Boring tedious jobs generally reduce people's perceptions of their

Chapter 11

the manager’s toolbox

Managing the Millennials: What’s Different about Today’s Generation of Younger Workers

Are the 75 million so-called Millennials, born between 1977 and 1994, really so different from earlier generations (the 78 million Baby Boomers, born 1946–1964, and 49 million Gen Xers, 1965–1976)? Do they need to be managed in different ways? The answer to both questions is yes. 1

Independent, Tech-Savvy, Diverse, Educated—&Anxious

Some major characteristics of Millennials: (1) They are extremely independent, because many were raised as day care or latchkey kids. (2) They are techsavvy, used to smartphones and the Internet, and accustomed to a faster pace of life. (3) They are racially and ethnically diverse. (4) They are probably the most educated in American history. (5) They are anxious they can’t meet their financial needs.

How Millennials Want to Be Managed

In the workplace, these translate into a skepticism about rules, policies, and procedures; a requirement for more autonomy; and a need for constant stimulation. Millennials not only want a good income and good relationships with bosses and coworkers but also challenging daily work, the opportunity for growth, the chance to show off skills and be recognized for their accomplishments, casual dress environment, and flexible schedules for social and personal time. Some tips for managing this group:

• Allow them independent decision making and expression. Millennials are impatient, skeptical, and blunt and expressive, but they are used to adapting and making decisions. Show appreciation for their individuality and let them participate in decision making.

• Train them and mentor them. Millennials are strongly attracted to education and training, the best kind not being classroom training but forms of independent learning. At the same time, they should be given the chance to create long-term bonds with mentors.

• Give them constant feedback and recognition. Millennials need to know they are making an impact and need to be recognized for their workplace contributions. Thus, supervisors should show them how their work contributes to the bottom line. This generation revels in, even craves, constant praise, so managers should provide rewards in the form of praise, flextime, and extra responsibility.

• Provide them with access to technology. To attract and retain Millennial employees, companies need to provide the newest and best technology.

• Create customized career paths. Millennials would most like to be self-employed, but few are able to do it because of high start-up costs. Employers can reinforce the sense of control that this generation desires by providing them with a realistic account of their progress and their future within the organization.

For Discussion As a worker, you might hope to be led by someone who would follow the preceding suggestions. But suppose your boss is of the old “tough guy” school and doesn’t manage this way. In a difficult job market, would you stick it out? How would you try to let your supervisor know how you would prefer to be managed?

This first of five chapters on leadership discusses how to manage for individual differences and behaviors. We describe personality and individual behavior; values, attitudes, and behavior; and specific work-related attitudes and behaviors managers need to beaware of. We next discuss distortions in perception, which can affect managerial judgment. Finally, we consider what stress does to individuals.

Page 338Personality & Individual Behavior

In the hiring process, do employers care about one’s personality and individual traits?

THE BIG PICTURE

Personality consists of stable psychological and behavioral attributes that give you your identity. We describe five personality dimensions and five personality traits that managers need to be aware of to understand workplace behavior.

In this and the next four chapters we discuss the third management function (after planning and organizing)—namely, leading. Leading, as we said in Chapter 1 , is defined as motivating, directing, and otherwise influencing people to work hard to achieve the organization’s goals.

How would you describe yourself? Are you outgoing? aggressive? sociable? tense? passive? lazy? quiet? Whatever the combination of traits, which result from the interaction of your genes and your environment, they constitute your personality. More formally, personality consists of the stable psychological traits and behavioral attributes that give a person his or her identity. 2 As a manager, you need to understand personality attributes because they affect how people perceive and act within the organization. 3

The Big Five Personality Dimensions

In recent years, the many personality dimensions have been distilled into a list of factors known as the Big Five. 4 The Big Five personality dimensions are (1) extroversion, (2) agreeableness, (3) conscientiousness, (4) emotional stability, and (5) openness to experience.

Extroversion. How outgoing, talkative, sociable, and assertive a person is.

