Is Your Best Performer Pathological or "Driven"?

High performers are welcome in any business and people who consistently meet their performance objectives are likely to be promoted over those who don’t. Some employees are so "driven" they spend every waking moment accomplishing their career goals and soon become budding stars. Is your best performer "driven" or is there something else going on?

Driven people are highly motivated and focused on their goals. They make compromises in their life to reach those goals. There are times when they make mistakes and make a wrong choice, but ultimately they continue on the right path. They believe that through persistence and hard work they can obtain what is important to them.

Pathological workers may also show high drive toward their goals and similarly make mistakes. However, they also carry with them other traits such as hostility, risk-taking, deceitfulness, callousness, grandiosity, irresponsibility, impulsivity and manipulativeness (De Caluwei, Decuyper & De Clercq, 2013). The value of the goal succeeds other considerations in much the same was as a gambling addict can't stop gambling.

Employees who are goal driven are an asset to any organization and create high expectations for others to achieve. They raise company performance and are a positive contributor to workplace culture. They do not neglect their needs, and they concern themselves with how they achieve those goals. High ethical standards and performance can work hand-in-hand.

Workers who show pathological behavior are outside the normal and seem to put an inappropriate weight on the achievement of a particular goal. Its obtainment appears to be more of an extension of the self, and its importance is artificially raised until few things else seem to matter. People become a nuisance in the process and their input can be discarded.

“Win at all costs” pathological behavior should be discouraged in the workplace. I have seen organizations where individuals achieve their goals at the expense of the entire company. Pathological employees get promoted because they create results but also damage their teams and departments in the process. They are the chaos creators that lower departmental performance, develop toxic work environments, and increase turnover rates

Well rounded employees can put their goals in perspective of the rest of their lives and the needs of others. They understand that while their objectives are essential they must also raise the status of the group and fulfill the needs of the company. Pathological employees are incapable of such reasoning and are only loyal to themselves. Higher human performance comes with focus and drive. To those with a conscious the ends is not the only justification of the means.

De Caluwe, E. Decuyper, M. & De Clercq, B. (2013). The child behavior checklist dysregulation profile predicts adolescent DSM-% pathological personality traits in 4 years. European Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 22 (7).

Designing Your Team for Effectiveness

Teams are a popular method of organizational problem solving. The very design of the team is often ignored in an effort to hastily put together a team of people who can achieve goals in the least amount of time and effort. However, the formation of the team, personalities contained within, and the background of members will have an unyielding influence on whether or not that team will succeed in its endeavors.

Let us consider a problem a department is having in terms of making themselves more efficient and customer focused. The standard approach is to gather together the leadership team of the department and demand that they come up with new solutions. They will certain put their minds together and come up with a laundry list of solutions of which they have already said before.

The problem is that we are not necessarily sure that this will lead to the "right" solution. The right solution is that which is comprehensive and streamlines processes while raising customer satisfaction. Including all of the same people that allowed the department to become less efficient and customer friendly in the first place really isn't that wise.

This doesn't mean all is lost. By swapping out a few of the old guard for some new blood will be helpful. However, if your going to move that far you might as well be a little more strategic. Consider some of the following tips:

Include Different Stakeholders:

Finding new and unique solutions requires including people on the team that have new and unique perspectives. This isn't possible if you continue to include the same members over and over. Try keeping managers who don't dominate the group but do have knowledge of the operations of the department while adding a few managers from other departments.

No department works in isolation and processes & procedures run together and mesh in many ways. When solving problems be sure to include a representative from the departments that will be impacted by the change. They will provide insight into how well, or poor, things worked before and whether or not they can be improved. Good solutions will have a wider group of supporters.

Include Different Personalities:

Personality has an impact not only on the group dynamics but also the way in which people perceive information. Having serious personalities mixed with more artistic personalities may create some friction in the group but ultimately does lead to higher levels of development. Experienced personalities may help steer creative ideas into something more practical while creative personalities will ultimately push innovation.

