When is it better to be a directive or an empowering leader?

In its early existence, a team led with a clear, directive approach outperforms one with a leader who is hands-off and emphasises empowerment. Over time, however, the empowered team forges insights and patterns of working that lead it to improve performance at a higher rate than directed teams. This is the finding from a new article by Natalia Lorinkova, Matthew Pearsall, and Henry Sims Jr, that aims to help solve the uncertainties about which leadership style is better. For them, the question is not which, but when.

The researchers investigated this issue using a computer strategy task undertaken by 60 5-person teams, each composed of undergraduates. Team members had distinct roles and had to coordinate actions to verify the accuracy of intel produced by Intelligence players to identify 'sweet spots' where their surveillance was highly accurate, traverse the battlefield safely and destroy enemies. My criticism of this study is that this kind of activity is very far from typical workplace activity, and the time-scales - one 3-hour session - out of proportion from the normal maturation of a work team. With that out of the way, the methodology is interesting, and the results notable.

The study required teams to be led by directive or empowering leaders. The directive style involves clear directions, explicit feedback, and minimises ambiguity on what you are supposed to do, similar to the 'tough leadership style'. An empowering style encourages followers to take ownership for tasks, and find their own norms of how to work well together. When they were recruited, participants completed measures of each style. The 30 highest scorers in directive leadership were each assigned leadership of a team, and additionally provided with pre-session training: 30 minutes including watching a clip from Apollo 13 showcasing the desired style and roleplaying out its behaviours. They were then provided with a 'cheat sheet' of advice to give, and a short speech to give at the outset of the task, that all reinforced their directive status. The other 30 teams were led by those scoring highest in empowering leadership, who received comparable training and resources.

After orientation and explanation of the task, teams completed 10 rounds of the task, with a break half-way through. The researchers predicted that the clarity of directive leadership enhances team performance within a stage of team development called 'role compilation'. Meanwhile, empoweringly-led teams use this stage to invest effort into figuring each other out, which pays off for them during a subsequent stage called 'team compilation' when the unit should be purring along. This is based on a four-stage model of team development by Kozlowski et al. (1999), but the mapping of role compilation onto rounds 1-5 and team compilation onto 6-10 seems a little arbitrary to me. Lorinkova's team do point out that risk-taking behaviour dropped between 1-5 and 6-10, suggesting they had moved to more routinised action.

Directive leaders earned higher performance in the task during rounds 1-5, but over stages 6-10 the empowered teams improved at a higher rate, leading to comparable performance by the end. The analysis confirmed several reasons behind this: the empowered groups learned to coordinate better, felt psychologically more in control, and after the study end were more accurate at characterising their colleague's capabilities and focus in a separate task. When entered into the analysis beforehand, the effect of empowered leadership could no longer be detected, suggesting that these were the routes through which empowerment was having its effect.

The authors would like to see this research conducted over longer time-scales, using set-ups more reflective of the workplace. However, this study already raises an important angle on leadership style: its impact may be profoundly tied to context, in particular the developmental stage of a team. Existing models emphasise the need for individual follower readiness for empowering leadership to work - some people may not expect nor desire ownership of tasks and the freedom to choose methods. But this research points to the dynamical processes within a team - where members stand in relation to one another and the team as a whole. The reliance on cross-sectional methodology in many leadership style studies may explain the controversy between studies: measuring at round 4 or round 9 would have produced very different conclusions about the relative benefits.

In conclusion, Lorinkova and colleagues offer a warning of taking these findings too simplistically: 'Although there may be some advantage to employing a combination of the two leadership approaches (e.g., Gratton & Erickson, 2007), our results suggest that the benefits of empowering leadership in teams tended to manifest because team members initially engaged in role identification and learning processes during the role compilation phase. Empowered teams, therefore, may not be able to reap the benefits of improved performance over time without first suffering the initial performance delays.'

Natalia M. Lorinkova, Matthew J. Pearsall, & Henry P. Sims Jr (2013). Examining the differential longitudinal performance of directive versus empowering leadership in teams Academy of Management Journal, 56 (2), 573-596 DOI: 10.5465/amj.2011.0132

Further reading: 
Seibert, S. E., Wang, G., & Courtright, S. H. 2011. Antecedents and consequences of psychological and team empowerment in organizations: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Applied Psychology, 96: 981–1003.
 

