Most bosses like some employees better than others—and that can be good for everyone, writes Peggy Drexler.
A 2011 survey conducted found that 92% of senior business executives have seen favoritism at play in employee promotions.
Ellen Weinstein
As
the head of the entertainment division of a major public-relations firm
in New York, Janelle was in charge of no fewer than 15 junior
publicists. She knew that she shouldn’t play favorites, but she couldn’t
help it. Some employees were just better than others.
But what defined “better”? To Janelle, “better” might mean those employees who delivered exceptional results for clients. More often, though, “better” was entirely subjective and undefined, even to her, as she explained to me in the course of my research on women in the workplace. (I have withheld full names to preserve the privacy of my subjects.)
Yet there was a clear advantage to being one of Janelle’s favorites. They often got the more interesting accounts. They were also entitled to special perks like free tickets to a client’s concert, off-the-books vacation days, friendlier conversation in the halls and more genuine interest in their personal lives.
The nonfavorites were largely just tolerated. “To put it simply,” Janelle told me, “My favorites were my favorites, and I was very nice to them and maybe a little disdainful of the others. I thought the better employees deserved my better treatment, because they’d somehow earned it.”
Maybe you’ve played favorites. Maybe you’ve been the favorite. Most anyone who’s worked in an office or team environment knows that favoritism is a fact of nearly every modern workplace. A 2011 survey conducted by Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business found that 92% of senior business executives have seen favoritism at play in employee promotions, while a quarter of executives admitted to practicing favoritism themselves.
When we talk about favoritism in an office environment, we usually have in mind how preferring some individuals to others can damage the team as a whole, creating rifts and fostering resentment. In order to create a collegial and productive work atmosphere, we often hear, bosses need to treat everyone the same way.
But this isn’t always the case—especially not if done right, and for the right reasons. Recent studies show that playing favorites can actually be a boon, motivating and empowering employees in ways that benefit the entire team.
A 2013 study by the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business and published in the Journal of Business Ethics found that there is an advantage to making certain employees feel a little more special than the others. When treated better than others in the group, the study found, employees were more likely to experience heightened self-esteem, follow workplace norms and perform tasks that benefit the entire group. They were perceived as both more social and more productive.
What’s more, the study found, not playing favorites may actually be a disincentive for those employees who, with a little extra attention, might be willing to go above and beyond. These are employees who work hard for outward, explicit approval and who, when unrecognized, may begin to work a little less hard.
As the supervisor of 10 real-estate agents in a large and very competitive New York firm, Jason was constantly trying to reward good work in a way that motivated his employees, without discouraging others. At the same time, he was a firm—and upfront—believer in favoritism. “I was very clear with the crew,” he said. “I said, ‘Look, I value results, collaboration, kindness and perseverance. Those of you who display these qualities are most likely to receive preferential treatment from me. Your work life will probably be better.” Those on his list of “favorites” changed all the time, and the staff knew that; there were always opportunities to get on the boss’s good side.
And when he did single out an employee, he was sure to do it without disparaging the others. “I rewarded good work on its own, and never in the context of others’ performances,” he told me. “For instance, I would never tell an underperforming staffer, ‘Why can’t you be more like so-and-so?’ Instead, I’d say, ‘Here’s where your performance disappointed me, and here’s how I’d like to see you make some changes.’”
The strategy worked: In his first year, Jason’s team outsold all others in the company. For many years his department continued to have a higher than average rate of retention.
By being careful, selective and clear about his methods, Jason had hit on an important aspect of using favoritism to advantage: transparency. That is, making it obvious to everyone in the office how they can qualify to become a favorite, too. He showed how favoritism can work when it is done for the right reasons—related exclusively to job performance and at-work behavior.
Janelle, by contrast, thought she was more likely to favor those who worked hardest, but she eventually realized that there were other patterns at play. For instance, she was more likely to favor an employee she had hired herself over one she had inherited. She also had a tendency to like mothers and those who had cats as pets. The message she was sending to her employees wasn’t that favoritism was earned, but that it was bestowed, based not on performance but on Janelle’s unstated and arbitrary preferences.