Agreeableness. How trusting, good-natured, cooperative, and soft-hearted one is.

Conscientiousness. How dependable, responsible, achievement-oriented, and persistent one is.

Emotional stability. How relaxed, secure, and unworried one is.

Openness to experience. How intellectual, imaginative, curious, and broad-minded one is.

Sociable and assertive. Does it take a certain kind of personality to be a good salesperson? Have you ever known people who were quiet, unassuming, even shy but who were nevertheless very persistent and persuasive—that is, good salespeople?

Standardized personality tests are used to score people on each dimension to draw a person’s personality profile that is supposedly as unique as his or her fingerprints. For example, if you scored low on the first trait, extroversion, you would presumably be prone to shy and withdrawn behavior. If you scored low on emotional stability, you supposedly would be nervous, tense, angry, and worried. (An example of a personality test is the Myers-Briggs, discussed in Chapter 9 ; to take a replica of this test for free, go to www.personalitypathways.com/type_inventory.html .)

Where do you think you stand in terms of the big five? Are you curious? If yes, take Self-Assessment 11.1 .

Page 339SELF-ASSESSMENT 11.1

Where Do You Stand on the Big Five Dimensions of Personality?

This survey is designed to assess your personality, using the Big Five index. Go to connect.mheducation.com and take Self-Assessment 11.1 . When you’re done, answer the following questions:

1. What is your personality profile according to the Big Five?

2. Which of the Big Five is most likely going to help you achieve good grades in your classes and to gain employment after graduation?

Do Personality Tests Work for the Workplace? As a manager, you would want to know if the Big Five model in particular and personality testing in general can help predict behavior in the workplace. Is a personality test helpful in predicting a match between personality and job performance? Two findings:

Extroversion—the outgoing personality. As might be expected, extroversion (an outgoing personality) has been associated with success for managers and salespeople. Also, extroversion is a stronger predictor of job performance than agreeableness, across all professions, according to researchers. “It appears that being courteous, trusting, straightforward, and soft-hearted [that is, agreeableness] has a smaller impact on job performance,” conclude the researchers, “than being talkative, active, and assertive [that is, extroversion].” 5

Conscientiousness—the dependable personality. Conscientiousness (strong work ethic) has been found to have the strongest positive correlation with job performance and training performance. According to researchers, “those individuals who exhibit traits associated with a strong sense of purpose, obligation, and persistence generally perform better than those who do not.” 6

The table below presents tips to help managers avoid abuses and discrimination lawsuits when using personality and psychological testing for employment decisions. 7 (See Table 11.1 .)

TABLE 11.1 Cautions about Using Personality Tests in the Workplace

Page 340The Proactive Personality A person who scores well on the Big Five dimension of conscientiousness is probably a good worker. He or she may also be a proactive personality , someone who is more apt to take initiative and persevere to influence the environment. Research reveals that proactive people tend to be more satisfied with their jobs, committed to their employer, and produce more work than nonproactive individuals. 7

Core Self-Evaluations

A core self-evaluation represents a broad personality trait comprising four positive individual traits: (1) self-efficacy, (2) self-esteem, (3) locus of control, and (4) emotional stability . Managers need to be aware of these personality traits so as to understand workplace behavior.

1. Self-Efficacy: “I Can/Can’t Do This Task” Self-efficacy is the belief in one’s personal ability to do a task. This is about your personal belief that you have what it takes to succeed.

Have you noticed that those who are confident about their ability tend to succeed, whereas those preoccupied with failure tend not to? Indeed, high expectations of self-efficacy have been linked with all kinds of positives: not only success in varied physical and mental tasks but also reduced anxiety and increased tolerance for pain. 8 One study found that the sales performance of life-insurance agents was much better among those with high self-efficacy. 9 A meta-analysis involving 21,616 people also found significant positive correlation between self-efficacy and job performance. 10 Low self-efficacy is associated with learned helplessness , the debilitating lack of faith in one’s ability to control one’s environment. 11

Self-efficacy. Erik Weihenmayer, blind since age 13, is a self-described “unrealistic optimist.” He became the first blind climber to scale Mt. Everest. Do you have a personal belief that you can succeed at great things?