Employers benefit when members don't only identify with them

Where does our work allegiance lie? At first blush, probably with the employer organisation that pays our wages and paints a vision of why we are doing what we do. We identify as National Trust people, or as part of Rummidge General Hospital. Identification with an organisation helps it meet objectives and lines employees up towards common goals, such as meeting hospital targets. But perhaps we also identify as a member of the medical profession: two identities, not one. And for in-sourced employees - 3rd party contractors working under the roof of a client company – this question is especially sharp: am I part of IT-Help Inc or Global Furniture Plc? Research suggests that people can and do answer 'both' to this question. Recent research looks at dual identification, helping us understand how it influences organisational goals.

Yen-Chun Chen, Shu-Cheng Steve Chi and Ray Friedman opted to investigate a clear example of dual identification: brand counter staff in department stores. The employees have a workplace - a Macys or Selfridges - that differs from their employer - the counter for a Levis or Fat Face. 181 participants, mostly women, from eight Taiwanese department stores completed a survey on how much they identified with their store and with their counter. A month later they reported their turnover intention and job satisfaction, and measures were taken of sales performance (using hard metrics) and customer focus (through ratings by colleagues in their team). The analysis controlled for job tenure - recent incumbents may form weaker attachments to their location - and social desirability of questionnaire responding.

As anticipated, participants identified primarily with their employer. And the stronger the better: highly identifying individuals were more satisfied, less likely to plan to leave, performed better in the job and more displayed more customer-oriented behaviour (as flagged by colleagues). But performance and customer focus were even higher when these individuals also identified strongly with their workplace, the department store.

The finding suggests that inwardly focused outcomes - whether I'm happy with the job and want to stay in it - are influenced by their identification with the employer, not the workplace. This makes sense: the employer assigns pay, establishes mission and vision, and holds the key to future prospects. The more outward aspects of the job - pleasing customers and making sales - are also tied to identification with the employer, but here the context - the workplace - matters as well. The authors suggest that workers who are aligned to their environment will operate more freely within it, finding it easier to liaise with staff on other counters and store management. This leads to easier coordination and a smoother experience for the customer - who after all, expects the parts of a store to work together for their benefit, rather than as a series of competing market vendors.

Statistically, the effect of workplace identity moderated the employer-identity benefit by just 1-2%. And when participants had low identification with their employer, workplace identity didn't matter either way. In this sample, workplace identity was definitely subservient to the employer one. But a significant moderator of a few percentage points is meaningful in this research area; over repeated interactions, small effects can add up. So if companies intend to invest efforts into aligning teams with their own organisational agenda, they should consider going the extra mile by fostering a positive dual identification. The people across the hall may be drawing their paycheck from a different account, but they make up the working environment, and it pays for your people to feel part of that.

Yen-Chun Chen, Shu-Cheng Steve Chi, & Ray Friedman (2013). Do more hats bring more benefits? Exploring the impact of dual organizational identification on work-related attitudes and performance Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology DOI: 10.1111/joop.12017

Further reading:
 Riketta, M., & van Dick, R. (2005). Foci of attachment in organizations: A meta-analysis comparison of the strength and correlates of work-group versus organizational commitment and identification. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 67, 490–510. DOI: 10.1016/j.jvb.2004.06.001
 

What happens to an organisation when people leave?

Today, one of your colleagues is packing the contents of his desk into a cardboard box. A few weeks back you were at a leaving do for someone in another department. On the personal scale, these can be sad events. But what does turnover augur for the organisation? Different studies show different things, for example that sales suffers, benefits or is unaffected by turnover rates. Contrasting hypotheses exist, but a meta-analysis by Tae-Youn Park and Jason D. Shaw takes us from the theories into the data. Let's start with the competing ideas.

The first position is that turnover disrupts how well an organisation does. More experienced workers perform better, an idea stemming from human capital theories. And people in an organisation for a while get to know each other, reducing transaction costs between them, an insight from social capital theory. Replacing people undermines these benefits and is costly.

Another view is that in a company with low turnover - people don't leave often - human capital is indeed accumulating. This means when people leave the organisation loses a resource, as per idea one. However, when turnover stands at a high rate, the company isn't accumulating appreciable human/social capital: it simply isn't a big part of how the organisation succeeds. Hence losses are fairly painless, and to boot the company is likely to be efficient at replacing staff, given it's such a routine issue. So low levels of turnover hurt, but the impact tails off at higher levels.

