That became clear in a recent study by Martin Abel, an assistant professor of economics at Middlebury College, that was published in the Institute of Labor Economics.
All managers need to be able to give tough feedback at times. But Abel’s research finds that both men and women discriminate against female bosses who dish out criticism, even when the feedback is worded identically to the feedback given by male managers.
Women are supposed to be nice, complimentary and supportive (especially to men). Those who are assertive and speak up, instead of melting into the background and shutting up are considered bitches.
As are women who do what bosses are supposed to do, i.e., provide feedback, both good and not, that helps their people grow and develop their capabilities to the fullest.
…workers surveyed were “about three times more likely to associate giving praise and appropriate use of tone with female managers. By contrast, they are about twice more likely to associate giving criticism and strict expectations with male managers.”
The attitudes aren’t new. The same type of studies (presenting the same whatever, but using male and female names) have documented the same reactions in college professors, managers and workers.
A year later GE scrapped its notorious rank and yank review system as implemented by then-CEO Jack Welch. A year after that Amazon followed suit. There are still plenty of companies that use the system — whether they admit it or just change the name. Individual managers are also guilty of it no matter their company’s attitude. Be it company wide or individually the effect is the same — higher turnover, lower productivity, decreased engagement, and increasing recruiting costs.
Years ago I wrote about how to make annual reviews painless and effective — more a review of the year’s accomplishments and setting goals for the coming year than a critique of work past.
It worked because mini-reviews, coaching and conversations during the year were frequent.
Typical annual reviews were fraught with fear and loathing.
For decades, General Electric practiced (and proselytized) a rigid system, championed by then-CEO Jack Welch, of ranking employees. Formally known as the “vitality curve” but frequently called “rank and yank,” the system hinged on the annual performance review, and boiled the employees’ performance down to a number on which they were judged and ranked against peers. A bottom percentage (10% in GE’s case) of underperformers were then fired.
Jack Welch championed a lot of very bad stuff (e.g., work/life balance, HR), but the negativity of rank and yank is near the top, if not number one.
(As for GE’s stellar results keep under Welch keep in mind that businesses like GE Financial practically printed money until it all blew up.)
But times are changing.
According to Raghu Krishnamoorthy, the longtime GE exec in charge of Crotonville (GE’s in-house management school) “Command and control is what Jack was famous for. Now it’s about connection and inspiration.”
And to that end, GE has developed a new in-house app that basically does what I and others evangelized a decade and more ago.
The new app is called “PD@GE” for “performance development at GE” There’s an emphasis on coaching throughout, and the tone is unrelentingly positive. The app forces users to categorize feedback in one of two forms: To continue doing something, or to consider changing something.
If you don’t have the luxury of an app you can simplify it even further.
Care about your people.
Interact with your people.
Talk with your people.
Challenge your people.
Help them grow and advance — even when that means they leave for a better opportunity that you can’t provide.
Read what GE is doing and adapt it to your own group — whether your company does of not.
Poking through 13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
Since this was written in 2012 things have gotten much worse, with deep fakes, audio and video, fake news and misinformation in general added to everything described in the post. Caveat emptor (let the buyer beware) is more true now and more important than ever before.
Do you look for peer reviews, such as those on Yelp, Amazon and most consumer sites, before buying the product, visiting the restaurant or booking the hotel?
Before the Internet we asked our friends and checked critics’ comments in newspapers and magazines, in order to increase the odds for a favorable experience.
“The wheels of online commerce run on positive reviews,” said Bing Liu, a data-mining expert at the University of Illinois, Chicago (…) Mr. Liu estimates that about one-third of all consumer reviews on the Internet are fake.
Consumer reviews are powerful because, unlike old-style advertising and marketing, they offer the illusion of truth. They purport to be testimonials of real people, even though some are bought and sold just like everything else on the commercial Internet.
Do rankings based on the number of followers people have influence your trust level or opinion of them? But how do you know they are real?
And it’s not just ego-driven blogger types. Celebrities, politicians, start-ups, aspiring rock stars, reality show hopefuls — anyone who might benefit from having a larger social media footprint — are known to have bought large blocks of Twitter followers.
Are you impressed when someone’s Facebook wall is filled with beautiful people?
His idea, he said, was “to turn cyberlosers into social-networking magnets” by providing fictitious postings from attractive people. The postings are written by the client or by Mr. Walker and his employees, who base the messages on the client’s requests.
If having to choose between being a chump and a cynic isn’t up your alley, perhaps the best advice when it comes to reviews, followers and friends is ‘buyer beware’ and ‘if it seems to good to be true it probably is’.
Yesterday’s redux was about the importance of liberal arts in a tech-gone-crazy world.
New studies, with hard salary data, bear out this truth.
Yes, tech starting salaries are higher, but that difference goes away relatively quickly.
Not only that, but the tech skills needed today, especially the “hot” skills, didn’t exist 10 years ago, or even three to five years ago, so a tech career requires a willingness to constantly learn the newest whatever that comes along.
That translates to 40 years of racing to keep up with the newly minted competition.