Page 341Among the implications for managers:

Assign jobs accordingly. Complex, challenging, and autonomous jobs tend to enhance people’s perceptions of their self-efficacy. Boring, tedious jobs generally do the opposite.

Develop self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is a quality that can be nurtured. Employees with low self-efficacy need lots of constructive pointers and positive feedback. 12 Goal difficulty needs to match individuals’ perceived self-efficacy, but goals can be made more challenging as performance improves. 13 Small successes need to be rewarded. Employees’ expectations can be improved through guided experiences, mentoring, and role modeling. 14

2. Self-Esteem: “I Like/Dislike Myself” How worthwhile, capable, and acceptable do you think you are? The answer to this question is an indicator of your self-esteem , the extent to which people like or dislike themselves, their overall self-evaluation. 15 Research offers some interesting insights about how high or low self-esteem can affect people and organizations.

People with high self-esteem. Compared with people with low self-esteem, people with high self-esteem are more apt to handle failure better, to emphasize the positive, to take more risks, and to choose more unconventional jobs. 16 However, when faced with pressure situations, high-self-esteem people have been found to become egotistical and boastful. 17 Some have even been associated with aggressive and violent behavior.

People with low self-esteem. Conversely, low-self-esteem people confronted with failure have been found to have focused on their weaknesses and to have had primarily negative thoughts. 18 Moreover, they are more dependent on others and are more apt to be influenced by them and to be less likely to take independent positions.

Can self-esteem be improved? According to one study, “low self-esteem can be raised more by having the person think of desirable characteristics possessed rather than of undesirable characteristics from which he or she is free.” 19 Some ways in which managers can build employee self-esteem are shown below. (See Table 11.2 .)

TABLE 11.2 Some Ways that Managers Can Boost Employee Self-Esteem

3. Locus of Control: “I Am/Am Not the Captain of My Fate” As we discussed briefly in Chapter 1 , locus of control indicates how much people believe they control their fate through their own efforts. If you have an internal locus of control, you believe you control your own destiny. If you have an external locus of control, you believe external forces control you.

Research shows internals and externals have important workplace differences. Internals exhibit less anxiety, greater work motivation, and stronger expectations that effort leads to performance. They also obtain higher salaries. 20

Page 342These findings have two important implications for managers:

Expect different degrees of structure and compliance for each type. Employees with internal locus of control will probably resist close managerial supervision. Hence, they should probably be placed in jobs requiring high initiative and lower compliance. By contrast, employees with external locus of control might do better in highly structured jobs requiring greater compliance.

Employ different reward systems for each type. Since internals seem to have a greater belief that their actions have a direct effect on the consequences of that action, internals likely would prefer and respond more productively to incentives such as merit pay or sales commissions. (We discuss incentive compensation systems in Chapter 12 .)

4. Emotional Stability: “I’m Fairly Secure/Insecure When Working Under Pressure” Emotional stability is the extent to which people feel secure and unworried and how likely they are to experience negative emotions under pressure. People with low levels of emotional stability are prone to anxiety and tend to view the world negatively, whereas people with high levels tend to show better job performance.

Emotional Intelligence: Understanding Your Emotions & the Emotions of Others

Emotional intelligence (EI or EQ) has been defined as “the ability to carry out accurate reasoning about emotions and the ability to use emotions and emotional knowledge to enhance thought.” 21 Said another way, emotional intelligence is the ability to monitor your and others’ feelings and to use this information to guide your thinking and actions. The trait of emotional intelligence was first introduced in 1909. Since that time much research has examined the components of EI and its consequences. 22

Why High EI Is Important Recent research underscores the importance of developing higher EI. It was associated with (1) better social relations for children and adults, (2) better family and intimate relationships, (3) being perceived more positively by others, (4) better academic achievement, and (5) better psychological well-being. Daniel Goleman, a psychologist who popularized the trait of EI, concluded that EI is composed of four key components: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and relationship management. 23 (See Table 11.3 .)