The third perspective turns this on its head: at low levels, turnover is actually useful, as it revitalises the workforce by eliminating misfits who harm performance. It's only when turnover gets too high, meaning fewer misfitting people are exiting, that costs exceed this benefit.

To decide between these possibilities and explore other factors described below, Park and Shaw identified 255 studies on the relationship between organisational performance and turnover using standard searches of databases. Through use of exclusion criteria, they arrived at 110 sources containing 371 correlations. Before performing analysis, correlations were coded according to a number of factors, from industry of organisation to methodological approach. We'll see these in a moment.

Across the studies, a significant negative effect was found of -.15, suggesting that a 1SD increase in turnover produces a .15 decrease in performance. And when turnover was higher, the negative relationship became if anything stronger. This aligns most strongly with the simple human/social capital predictions: turnover hurts at all levels.  But the relationships varied widely across the included studies, and it's important to understand what's behind this.  Here's the overview.

Turnover affects certain performance measures more than others

• Customer Satisfaction and Quality showed large effects
• Weaker effects found for employee attitudes, productivity and financial performance
• Generally the effects were greater when measuring performance soon after the turnover, rather than moderately far or far into future

Organisational Type and structure matters

More effects were found in

• smaller companies
• executive level samples
• industries such as healthcare and hospitality, coded as 'human-capital-centric'
• those with so-called 'primary employment systems' that focus around delivery through committed employees (instead of a transactional, control-system)

These all paint a consistent picture that when organisations rely more on human capital, turnover hurts more. A large company which differentiates itself through use of equipment/other resources, eg mining, is less hurt by departures, especially so if it isn't investing in people practices (such as training, development, or engagement strategies) that secure commitment.

Turnover type matters

Reduction in force (downsizing) and voluntary turnovers both showed a significant negative relationship to performance. Involuntary turnover (getting fired) showed a relationship not different from zero. As some theories suggest all turnover should hurt, and others suggest that involuntary turnover should help organisations by losing weak performers, it's important to take this away. Possibly the benefits of losing misfits are cancelled by the costs of rehire.

The author conclude that 'organizations must recognize that when turnover rates rise, their workforce and financial performance are at risk. They should
 search for strategies to mitigate and eliminate turnover, recognizing
 that lower turnover is always better.'

Park, T., & Shaw, J. (2013). Turnover rates and organizational performance: A meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 98 (2), 268-309 DOI: 10.1037/a0030723

Highly extraverted sales people perform more poorly

What sales manager wouldn't hire extraverts? They tend to be comfortable in interactions, naturally display enthusiasm and confidence for their own ideas, and can be firm and persistent when they meet with resistance to their agenda. Scrutinise many sales forces and you'll probably spot this reasoning at work.

Yet research finds weak and sometimes inconsistent relationships between sales performance and extraversion, with three meta-analyses finding the summed effects to amount to .07 - a non-significant finding. A new study by Adam Grant from the Wharton School, Pennsylvania, suggests that the sweet spot for sales performance might instead be balanced between extraversion and introversion.

Grant looked at week-on-week sales performance (revenue earned) for 340 outbound sales executives over three months. All completed a big-five personality inventory beforehand, comprising extraversion along with the other four primary personality dimensions; the inventory required them to rate their agreement with various items using a seven-point Likert scale. Regression analysis on the data revealed no linear relationship between extraversion and sales performance, instead finding a quadratic effect. Specifically, performance rose with extraversion until a peak at 4.5, well before the maximum of seven. From this point, performance actually decreased.

In hard numbers, the performers at the peak made on average $151 per hour, versus $127 for those whose extraversion was a standard deviation below, and a more meagre $115 for those a standard deviation above. Grant's analysis confirmed that the findings were not being driven by a confound from other personality factors, for instance a toxic combination of low agreeableness and high extraversion which might invite conflicts.

Why might those falling more towards the middle of the scale perform better? Grant dubs these 'ambiverts' and suggests that they are more likely to engage in give and take with clients, falling back to listening as introverts tend to, but then being willing to act and engage. Meanwhile, the strongly extraverted may fall into a range of traps - the dark underbelly of their strengths - by dominating others, projecting overconfidence, and sending obvious 'influence' signals that may lead to prospective customers raising their defences.

Grant concludes that organisations may want to look harder at the relationship between personality and sales performance to guide recruitment strategies, and that they may 'benefit from training highly extraverted salespeople to model some of the quiet, reserved tendencies of their more introverted peers'.