Even staying current won’t assure a good career path, since if you want to go higher more soft skills, such as written and verbal communications, are required.
And in case you are part of my millennial and under audience, written skills don’t refer to proficient texting, while verbal skills mean competently carrying on face-to-face conversations.
Liberal arts can (should) open your mind to other experiences and viewpoints increasing your EQ and SQ, which is critical to getting ahead (and getting along).
There’s another reason liberal arts is even more important now and in the future — AI.
Techies are so enamored with the technology they haven’t given much thought to the fact that AI is best at repetitive functions — like coding.
AI apps like Bayou, DeepCoder, and Commit Assistant automate some tedious parts of coding. They can produce a few lines of code but they can’t yet write programs on their own, nor can they interpret business value and prioritize features.
The stuff AI can’t do isn’t found in a tech education, but liberal arts provides the foundation to do them.
Sometimes a cliché is useful. The bottom line is an education that combines tech skills for the short-term and liberal arts for both short and long-term is the real career winner.
(Note: Although the image above says liberal arts is for sales and marketing, it’s even more crucial for techies.)
Does that mean the employee can expect a positive outcome if they have the courage to report their boss, another executive or a customer for harassment?
Then there are the companies looking for passionate workers.
Lisa Cohen, an associate professor of organizational behavior at McGill University’s Desautels School of Management shared that passion is a common attribute that companies she’s spoken with want, but they struggle to explain why.
“They haven’t defined the term,” she said. “They don’t know why it matters and probably what they’re looking for—and they’ll put this in not particularly nice terms—is somebody who’s going to work like crazy for long hours, right?”
Hiring for intangibles is smart, but it should be for traits that actually matter, as opposed to smoke and glitter.
Looking at founders, such as Larry Page, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zukerberg, you get the feeling they believe they are all powerful — more so than even governments.
The Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, according to Mr. Smith, “learned that life actually does require compromise and governments actually are stronger than companies,” if only after a bruising confrontation.
Mr. Gates, who wrote the foreword in Mr. Smith’s book, recalled that for years he was proud of how little time he spent talking to people in government. “As I learned the hard way in the antitrust suit,” he wrote, “that was not a wise position to take.”
Lesson learned well enough that you don’t see Microsoft on the common list of big tech, Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Apple.
That lesson hasn’t hurt Microsoft, which is valued at more than a trillion dollars by investors based on profitability, not funding.
Satya Nadella, who became CEO in 2014, is credited most often for the change in Microsoft fortunes, i.e., its culture. attitude and product mix.
You don’t hear as much about Microsoft president Brad Smith, but he’s the guy who made friends with government and helps with policy.
“When your technology changes the world,” he writes, “you bear a responsibility to help address the world that you have helped create.”
Responsibility.
The thing that so many founders don’t see as being within their purview.
Unlike Microsoft, their future will be decided more in Europe than in the US.
But the revised interpretation of an old US law could change things drastically.
And that change is being driven in by a surprising source.
Did you know there are 35 million people like me in the US?
Not a giant market, but not one to completely ignore, especially when you add in all their relatives, friends, etc.
Yet that is what most advertisers do.
How do I know?
Because they don’t bother with captioning.
Congress requires video programming distributors (VPDs) – cable operators, broadcasters, satellite distributors and other multi-channel video programming distributors – to close caption their TV programs.
But not ads.
It’s not just that they don’t care about us (the hearing impaired), but it’s an active insult along the lines of hearing impaired = can’t/won’t purchase.
Think I’m exaggerating?
Women’s fashion couldn’t be bothered designing for curvy women, because if they cared how they looked they would lose weight/didn’t care about fashion/no money/ignorant/dumb, until it was the only market that offered growth — and the growth is enormous.
Even so, fashion doesn’t caption its ads, nor do automobiles, retail, financial, communications companies, sports equipment, food, the list is endless, although there are exceptions in every category.
Monday was about dealing with jerks in your workplace and yesterday about managing lazy co-workers.
What about bosses? Where are they? Why is it being left to workers to deal with problem co-workers?
Over the years (decades, actually), I’ve heard all the excuses — ‘I can’t be everywhere’, ‘I’m working on it’, or the ubiquitous ‘I’m busy’.
Those are the “good” excuses; here are the bad ones — ‘they’re really good at [whatever]’, ‘they’re a friend/relative of X’, ‘they’ve been here since the beginning’, and, in some ways, the worst ‘deal with it’.
Being self-motivated and self-managing should not include having to manage your colleagues.
That’s the boss’ job and why they make the bigger bucks.
I’ve never forgotten what Terry Dial, who eventually became vice chairman of Business Banking at Wells Fargo, told me decades ago when I was a recruiter, “People are 90% of our costs as well as the key to customer service and satisfaction. The only thing that should take priority over hiring a new employee is keeping a current one.”
That hasn’t changed in all these years.
Which begs the question, what are the bosses doing?
Avoiding direct interactions by hiding behind social media and chat apps, just as they hid behind email and, before that, memos.
Sometimes it’s because they are promoted in spite of not being a “people person,” which has nothing to do with whether they are extroverts or introverts.