Each group comes with its own dynamics. Switching around personalities helps to ensure that the dynamics don't become solidified unless it is beneficial. For example, an extremely dominant person may attempt to force their will o  each group but this doesn't necessarily mean that the group dynamics are beneficial for solution creation.

Include Knowledge Based on Goals:

In our example of improving customer service and improving efficiency it is necessary to include those people who have the actual knowledge to contribute meaningfully to the discussion. Operational questions will need someone that can understand operations while customer service will need someone who understands customer service.  Without this knowledge it is likely that results will be off.

Depending on the type of business you are running it is beneficial to include a marketing person in the group. Ideas must have market utility and raise the value of the company. Marketing people have the ability to understand the utility of ideas and whether or not they will achieve certain external expectations. A goal of improving customer service should have the knowledge support from marketing, customer service, or other qualified representatives.

Provide Skills for the Team:

Any serious ideas should be vetted through finance, legal, and others to determine if they are feasible. Even though all of these skills need not be on the team the support to analyze this information should be available to the team. Having someone who can understand and manage the process of analysis is important.

This means someone on the team that will have a basic level of statistical understanding, data metrics, finance, and human relations abilities to understand the feasibility of proposed ideas. Before coming to a final recommendation numbers will need to be run and a SWOT conducted. Without the ability to analyze options the team will not know which are likely to be approved.

Persuasion and Manipulation Among Managers

Persuasion and manipulation are two workplace activities that follow many of the same paths yet have different means of achieving their ends. Some managers will engage in persuasion while others will lean towards manipulation. Those who are engaged in persuasion are more likely to gain the respect of their employees while those who are more manipulative often receive immediate gratification but loose out on long-term effectiveness. Companies should recognize and remove manipulators to ensure a positive work environment.

Persuasion is an attempt to show certain facts in a positive light without hiding or leaving out crucial information. It is generally a positive experience. Ultimately the listener can make a free choice on the issue as all the important information is presented to them. The influencer seeks to create a prevailing logic that both parties can agree with that leads from agreement to performance. Manipulation attempts to leave out particular facts and distort their meaning in an effort to change the perception of events.

When trust and persuasion are high the managers words are highly palatable to the listener. The managers experience and knowledge of the situation can help the employee make a better decisions as to their next course of action. When trust is low, and manipulation is high, the immediate gain takes precedence over long-term solutions. Employees could become resistant to the managers wishes and find ways of thwarting their influence.

The risk manipulators face is that someday they may become discovered. A simple discovery of manipulated facts leads to resentment, destruction of trust, and an active attempt to undermine the manager. Employees often respond to manipulators by avoidance and attempting to hold the perpetrator accountable (Bryand & Sias, 2011). The violation of a persons integrity leads to further conflict.

Workplace do not function well off of manipulative tactics as organizational culture will come to reflect that inherent lack of trust and respect. Organizations that do not seek to gain employee trust through open and honest dialogue will ultimately find themselves lacking in performance, embroiled in workplace conflict, involved in legal suits, and suffering from chronic staff turnover. 

Discerning between those who are persuasive and those who are manipulators can be difficult. According to Robin Dreeke, the head of behavioral analysis at the FBI, trust becomes a central issue in developing positive relationships and manipulators have a hard time creating long-term trust (Nahai, 2013). Manipulators are focused on their own needs and often leave others with buyers remorse through unfulfilled promises and self-seeking behavior. 

Manipulators have an inherent disrespect for the integrity of other people and don't see much point in telling the truth. Manipulators exhibit higher levels of Machiavellianism and lower levels of agreeableness that correspond to personality disorders (Wischniewski & Dipl-Psycho, 2013). They will use whatever means work and seek to punish those who do not agree with their methods leading to a retaliatory environment.

All employment sectors are open to the power of manipulators. Whether you are in business, non-profit work, law enforcement, political positions or any other type of employment manipulators can and do exist. Organizations would do well to screen those who manipulate for self-seeking gain in order to reduce potential risks and raise the trust factor among employees and stakeholders.