TABLE 11.3 The Traits of Emotional Intelligence

Sources: Adapted from D. Goleman, R. Boyatzis, and A. McKee, “Primal Leadership: The Hidden Driver of Great Performance,” Harvard Business Review, December 2001, p. 49; and Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 2002), p. 39.

Can You Raise Your EI? Is there any way to raise your own emotional intelligence, to sharpen your social skills? Although parts of EI represent stable traits thatPage 343 are not readily changed, other aspects, such as using empathy, can be developed. 24 Two suggestions for improvement are as follows:

Develop awareness of your EI level. Becoming aware of your level of emotional intelligence is the first step. The self-assessment below can be used for this purpose. (Some companies use the Personal Profile Analysis during the hiring process to provide insights into a person’s EI. 25 )

Learn about areas needing improvement. The next step is to learn more about those EI aspects in which improvement is needed. For example, to improve your skills at using empathy, find articles on the topic and try to implement their recommendations. One such article suggests that empathy in communications is enhanced by trying to (1) understand how others feel about what they are communicating and (2) gaining appreciation of what people want from an exchange. 26

EXAMPLE

Emotional Intelligence: Self-Understanding Should Include “the Good, the Bad, & the Ugly”

Charlotte Beers is a former chairwoman and CEO of advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, but in her early 30s she was a management supervisor and “thought I was really doing well.” Then she heard from a friend that a colleague described her management style as “menacing.” That surprised her because Beers regarded herself as “a friendly, gentle Southern belle,” and the criticism was the exact opposite of the way she thought of herself. 27

Learning to Self-Correct. She goes on: “I began to watch myself—something I think we all have to do—and I realized I did end meetings on a threatening note. I created urgency when there was none. I was taking on the persona of ‘I really mean business’ that I had learned from an earlier boss.” After that she learned to watch herself more and to self-correct about talking too much and interrupting other people.

YOUR CALL

The comment about her coming off as menacing, though devastating at first to her, was important because “nothing is more helpful than finding out how others see you,” says Beers. “[You need to learn to] keep your own scorecard, and it has to include the good, the bad, and the ugly.” Do you agree? Could you conduct this kind of research about yourself in an impersonal way to find out how others see you?

Both research and our experience suggest that your emotional intelligence can help or hurt your career. Would you like to know where you stand and what you might do to improve your level of emotional intelligence? If yes, take Self-Assessment 11.2 .

SELF-ASSESSMENT 11.2

What Is Your Level of Emotional Intelligence?

The following survey is designed to assess your emotional intelligence. Go to connect.mheducation.com and take Self-Assessment 11.2 . When you’re done, answer the following questions:

1. How do you stand on the five dimensions of emotional intelligence?

2. Use the scores from the items to identify your strengths and liabilities.

3. Identify two things you might focus on to enhance your emotional intelligence.

Page 344Values, Attitudes, & Behavior

How do the hidden aspects of individuals—their values and attitudes—affect employee behavior?

THE BIG PICTURE

Organizational behavior (OB) considers how to better understand and manage people at work. In this section, we discuss individual values and attitudes and how they affect people’s actions and judgments.

If you look at a company’s annual report or at a brochure from its corporate communications department, you are apt to be given a picture of its formal aspects: Goals. Policies. Hierarchy. Structure.

Could you exert effective leadership if the formal aspects were all you knew about the company? What about the informal aspects? Values. Attitudes. Personalities. Perceptions. Conflicts. Culture. Clearly, you need to know about these hidden, “messy” characteristics as well. (See Figure 11.1 , left.)