Getting favoritism right is all about how and why you choose to do it. Playing favorites with an employee because the person is a friend outside of work, the best-dressed in the office or simply a cat lover is damaging to morale and to productivity. On the other hand, preferring an employee who works or tries harder, performs better and delivers more consistent results can be a very effective management tool—and it can have beneficial results throughout an organization.
Those who receive preferential treatment from their bosses at one point or another report feeling a greater sense of self-worth in their jobs. They also tend to stick around longer. And eventually, they may become effective leaders themselves.
========================================================================================== Explode Your INCOME. Make more money with a powerful online Home Business. You can earn a Full time Income on a Part Time basis while keeping your current Job. When you Love the Idea of Network Marketing and Residual Income, but HATE Cold Calling & Having to Pitch your Friends and Family... You Earn cash while Surfing the Web. Earn cash for Referrals with Trusted Programs. Check it out:
1. You’ve got to have a website or a blog, of course the easiest and most practical Way to Promote Referral Items.
2. Use Valid Email Address.
3. Signing up free for an account with a payment processor such as "Payza".
4. With this in place, join various network sites hosting merchants' products/services. There's usually no charge. You join; you get your own referral link code, so that you can send people to the destination with your own code branded into it. This way, the merchant can determine that the sale was originated by you and you earn a commission.
5. Choose from the more popular sites for information and/or hard products or services. Many of the products or services offer very generous commissions.
6. You can also examine the links that appear here and join the sites.
We have spent the time and put in much effort to create for you something extraordinary! Go to the websites, relax, watch the videos, and get ready...they Can Easily Make you Financially Independent and many more!. You will have more reliable ones as you continue to hang on this blog
7. Once you joined, just do a search in the network company to find your favorite product/service.
8. Grab your code and promotional creative, text, banners, etc.
9. Place the link on your website.
10. Go ahead and promote your website. You should get many visitors to your website in order to be able to get enough sales.
11. Do a review of the product/service of your website and make a recommendation. A very good way is to review products/services and point out their pros and cons and rate them according to their quality.
12. Even better is to have your own experience with that product/service and share it with your visitors.
13. Only a small number of your visitors are likely to follow your advice and buy and this also provided that you've done an honest and good job promoting it.
14. You should take a look from time to time in the stats in your account at the network company to see how you perform. The good thing is that you don't necessarily have to deal with the merchants. You can just join a reliable and reputable network hosting the products/services and doing all the work for you.
Click here to check out some of the best PTC sites.
So what are the risks? With any new start up company you are at risk if the company doesn’t make it. Plain and simple. If you focus on promoting only one product, service, affiliate program or business opportunity and it doesn’t sell or the company goes down – you have nothing! But when you create multiple streams of income – if one of the streams dries up – it’s a bummer but not catastrophic.
Here, we will always preach the power of PRODUCTIVE LIVING and of creating MULTIPLE STREAMS OF INCOME as a way to help you make for yourself a large, stable, diverse, passive residual income with less effort and less cost. Earn instant multiple income streams daily. Keep coming back to the blog as we keep on identifying the best methods, unique strategies, effective techniques to earn unlimited income from paid to click, surf, read, promote and sign up excellent passive income sources. These are revolutionary ways to make money online. We select, review and recommend to our associates the best PTC paying sites. In a nutshell, we are helping thousands of people worldwide become their own boss from their own home. The best part is No matter how much experience you have online you can make money month after month! So, Stay subscribed for more-make-money tips & tricks...
Read The Myth of Easy. Why You Don’t Want Easy Online Marketing
Are you interested in generating income from Transport Partnership Click here to check it out!
Join our Facebook Page because we want to connect with all of you as the individuals you are, rather than random statistics and figures on our blog counter. With this page, we hope to know all of you better as readers, individuals and friends. At the moment, there are over 9319 amazing Fortune Fair readers (as of 03-Jun-2013) on the page.