 
Grant, A. (2013). Rethinking the Extraverted Sales Ideal: The Ambivert Advantage Psychological Science DOI: 10.1177/0956797612463706


Further reading:

Barrick, M. R., Mount, M. K., & Judge, T. A. (2001). Personality and performance at the beginning of the new millennium: What do we know and where do we go next? International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 9, 9–30. DOI: 10.1111/1468-2389.00160

Grow, broaden, maintain: HR practices and how they matter for older workers

In the last issue of the Human Resource Management Journal, Dorien Kooij and colleagues investigate how general HR practices might have differential effects for younger and older employees. Given the ageing workforces prevelant in the West, it's an increasingly relevant issue.

800 respondents to a much larger survey were randomly selected to form eight equally sized age groups, ranging from those below 20 to an over-50 group. Participants reported their experiences of HR practices that could influence their ability, motivation or opportunities within the last 12 months. These practices were organised into bundles, the first containing practices that help the employee maintain their performance or minimise drops in capability: this comprised career advice, performance appraisal, opportunities to voice ideas, and access to information needed to carry out the job.

This was to be accompanied by just a second bundle, but confirmatory factor analysis found the best fit to the data was a total of three categories. Consequently the researchers added a development bundle, composed of formal training both for the current role and for anticipated future roles, and a job enrichment bundle, involving challenging job demands, and whether the job called on the full capacity of skills and knowledge that the individual possesses.

Overall, experience of each bundle was positively related to the measures of wellbeing collected in the survey - the individual's organisational commitment, their job satisfaction, and their perceived organisational fairness. The association between developmental practices and wellbeing was weaker for older workers relative to their younger counterparts. This was predicted on the basis that as we develop over our lifespan, our priorities shift away from opportunities for growth towards a 'prevention focus' that is concerned with keeping problems at bay. And indeed those practices within the maintenance bundle had a stronger relationship with wellbeing measures for older workers.

Although for older workers, growth is less important for wellbeing, Kooij's team predicted that it may be vital for their performance . As workplace demands evolve and fluctuate, older workers tend to be more at risk of experiencing obsolescence, which can be mitigated by proactively broadening functionality. Job performance was captured in the survey in the form of a self-rating, and was indeed found to have a significantly more positive relationship with both the development and job enrichment bundles (originally these were to be a single bundle, at which the prediction was pointed).

It should be noted that this 'more positive relationship' was a little odd, as it actually reflects a move from a negative relationship (more HR practices relating to negative wellbeing) to a non-significatn one, rather than from positive to more positive. There are some precedents for this negative relationship; explanations include participants self-reporting poorer performance because they are conscious that the training, while broadening, may be taking them away from the immediate demands of the job. Still, this makes the finding harder to parse, as does the fairly low effect sizes found in the study. (The authors raise this, but counter that effect size is of limited insight in these forms of regression analysis.)

This study suggests that older adults appreciate HR interventions to different degrees compared to their younger counterparts, treasuring more those that keep them on track than those designed for growth. The data at the least poses the possibility that in contrary to these preferences, these older workers may have more to gain from the activities they seek less. A conundrum for the HR sector to consider.

Kooij, D., Guest, D., Clinton, M., Knight, T., Jansen, P., & Dikkers, J. (2013). How the impact of HR practices on employee well-being and performance changes with age Human Resource Management Journal, 23 (1), 18-35 DOI: 10.1111/1748-8583.12000

Dorien T. A. M. Kooij, Annet H. De Lange, Paul G. W. Jansen, Ruth Kanfer and Josje S. E. Dikkers Age and work-related motives: Results of a meta-analysis Journal of Organizational Behavior 32. DOI: 10.1002/job.665

Your boss's expectations shape your performance - but only if you trust them?

The Pygmalion effect is the much-observed finding that a leader's high expectations for their subordinates, if clearly communicated and followed up by supporting behaviours, translate into higher achievements for those subordinates. The leader paints the possibility of another possible self that the subordinate could become - 'be all you can be' - if they apply themselves and follow the path. Thus inspired, the subordinate fixes themself on the new horizon, and with guidance, surpasses themself. The leader keeps the horizon visible, a function termed 'the maintenance of hope'. As you can see, the orthodox view of this is rather unidirectional - leader transmits, others receive. In a theoretical paper, Leonard Kararkowsky, Nadia DeGama and Kenneth McBey unpack how the subordinate is likely to be a crucial factor in this effect: for them, it all comes down to trust.