FIGURE 11.1 Formal and informal aspects of an organization

Organizational Behavior: Trying to Explain & Predict Workplace Behavior

The informal aspects are the focus of the interdisciplinary field known as organizational behavior (OB) , which is dedicated to better understanding and management of people at work. In particular, OB tries to help managers not only explain workplace behavior but also to predict it, so that they can better lead and motivate their employees to perform productively. OB looks at two areas:

Individual behavior. This is the subject of this chapter. We discuss such individual attributes as values, attitudes, personality, perception, and learning.

Group behavior. This is the subject of later chapters, particularly Chapter 13 , where we discuss norms, roles, and teams.

Let’s begin by considering individual values, attitudes, and behavior.

Values: What Are Your Consistent Beliefs & Feelings about All Things?

Values are abstract ideals that guide one’s thinking and behavior across all situations. 28 Lifelong behavior patterns are dictated by values that are fairly well set by the time people are in their early teens. After that, however, one’s values can be reshaped by significant life-altering events, such as having a child, undergoing a business failure, or surviving the death of a loved one, a war, or a serious health threat.

From a manager’s point of view, it’s helpful to know that values are those concepts, principles, things, people, or activities for which a person is willing to work hard—even make sacrifices for. Compensation, recognition, and status are common values in the workplace. 29 However, according to numerous surveys, employees are more interested in striking a balance between work and family life rather than just earning a paycheck. 30 For instance, 86% of 550 employees responding to one survey said flexibility to balance their work and personal life was an important aspect of job satisfaction.

Page 345Attitudes: What Are Your Consistent Beliefs & Feelings about Specific Things?

Values are abstract ideals—global beliefs and feelings—that are directed toward all objects, people, or events. Values tend to be consistent both over time and over related situations.

By contrast, attitudes are beliefs and feelings that are directed toward specific objects, people, or events. More formally, an attitude is defined as a learned predisposition toward a given object. 31 It is important for you to understand the components of attitudes because attitudes directly influence our behavior. 32

Example: If you dislike your present job, will you be happier if you change to a different job? Not necessarily. It depends on your attitude. In one study, researchers found that the attitudes of 5,000 middle-aged male employees toward their jobs were very stable over a 5-year period. Men with positive attitudes tended to stay positive, those with negative attitudes tended to stay negative. More revealingly, even those who changed jobs or occupations generally expressed the same attitudes they had previously. 33

The Three Components of Attitudes: Affective, Cognitive, & Behavioral Attitudes have three components—affective, cognitive, and behavioral. 34

The affective component—“I feel.” The affective component of an attitude consists of the feelings or emotions one has about a situation. How do you feel about people who talk loudly on cell-phones in restaurants? If you feel annoyed or angry, you’re expressing negative emotions or affect. (If you’re indifferent, your attitude is neutral.)

The cognitive component—“I believe.” The cognitive component of an attitude consists of the beliefs and knowledge one has about a situation. What do you think about people in restaurants talking on cell-phones? Is what they’re doing inconsiderate, acceptable, even admirable (because it shows they’re productive)? Your answer reflects your beliefs or ideas about the situation.

The behavioral component—“I intend.” The behavioral component of an attitude , also known as the intentional component, refers to how one intends or expects to behave toward a situation. What would you intend to do if a person talked loudly on a cell-phone at the table next to you? Your action may reflect your negative or positive feelings (affective), your negative or positive beliefs (cognitive), and your intention or lack of intention to do anything (behavioral).

All three components are often manifested at any given time. For example, if you call a corporation and get one of those telephone-tree menus (“For customer service, press 1 . . .”) that never seems to connect you to a human being, you might be so irritated that you would say:

“I hate being given the runaround.” [affective component—your feelings]

“That company doesn’t know how to take care of customers.” [cognitive component—your perceptions]

“I’ll never call them again.” [behavioral component—your intentions]

When Attitudes & Reality Collide: Consistency & Cognitive Dissonance One of the last things you want, probably, is to be accused of hypocrisy—to be criticized for saying one thing and doing another. Like most people, you no doubt want to maintain consistency between your attitudes and your behavior.

