Tag: Case Studies

Seeing eye-to-eye about the employee-supervisor relationship is equally, if not more important than the actual quality of the relationship

– Fadel Matta, lead investigator on the study and a management researcher in MSU’s Broad College of Business.

A new study led by Michigan State University business scholars finds that workers are more motivated if they and their supervisors see eye-to-eye about a bad relationship than if they have different views about their relationship.

Past research suggests workers and their bosses often have differing views about the quality of their relationship. Matta and his fellow researchers set out to examine whether that affects actual work engagement, or motivation.

It does. According to the MSU-led study of 280 employees and their bosses, motivation suffered when an employee believed he or she had a good relationship with the boss but the boss saw it differently. The finding held when the flip side was true and the boss believed the relationship was good but the subordinate did not. The two were surveyed separately, meaning the boss did not necessarily know how the employee felt about him or her, and vice versa.

Interestingly, employee motivation was higher (and the employee was more apt to go above and beyond his or her basic job duties) when the worker and supervisor saw eye-to-eye about the relationship, even when it was poor.

“Some people would say it’s better to fake it, but our results indicate that the opposite is true,” said Matta, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Management. “At the end of the day, it’s better for everyone to know where they stand and how they feel about each other.”

– Michigan State University’s Department of Management, Trouble With Your Boss? Own It. , Nov. 21, 2014

In the NEF’s report “Five Ways to Wellbeing: A report presented to the Foresight Project on communicating the evidence base for improving people’s well-being,” the factor stated to affect happiness the most is social connections.

In 2008, at the request of the British government and financed by the British Ministry of Science (New Economic Foundation – NEF), in cooperation with the University of Cambridge, a comprehensive project was carried out, summarizing and comparing studies, identifying which factors affect the citizens’ happiness. The most influential factor is social connections. Out of the 5 recommendations suggested, 2 of them are directly connected to social relationships.

Image: "Happy Monday" by Yasin Hassan.

In the article “Emotional Contagion Can Take Down Your Whole Team,” Tony Schwartz, president and CEO of The Energy Project and the author of Be Excellent at Anything, describes how negativity begins in an office setting by one person talking and passing negative emotions from one to the other, and how negative emotions in this setting have destructive effect.

Emotional contagion takes hold and as the negativity spreads, it drains the energy from the team and the company as a whole.  The negative emotions temporarily overwhelm the capacity to assess the facts at hand. 

“How much do emotions matter in the workplace?  Walk into any Department of Motor Vehicles and you’ll feel the impact of the prevailing mood instantly — a dense fog of sourness, irritability, and listlessness. Walk into almost any Apple store and you’ll experience the opposite — a sense of aliveness and excitement that raises your energy.”

Schwartz tells a story of his personal experience with a senior executive, and lists some points that he had learned from the experience in the article.

Image: "Gossip Walk" by Ktoine.

In the article “Don’t Neglect Your Power to Bring People Together,” Ron Ashkenas describes a situation where a manager first tried fulfilling a certain task according to common managerial lines, of “calling meetings for their own direct staff and those who report to them.” However, although everyone agreed and got to work, little of the task’s goals were fulfilled.

In frustration, the manager grouped all parties together for a common meeting, through which all the obstacles were discussed together, and after which the task’s goal became fulfilled to much greater effect.

Then, Ashkenas continued to look into the reasons why managers don’t take steps initially to call common meetings outside their own staff and people who report directly to them, if the results of such meetings can be more effective. Some of the reasons Ashkenas mentioned included fears and anxieties in making sure no one is left out, preparing convincing cases as to why this is important for each member attending the meeting, the possibility of some or many of the invitees refusing to attend, as well as other fears.

However, in conclusion, Ashkenas encourages managers to overcome these fears in order to convene people together since “bringing the right people together from across the organization (and even including suppliers and customers) is often the best way to get things done quickly.”

Image: "Skype Reverie" by Steve Jurvetson.