The higher the position and the more authority the position has the greater the destructive power of manipulation. People unwittingly give unconditional support to certain societal members based upon positional or institutional status. Those less likely to be manipulated are the ones who can question the decision-making processes regardless of the position of the manipulator. Questioning creates critical thinking beyond simple assumptions.

Manipulators are not only dangerous in their personal relationships but also the organizations where they work. In the business world we have idealized people in movies and popular media who will stop at nothing to achieve their goals without regard to the impact on others. Calm,cool, and collect is immortalized. The ends do not justify the means as manipulators eventually ruin previously positive work environments and do incalculable damage to the organizations where they are employed. Creating cultures where manipulation is thwarted and persuasion is appreciated not only shows a level of respect for employees and co-workers but also leads to stronger corporate cultures.

Bryand, E. & Sias, P. (2011). Sensemaking and relational consequences of peer co-worker deception. Communication Monographs, 78 (1).

Nahai, N. (Sept 21, 2013). Trust, Persuasion, and Manipulation. Psychology Today. Retrieve from http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/webs-influence/201309/trust-persuasion-and-manipulation 

Wischniewski, J. & Dipl-Psych, B. (2013). Personality disorder respond to norm violations? Impact of personality factors on economic decision-making. Journal of Personality Disorders, 27 (4).

Call for Papers: 2014 Summer Global Symposium on Women Leadership

Date: July 25-26, 2014
Los Angeles, United States of America

Web address:
http://www.uofriverside.com/conferences/global-womens-leadership-symposium/

Submission of an abstract, topic of interest or proposal will be accepted for the purpose of registration. Time schedule to be determined later after all the papers have been received. 30 minute presentation per paper.

Topics:

Abstracts of research papers in 150-200 words are invited from female professionals, females of any age interested in career growth, men who are supportive of women in leadership, executives, supervisors, managers, administrators, educators and Ph.D. scholars/Post Graduate students on contemporary issues in Women's Leadership befitting any of the conference tracks mentioned below. Topics of interest for submissions include, but are not limited to:

-Gender and history

-Women in the university: benefits and barriers

-Market limitations

-Glass ceilings

-Trials and triumphs

-Economics of Gender

-Women at Work

-Women and social justice

-Women in the military

-Politics of gender

-Feminism

-Culture and progress

-Reproductive politics

-Women’s education demographics

-Women’s health, politics and the child

-Women’s rights and the law.

Book Review: Theory U-Leading from the Future as it Emerges

Dr. Otto Scharmer builds off of previous research in the concept of presencing of self to further help executives and managers find a more creative and genuine place within their management style. His book Theory U Leading from the Future as it Emerges discusses understanding the blind spot, entering the U field, and presencing. Decision-makers who can enter the U field are capable of managing to a higher and more accurate degree than those who don't.

Theory U is a change management process originally developed by Dr.Friedrich  Glasl and Dirk Lemson. They sought to develop a method by which consciousness is used to handle conflict and processes manifested in relationship dynamics and conflicts. The Theory was then picked up by Dr. Otto Scharmer who included the concepts of presencing and capitalism. It is this presencing that releases creative and productive energy.

The original theory analyzed technical/instrumental subsystems, social subsystems and cultural subsystems. It is a process of transforming observations into intuition and then decisions.  In general, one would understand the facts of the workplace, forming a picture of how the organization operates, understand the implicit and overt values within the workplace, envision the future, and aligning the pieces to that future. The process is one of developing conscious awareness of the workplace and putting into action effort to achieve future goals. 

Dr. Otto Scharmer took the theory to the next level by incorporating the concepts of thinking, conversing, structuring, and global ecosystems. As people work in patterns they are often locked into ways of thinking that limit the organizations potential. By empathizing with customer’s needs and fellow employees they can create new understandings and new patterns that better strengthen the market response.  Actions become more purposeful and focused on root truths.

The concept of presencing indicates that at the bottom of the U is the current self and future self that resonate with each other bringing forward a new path to development. As each of our selves interacts with each other we begin to become more effortful in our actions, more creative in our productions, and more clear in our thinking. It is a process of understanding our true selves at a deeper level.  It is about moving beyond surface assumptions.

