Power…” found that people rated rule-breakers as being more in control and leaderlike than conscientious types.

Researchers in Amsterdam wanted to see if the reverse were true. If you break the rules are you seen as more powerful? And the answer appears to be yes.

People in positions of power have more freedom to act and can ignore the rules. Research has shown that powerful people often ignore the social norms of he workplace for example by taking more than their share of the biscuits from the plate, eating with their mouths open and spreading crumbs.

In the Dutch experiments participants were given scenarios in which people violated the rules at work by stealing coffee and ignoring financial anomalies. A control group was given similar scenarios without the norm violations. Participants recognised the norm violations but also rated the culprits as more powerful.

Then, in a real-life experiment in a waiting room, one of the confederates who arrived late and threw his bag on the table was perceived as the more powerful. In another video experiment they tested the hypothesis that powerful people react with anger rather than sadness to negative events, in this case treating a waiter brusquely and dropping cigarette ash on the floor.

The authors say; “as individuals gain power they experience increased freedom to violate prevailing norms. Paradoxically these norm violations may not undermine the actor’s power but instead augment it, thus fuelling a self-perpetuating cycle of power and immorality”.

Rudeness is a cross we have to bear in the workplace. Surveys show that the percentage of employees experiencing rudeness at work more than once a week doubled between 1998 and 2005 from 25% to 50%. In fact in 2005 25% of employees experienced rudeness every day.

This has a negative effect on the organisation as people lose focus, try to avoid the rude person, are less productive and think more about leaving.  And you don’t have to be the object of the rudeness. According to American researchers, just witnessing it effects your cognitive ability in problem solving, flexibility, creativity, and helpfulness. Like stress the rude encounter makes us more stupid.

And it seems more than 9 out of 10 people get even with the rude person or the organisation in some way eg through vendettas.  And rudeness seems to be contagious making us ruder and more aggressive than we would be normally. So not good for the organisation let alone customers and employees.

On the other hand research at the University of Michigan shows that virtuous behaviour has the opposite effect. The more people experience helpfulness, forgiveness, generosity, courage, and support – or even just witness it – the more they are likely to do the same.

So virtuous behaviours encourage flexibility, creativity and good team work and makes employees feel good at work, thus enhancing employee engagement.

But what of the rude and arrogant people themselves? A report in the Psychologist this year described the work of Russell Johnson and colleagues at Michigan State University who developed a Workplace Arrogance Scale (WARS) to use in their research. This measured behaviours such as “shoots down other people’s ideas in public”.

First they defined arrogance as “behaviours that exaggerate your importance and disparages others”. So first cousin to narcissism except that narcissism includes thoughts and attitudes that don’t effect others such as self-admiration.

Their research showed that arrogant individuals report fewer examples of organisational citizenship behaviours such as helping people and going the extra mile. So confirmation of other research in this field.

They then looked at how good arrogant employees were at their jobs. They used the WARS, measures of overall task performance and performance in specific areas such as customers, relationships, and development. Individuals rated themselves and were rated by nominated individuals in their organisation – a selective 360 degree survey.

They found that arrogant workers were rated as being weaker in almost every way by their raters. Some people who rated their managers as arrogant also rated them as poor across the board so there was possibly a horns (negative halo) effect or just some of the payback other researchers have found.

Perhaps surprisingly arrogant employees also rated themselves weaker at relationships and overall performance with both their supervisors and direct reports in agreement. In another study the arrogant individuals reported lower self-esteem and more job-related strain. They also seem to fixate on minimising mistakes rather than focussing on success.

As the research didn’t include objective measures such as sales figures, it might be that arrogant employees realise they are ostracised and because of their low self-esteem join with their critics and discount themselves about their perceived performance.

Initially they appear charming, seem competent, exude warmth, and often have a sense of humour. They are easily confused with extraverts and may even be considered charismatic.

But in reality they dislike people, can become aggressive, are highly manipulative and can be a danger to others’ careers and well-being.

We are talking about narcissists. I’ve posted about narcissistic leaders before but it’s a topic that keeps coming round.

In everyday usage “narcissism” refers to inflated self-importance, egotism, vanity, conceit, or simple selfishness and we are seeing more of it every day and not just in the selfishness of bankers, with their undeserved bonuses.

We see the sense of narcissistic entitlement exhibited by wanna-be pop stars and entertainers like Bruce Forsyth who said he had five years of torment wondering if he’d ever get a knighthood! We hear former WAG Nancy Dell’ Ollio’s comment that the TV show she had just been voted off would, without her, be “a Xmas tree without the lights“. You get the picture. It’s all about them.

But it’s not just the City and showbiz. Students today are reportedly 40% less empathetic than they were 20 or 30 years ago. The current “Generation Me” is more narcissistic, self-centred and competitive and less concerned with other people’s feelings. One in four Americans in their 20s now scores at the narcissistic end of the Narcissism Personality Inventory scale.

So narcissism is all around us so it’s no surprise that it rears its head at work. Narcissists think of themselves as being a lot better than they are and even though they are self-centred they attract followers. This is because they are seen as entertaining and exciting to be around.

Because of their self-confidence they believe they are good leaders, project authority and a confident image, and people buy into that. There is evidence that narcissists seem to be able to take over leaderless groups with ease. Their confidence is contagious and the group starts to believe it is doing well.

But there is a downside to having a narcissistic leader. Because of their high self-confidence and belief that they are always right they may not share information. When that is crucial to good performance the team will perform badly even though they think their leader is doing a good job.

Experiments by Nevicka et al reported in Psychological Science last month showed that leaders with higher scores on narcissism were generally seen as more effective than those with low narcissism scores by their team members. But groups with more narcissistic leaders shared information less and because of that made worse decisions.

So it’s good to have confidence in your leader and that will motivate the team but when the narcissistic leader doesn’t share information, dominates discussions and makes all the decisions, then the team will be less successful. And it is probable that the group members’ positive impressions will decline as time goes by.

They can shrug off criticism about their behaviour but can’t stand it if people tell them they are not as brilliant or wonderful as they think. After all they prefer to be admired rather than liked.

This may be because their over-confident and boastful behaviour is covering up feelings of inferiority and low self-esteem. At least those were the findings from research into narcissistic women who were asked to rate themselves on their self-esteem and levels of narcissism.

The questionnaire was then repeated with the women connected to what they thought was a lie detector. Some were told it was on and others it was switched off. For those who scored low on narcissism this made no difference but for those who scored high believing they were attached to a lie detector produced much lower scores of self-esteem.

The researchers concluded that most people with high levels of narcissism were compensating for their true feelings of low self-esteem which they normally inflated by claiming to like themselves.

Narcissistic behaviour is one element in a cluster of what is called the dark side triad along with psychopathy and Machiavellianism. Of the three it is probably the one with more positive aspects and strongly related to extraversion ie sociable and outgoing, narcissists only showing their negative aggressive side when ignored or no longer admired.

If you want to know more about the clinical definitions and see the checklist click here.

Headed “Say what you mean and mean what you say” the review describes how Murray, Chairman of a PR company, questioned 60 top business leaders about what they looked for when hiring leaders. 

The responses consistently said, in order:

1. raw intellect and ability to think clearly & strategically
2. the ability to choose the right people & align them to a cause
3. the ability to communicate with others and inspire them