But what if a strongly held attitude bumps up against a harsh reality that contradicts it? Suppose you’re extremely concerned about getting AIDS, which you believe you might get from contact with body fluids, including blood. Then you’re in a life-threateningPage 346 auto accident in a third-world country and require surgery and blood transfusions—including transfusions of blood from (possibly AIDS-infected) strangers in a blood bank. Do you reject the blood to remain consistent with your beliefs about getting AIDS?

In 1957, social psychologist Leon Festinger proposed the term cognitive dissonance to describe the psychological discomfort a person experiences between his or her cognitive attitude and incompatible behavior. 35 Because people are uncomfortable with inconsistency, Festinger theorized, they will seek to reduce the “dissonance” or tension of the inconsistency. How they deal with the discomfort, he suggested, depends on three factors:

Leon Festinger. In 1957, the psychologist and his associates penetrated a cult whose members predicted that most people on earth would perish in a cataclysmic event except for a handful that would be rescued by aliens in a flying saucer. Festinger found himself standing with cult members on a hilltop awaiting the event, which, of course, did not happen. Later he proposed the term cognitive dissonance to explain how they rationalized the failure of their prophecy. Have you observed people employing this mechanism when the surefire thing they predicted did not occur?

Importance. How important are the elements creating the dissonance? Most people can put up with some ambiguities in life. For example, many drivers don’t think obeying speed limits is very important, even though they profess to be law-abiding citizens. People eat greasy foods even though they know that ultimately they may contribute to heart disease.

Control. How much control does one have over the matters that create dissonance? A juror may not like the idea of voting the death penalty but believe that he or she has no choice but to follow the law in the case. A taxpayer may object to his taxes being spent on, say, special-interest corporate welfare for a particular company but not feel that he or she can withhold taxes.

Rewards. What rewards are at stake in the dissonance? You’re apt to cling to old ideas in the face of new evidence if you have a lot invested emotionally or financially in those ideas. If you’re a police officer who worked 20 years to prove a particular suspect guilty of murder, you’re not apt to be very accepting of contradictory evidence after all that time.

Among the main ways to reduce cognitive dissonance are the following. (See Table 11.4 .)

Change your attitude and/or behavior. This would seem to be the most obvious, even rational, response to take when confronted with cognitive dissonance.

Belittle the importance of the inconsistent behavior. This happens all the time.

Find consonant elements that outweigh the dissonant ones. This kind of rationalizing goes on quite often, as when employees are confronted with ethical dilemmas but fear losing their jobs.

TABLE 11.4 Examples of Ways to Reduce Cognitive Dissonance

Sources: R. Plotnik, Introduction to Psychology, 3rd ed. (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 1993), p. 602; E. Aronson, R. D. Akert, and T. D. Wilson, Social Psychology, 6th ed. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Prentice Hall, 2006); S. Bok, cited in E. Venant, “A Nation of Cheaters,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 7, 1992, p. D3, reprinted from Los Angeles Times; A. Dobrzeniecki, quoted in D. Butler, “MIT Students Guilty of Cheating,” Boston Globe, March 2, 1991, p. 25.

Page 347Behavior: How Values & Attitudes Affect People’s Actions & Judgments

Values (global) and attitudes (specific) are generally in harmony, but not always. For example, a manager may put a positive value on helpful behavior (global) yet may have a negative attitude toward helping an unethical coworker (specific). Together, however, values and attitudes influence people’s workplace behavior —their actions and judgments.

EXAMPLE

How Values & Attitudes Affect Behavior: Thinking Beyond Profit to Create Value for Society

As a manager, would you think most employees would agree that innovation is beneficial—that the original Silicon Valley firms prospered because they were constantly creating new products and services? Employees may have the value, then, that innovation is good—that it leads to productivity and profitability.

However, what if employees think that a company’s purpose is to be solely a money-making machine? They might have the attitude that social innovation is unnecessary, even discouraged.