If you’d like to give us a chance to know you better, we sincerely invite you to connect with us on our Facebook Page and Follow us on Twitter. We’ll greatly value your friendship and make the effort to read every message or tweet and reply where we can. Click here to refresh yourself.
But what defined “better”? To Janelle, “better” might mean those employees who delivered exceptional results for clients. More often, though, “better” was entirely subjective and undefined, even to her, as she explained to me in the course of my research on women in the workplace. (I have withheld full names to preserve the privacy of my subjects.)
Yet there was a clear advantage to being one of Janelle’s favorites. They often got the more interesting accounts. They were also entitled to special perks like free tickets to a client’s concert, off-the-books vacation days, friendlier conversation in the halls and more genuine interest in their personal lives.
The nonfavorites were largely just tolerated. “To put it simply,” Janelle told me, “My favorites were my favorites, and I was very nice to them and maybe a little disdainful of the others. I thought the better employees deserved my better treatment, because they’d somehow earned it.”
Maybe you’ve played favorites. Maybe you’ve been the favorite. Most anyone who’s worked in an office or team environment knows that favoritism is a fact of nearly every modern workplace. A 2011 survey conducted by Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business found that 92% of senior business executives have seen favoritism at play in employee promotions, while a quarter of executives admitted to practicing favoritism themselves.
When we talk about favoritism in an office environment, we usually have in mind how preferring some individuals to others can damage the team as a whole, creating rifts and fostering resentment. In order to create a collegial and productive work atmosphere, we often hear, bosses need to treat everyone the same way.
But this isn’t always the case—especially not if done right, and for the right reasons. Recent studies show that playing favorites can actually be a boon, motivating and empowering employees in ways that benefit the entire team.
A 2013 study by the University of British Columbia’s Sauder School of Business and published in the Journal of Business Ethics found that there is an advantage to making certain employees feel a little more special than the others. When treated better than others in the group, the study found, employees were more likely to experience heightened self-esteem, follow workplace norms and perform tasks that benefit the entire group. They were perceived as both more social and more productive.
What’s more, the study found, not playing favorites may actually be a disincentive for those employees who, with a little extra attention, might be willing to go above and beyond. These are employees who work hard for outward, explicit approval and who, when unrecognized, may begin to work a little less hard.
As the supervisor of 10 real-estate agents in a large and very competitive New York firm, Jason was constantly trying to reward good work in a way that motivated his employees, without discouraging others. At the same time, he was a firm—and upfront—believer in favoritism. “I was very clear with the crew,” he said. “I said, ‘Look, I value results, collaboration, kindness and perseverance. Those of you who display these qualities are most likely to receive preferential treatment from me. Your work life will probably be better.” Those on his list of “favorites” changed all the time, and the staff knew that; there were always opportunities to get on the boss’s good side.
And when he did single out an employee, he was sure to do it without disparaging the others. “I rewarded good work on its own, and never in the context of others’ performances,” he told me. “For instance, I would never tell an underperforming staffer, ‘Why can’t you be more like so-and-so?’ Instead, I’d say, ‘Here’s where your performance disappointed me, and here’s how I’d like to see you make some changes.’”
The strategy worked: In his first year, Jason’s team outsold all others in the company. For many years his department continued to have a higher than average rate of retention.
By being careful, selective and clear about his methods, Jason had hit on an important aspect of using favoritism to advantage: transparency. That is, making it obvious to everyone in the office how they can qualify to become a favorite, too. He showed how favoritism can work when it is done for the right reasons—related exclusively to job performance and at-work behavior.
Janelle, by contrast, thought she was more likely to favor those who worked hardest, but she eventually realized that there were other patterns at play. For instance, she was more likely to favor an employee she had hired herself over one she had inherited. She also had a tendency to like mothers and those who had cats as pets. The message she was sending to her employees wasn’t that favoritism was earned, but that it was bestowed, based not on performance but on Janelle’s unstated and arbitrary preferences.