Most managers and employees work from a false sense of self. This self has come from societal expectations, misinterpretations, and lack of understanding. It is that same power that artists and visionaries use to develop a better impression of the world. It is that place where the best of self exerts itself on the environment. Michelangelo described it as the place where the sculptor, “releases the hand from the marble that holds it prisoner” or Picasso’s concept of where the “mind finds its way to the crystallization of its dream.” 

Scharmer, O. (2009). Theory U: Leading from the Future as it Emerges. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.  ISBN: 978-1-57675-763-5

Developing Strong Socialization Processes in the Workplace

New employees are often confused about the expectations and requirements of their new positions and the organization where they work. These uncertainties result in feelings of stress, confusion, anxiety, awkwardness and uneasiness (Louis, 1980). Such feelings create insecure inaction that begins to clear up the longer the employee is employed. Yet managers can speed up the socialization process by developing stronger communication networks and transference of information through a proper socialization process.

One of the first things new employees look for to clear up this confusion is a point of reference. This typically is the person they are first introduced. Such points of reference are based upon interpersonal communication and the information they can secure through the work network. This point of reference is fostered from another employee, organizational information, or their managers (Barge & Schlueter, 2004).

It is important for managers to understand precisely what points of reference employees are being offered or most likely to attach themselves. For example, if an employee receives one day of training and then left to their work group to understand their environment they will use available positive and negative information to make their conclusions. It is the constant communication between managers and employees that helps foster alternative points of reference that further more appropriate impressions and final conclusions.

The totality of positive and negative impressions can impact the success of the employee and cause low productivity and higher turnover rates into the future. During the initial organizational entry period both formal and informal messages combine to either reinforce engagement or encourage disengagement from the organization (Altman, Visel & Brown, 1981). Strong orientations and constant communication can develop higher levels of engagement that allow the integration of the self with the organizational expectations.

The very first months will create attitudes, behavior, and knowledge that determine employee level engagement with company expectations (Allen, 2006). After these first impressions are created it becomes extremely difficult to change the course of thinking without higher levels of intervention. Such impressions make their way throughout the employees’ method of thinking creating additional justifications why their assumptions are true. Competing information is often ignored due to high levels of selection attention that don’t fit with initial assumptions.

The initial signs of uncertainty most employees feel when entering the workplace is the ideal time to open up communication lines and socialize employees to positive workplace expectations. This is the time when information seeking behavior increases (Berger and Calabrese, 1975). In such a situation it is beneficial to offer the needed information in order to both reduce this information seeking behavior as well as limit the cost of initial lackluster performance throughout the socialization process. 

Managers who engage their employees through positive communication and expectation building have the capacity to create higher levels of performance with less wasted time and disciplinary distractions that impact the department long into the future. Proactive management should consider the benefits of spending additional time at the beginning of the socialization process to ensure that initial impressions are strong so that future information is filtered and categorized appropriately by the employee. A little extra effort in the beginning can create stronger group development in the future once a general culture has been developed.

Allen, D. (2006). Do organizational socialization tactics influence newcomer embeddedness

and turnover? Journal of Management, doi: 10.1177/0149206305280103.

Altman, I., Vinsel, A. & Brown, B. (1981). Dialectic conceptions in social psychology: An

application to social penetration and privacy regulation. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances

in experimental social psychology (Vol. 14, pp. 107-160). New York: Academic Press.

Barge, J. & Schlueter, D. (2004). Memorable messages and newcomer socialization.

Western Journal of Communication, 68(3), 233-256.

Berger, C. & Calabrese, R. (1975). Some explorations in initial interaction and beyond:

Toward a theory of interpersonal communication. Human Communication Research,

1(2), 99-112.

Louis, M. (1980). Surprise and sense making: What newcomers experience in entering

unfamiliar organizational settings. Administrative Science Quarterly, 25(2), 226-251.