Trust involves at its base a willingness to be vulnerable and put yourself in anothers hands, believing they will not let you down. Clearly the Pygmalion effect involves risk, as it calls for individuals to abandon old behaviours and strive for something currently beyond them. So it's reasonable to believe trust plays a part. Just how might it do so?

Firstly, the authors note that for trust to occur, the individual has to believe that the trustee has the ability to deliver. This is a cool, cognitive component of trust. Does this leader have the nous to get me from the present to the new possibility? And even before this, do I believe they possess good enough judgment to spot talent? If this trust is present, then the manager's high expectations can raise the subordinate's self-expectations, and with it self-efficacy and motivation to perform.

Just because they can, doesn't mean they will. So trust also relates to beliefs about a person's integrity: how reliable they are, whether their words meet their actions. Coupled with this is an even more important factor: benevolence. While integrity and capability are concerns to coolly appraise, benevolence involves emotional feelings of loyalty and attachment, the sense that this individual cares for you and will go beyond obligations to see you right. When leader Pygmalion behaviours - goal setting, feedback, advice - are viewed through the prism of integrity and benevolence, the subordinate can view them as one side of a social contract, where the leader is delivering effort (integrity) for the subordinate's good (benevolence). This calls for reciprocity from the subordinate, in the form of renewed efforts and changes in their own behaviour.

Karakowsky and colleagues note that the effect has been most deeply researched in educational and military settings - settings where respect for the other's authority and integrity is taken for granted.  The military setting in particular is heavily masculine, which may explain why the research often fails to find the effect with female leaders, who may be perceived through social stereotyping as less capable due to misfit to masculine activities. The authors conclude that for Pygmalion to be fully understood, we need to understand the influence of trust and the active role that subordinates need to take for change to occur.

Karakowsky, L., DeGama, N., & McBey, K. (2012). Facilitating the Pygmalion effect: The overlooked role of subordinate perceptions of the leader Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 85 (4), 579-599 DOI: 10.1111/j.2044-8325.2012.02056.x

Further reading:

White, S. S., & Locke, E. A. (2000). Problems with the Pygmalion effect and some proposed solutions. The Leadership Quarterly, 11, 389–415. DOI: 10.1016/S1048-9843(00)00046-1 

Does great performance depend on enjoying your work?

What fires you to get through today's pile of work? Does it intrinsically attract you, tugging your curiosity? Or do you feel a weight of obligation to do as you're supposed to? These two motivation sources, enjoying work versus being driven to work, have been well examined in the workaholism literature, with obligation leading to personal outcomes such as anxiety and rising guilt. However, despite popular accounts such as Daniel Pink's Drive, there is limited research contrasting how these approaches translate to workplace outcomes.

Laura Graves and her colleagues set out to remedy this, examining three areas that motivation could influence. The team approached managers on  a 5-day leadership program, 357 of whom consented to complete a questionnaire probing how much they enjoyed work, and were driven by it. They also rated two outcome measures: career satisfaction and current psychological strain. A third key measure was work performance, determined by ratings by those who knew the manager:  peers, superiors, direct reports, and others in the organisation.

Managers who reported more enjoyment of work were better performers, experienced less strain and were more satisfied with their careers; good news for them. But higher self-ratings of 'driven to work' were unrelated to these areas; it didn't help, but neither did it hinder. In fact, being driven to work actually helped maintain performance when the enjoyment motive was lacking. However, under that set of conditions psychological strain did increase, suggesting that the obligation motivation can be a blunt instrument of achieving performance when nothing else is available, but it comes at a cost.

This research is important in reinforcing the benefits of a workforce intrinsically stimulated by its daily activities. The effects of enjoying work can be interpreted in terms of positive mood that  increases cognitive capacity through a broaden-and-build effect, and by ensuring that goals achieved are personally meaningful and thereby satisfying. But these findings also suggest that a traditional, obligation-focused mindset isn't calamitous and can be productive – for the organisation, at least - when interesting work is lacking. Findings like this remind us that if we want to move to a world of more fulfilling, happier employment, we shouldn't allow our arguments to solely rely on the organisation's short-term self-interest.

Graves, L., Ruderman, M., Ohlott, P., & Weber, T. (2012). Driven to Work and Enjoyment of Work: Effects on Managers' Outcomes Journal of Management, 38 (5), 1655-1680 DOI: 10.1177/0149206310363612

When and how does mentoring matter?