Getting favoritism right is all about how and why you choose to do it. Playing favorites with an employee because the person is a friend outside of work, the best-dressed in the office or simply a cat lover is damaging to morale and to productivity. On the other hand, preferring an employee who works or tries harder, performs better and delivers more consistent results can be a very effective management tool—and it can have beneficial results throughout an organization.
Those who receive preferential treatment from their bosses at one point or another report feeling a greater sense of self-worth in their jobs. They also tend to stick around longer. And eventually, they may become effective leaders themselves.
========================================================================================== Explode Your INCOME. Make more money with a powerful online Home Business. You can earn a Full time Income on a Part Time basis while keeping your current Job. When you Love the Idea of Network Marketing and Residual Income, but HATE Cold Calling & Having to Pitch your Friends and Family... You Earn cash while Surfing the Web. Earn cash for Referrals with Trusted Programs. Check it out:
1. You’ve got to have a website or a blog, of course the easiest and most practical Way to Promote Referral Items.
2. Use Valid Email Address.
3. Signing up free for an account with a payment processor such as "Payza".
4. With this in place, join various network sites hosting merchants' products/services. There's usually no charge. You join; you get your own referral link code, so that you can send people to the destination with your own code branded into it. This way, the merchant can determine that the sale was originated by you and you earn a commission.
5. Choose from the more popular sites for information and/or hard products or services. Many of the products or services offer very generous commissions.
6. You can also examine the links that appear here and join the sites.
We have spent the time and put in much effort to create for you something extraordinary! Go to the websites, relax, watch the videos, and get ready...they Can Easily Make you Financially Independent and many more!. You will have more reliable ones as you continue to hang on this blog
7. Once you joined, just do a search in the network company to find your favorite product/service.
8. Grab your code and promotional creative, text, banners, etc.
9. Place the link on your website.
10. Go ahead and promote your website. You should get many visitors to your website in order to be able to get enough sales.
11. Do a review of the product/service of your website and make a recommendation. A very good way is to review products/services and point out their pros and cons and rate them according to their quality.
12. Even better is to have your own experience with that product/service and share it with your visitors.
13. Only a small number of your visitors are likely to follow your advice and buy and this also provided that you've done an honest and good job promoting it.
14. You should take a look from time to time in the stats in your account at the network company to see how you perform. The good thing is that you don't necessarily have to deal with the merchants. You can just join a reliable and reputable network hosting the products/services and doing all the work for you.
Click here to check out some of the best PTC sites.
So what are the risks? With any new start up company you are at risk if the company doesn’t make it. Plain and simple. If you focus on promoting only one product, service, affiliate program or business opportunity and it doesn’t sell or the company goes down – you have nothing! But when you create multiple streams of income – if one of the streams dries up – it’s a bummer but not catastrophic.
Here, we will always preach the power of PRODUCTIVE LIVING and of creating MULTIPLE STREAMS OF INCOME as a way to help you make for yourself a large, stable, diverse, passive residual income with less effort and less cost. Earn instant multiple income streams daily. Keep coming back to the blog as we keep on identifying the best methods, unique strategies, effective techniques to earn unlimited income from paid to click, surf, read, promote and sign up excellent passive income sources. These are revolutionary ways to make money online. We select, review and recommend to our associates the best PTC paying sites. In a nutshell, we are helping thousands of people worldwide become their own boss from their own home. The best part is No matter how much experience you have online you can make money month after month! So, Stay subscribed for more-make-money tips & tricks...
Read The Myth of Easy. Why You Don’t Want Easy Online Marketing
Are you interested in generating income from Transport Partnership Click here to check it out!
Join our Facebook Page because we want to connect with all of you as the individuals you are, rather than random statistics and figures on our blog counter. With this page, we hope to know all of you better as readers, individuals and friends. At the moment, there are over 9319 amazing Fortune Fair readers (as of 03-Jun-2013) on the page.
If you’d like to give us a chance to know you better, we sincerely invite you to connect with us on our Facebook Page and Follow us on Twitter. We’ll greatly value your friendship and make the effort to read every message or tweet and reply where we can. Click here to refresh yourself.
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