Good bosses know that when someone is messing up, hurting or one of the other myriad causes of less than optimum behavior, it’s their responsibility.
Yesterday we took another look at the effects of, and how to deal with, jerks in the workplace. Today’s guest post by Ariel Schur addresses a different problem, i.e., colleagues who don’t pull their weight.
Most of us have dealt with a lazy colleague at some point in our professional career. They do the bare minimum, but just enough to fly under the radar. Coworkers like these unfortunately have the capability of single-handedly undermining group work or projects with looming deadlines. Yet, somehow, they have managed to remain employed – and some even manage to get ahead! Are employees simply supposed to grin and bear it? What can we do when we’re saddled with a lazy coworker?
There are effective ways to combat this issue at work and potentially change that colleague’s behavior moving forward.
Speak to your colleague directly
Approach your colleague with your concerns, relate their performance back to how it affects you. For example, “I’ve been taking on a lot of your work assignments lately and it’s preventing me from getting my own work done”, or “I had to re-do your part of the project because it didn’t follow the requirements”. Making them realize how their shortcomings are affecting the performance of yourself or the group is the first step if you want their behavior to change. From there, talk about ways to hold each other accountable and hold up each end of the bargain for future collaborations.
It is usually best to first try approaching your colleague with your concerns before going to your manager. Not only is this proper workplace etiquette, but why take the problem to someone else if you may be able to solve it on your own?
Document all correspondence
Any e-mail, conversation transcription, group notes, etc. will be helpful. Keeping a paper trail of all written (or verbal) communication is important for two reasons; 1) so you can remind your colleague of all the times you talked to them regarding the issue, and 2) you’ll have examples to bring up to your boss or manager, in the event that you do have to talk to them about the situation. If it does need to be reported, I suggest going directly to whoever is overseeing the project or would hold you responsible if the work is not completed.
Keep a Positive Attitude to Avoid Adopting Their Work Ethic
It’s easy to let a coworker’s laziness affect your attitude at work. You may even feel tempted to think “well, if they’re not going to do it, neither am I” – but that’s a bad idea. Your reputation is directly correlated to your performance and that is not worth risking. If you talked to your colleague and/or supervisor and do not see a change, do not let it influence the work you’ve put in. Always remain professional and continue to be the conscientious worker you are!
Dealing with lazy colleagues is never easy. Talking to them about the issue is often times enough for things to improve, but in some instances you may be required to take extra steps. Try to work with them, keep track of all the problems that arise as a result of their slack, and do not let it affect your own performance. Taking these steps to combat the issue are sure to make your life at your job easier moving forward.
Ariel Schur, LCSW is the CEO and sole founder of ABS Staffing Solutions. Her high-touch, service-oriented approach has been a refreshing change to the industry. Ariel prides herself on developing highly customized relationships with clients so that they can find the right employee matches for any and all employment needs. Ariel has set a new standard for the “boutique” approach to staffing. Her work model is time-intensive, specifically tailored to her clients’ specific needs, and all-encompassing to provide the highest quality experience.
Poking through 13+ years of posts I find information that’s as useful now as when it was written.
Golden Oldies is a collection of the most relevant and timeless posts during that time.
People. Whether at work or in your personal life, how you choose to respond to people is usually the make or break of any situation. That is especially true when dealing with someone’s negative actions.
I’m in love — with a man I never met, never spoke to, never followed or chatted with online.
His name is Rich Waidmann and he’s founder and CEO of Connectria Hosting.
I love him because when he started his company he consciously set out to make it a great place to work.
That means it’s a job requirement at his company that every employee treat everyone else with courtesy and respect as well as “going the extra mile” to take care of people in the community who are less fortunate
Then his company did a survey and found that
More than half (55%) of 250 IT professionals in the US. surveyed said they had been bullied by a co-worker. And 65% have said they dreaded going to work because of bad behavior of a co-worker.
Waidmann believes it shouldn’t be that way so he’s starting a No Jerks Allowed movement in an effort to encourage better cultures.
Way back in 2007 Stanford’s Bob Sutton wrote The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace and Surviving One That Isn’t, but looking at the stats I’m not sure how much good it actually did.
The Talmud says, “We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.” Moreover, it’s often as we are that particular day, or even minute, and even as we change, minute to minute, so do others.
Jerks are known to lower productivity and kill innovation, so a lot of good information on identifying and dealing with jerks has been developed since Sutton’s book came out.
Contributing to that effort, here are my four favorite MAP attitudes for dealing with jerks.
Life happens, people react and act out, but that doesn’t mean you have to let their act in.
Consider the source of the comment before considering the comment, then let its effect on you be in direct proportion to your respect for that source.
Use mental imagery to defuse someone’s effect on you. This is especially useful against bullying and intimidation. Do it by having your mental image of the person be one that strips power symbols and adds amusement. (Give me a call if you want my favorite, it’s a bit rude, but has worked well for many people.)
And, finally, the one I try to keep uppermost in my mind at all times
At least some of “them” some of the time consider me a jerk—and some of the time they are probably correct.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