A recent meta-analysis on mentoring aims to shed light on what matters in these relationships. Mentoring is a distinctive relationship where the mentor acts as a role model, has more experience than their protege, offers them guidance, and provides a safe space for learning and exploration. Obtaining mentoring is often proclaimed as a life-changing opportunity, so a chance to assess this is useful.

The work, led by Lillian Turner de Tormes Eby, used database searches to gather 173 samples where mentoring had been investigated. All these samples contained data on protégé perceptions of mentoring, allowing the study to amass common findings and arrive at sizes for the different effects. The analysis spanned across academic and working contexts, and the authors found that the findings rarely differed between these contexts, doing so only in degree, not in nature.

First off, greater similarity between protégé and mentor on deep features such as aligned values or attitudes was solidly related to three key measures of mentor value: relationship quality (liking of the mentor and satisfaction with how the relationship has unfolded), psychosocial support (counselling and offering acceptance), and to a lesser extent instrumental support (sponsorship or providing visibility in organisations). Having a similar background and experiences provided a more modest boost to instrumental support and a smaller one with relationship quality. Meanwhile, surface level similarities between mentor and protégé such as race, age and gender, turned out to be in aggregate almost irrelevant, with tiny effect sizes.

In terms of the process of mentoring, protégés in more informal relationships received slightly more support of both types, as evidenced by the small correlations with those variables. And more frequent interactions were helpful in terms of all three key measures, especially for the workplace-based samples. In terms of what the protégé brought to the table, those with more social capital - supportive friends and family - appeared to be better able to form a relationship of higher quality and felt they could gain more usable instrumental assistance.

What did these effects produce? The more the relationship embodied any of the three core components, the more satisfied the protégé,  the stronger their sense of affiliation with the organisation, and the less likely they were to plan to leave the organisation. In addition, the two types of support were associated with greater learning.  More instrumental support and higher relationship quality were both associated with stronger perceptions of career success. All these effects were between small and medium in size. The analysis looked at health outcomes and found a no effects beyond a small correlation between more psychosocial support and less workplace strain.

To summarise, mentor-protégé relationships are stronger when the two align on deep features and to a lesser extent in terms of common experiences, when the contact is regular and informal, and when the protégé has other relationships to offer them solid foundations. In terms of outcomes, the authors note in concluding that 'for the typical protégé, the benefits of mentoring are likely to be more limited in both scope and magnitude' than have sometimes been touted.

de Tormes Eby LT, Allen TD, Hoffman BJ, Baranik LE, Sauer JB, Baldwin S, Morrison MA, Kinkade KM, Maher CP, Curtis S, & Evans SC (2012). An Interdisciplinary Meta-Analysis of the Potential Antecedents, Correlates, and Consequences of Protégé Perceptions of Mentoring. Psychological bulletin PMID: 22800296

Interested workers are better performers

Vocational interests – the activities, processes and environments you prefer at work – are, compared to ability and personality, the neglected child of occupational psychology. This is partly thanks to a 1984 meta-analysis, which reported a weak correlation with job performance of just .1. However, recent focus on the idea of person-job fit has drawn attention back to this domain, and a new meta-analysis appears to further rehabilitate interests by showing a rather stronger relationship to performance.

Lead author Christopher Nye and his team gathered 60 studies by searching the literature for terms such as vocational interests, job performance, and turnover, and by perusing the bibliographies of texts such as interest inventory technical manuals. Half the studies followed the 1984 meta-analysis, 42 involved employment (the remainder looked at academic achievement), and these related interests to various measures of performance, such as job outcomes or organisational citizenship behaviours. Interests were measured in various ways, but common to many studies was John Holland's six-interest taxonomy, comprising work that is realistic (e.g. technical), investigative (research), artistic, social, enterprising, and conventional. Interest scores can be treated in a fairly absolute way - your standardised interest score is above average, so you should be somewhat suited to this role - but the team suspected that stronger relationships would be found in by taking a different approach. An individual's interests can be portrayed in terms of a personal ranking or interest profile, where the absolute scores matter less than the relative priorities; a strong investigative interest matters less if other areas matter even more to you. Matching individual interest profiles to job profiles produces 'congruence scores' that, by more closely reflecting fit or misfit, could be better predictors of outcomes.

Overall, the regression-based meta-analysis revealed the baseline relationship between interests and job performance to be .20, already twice as strong as the original 1984 analysis. Moreover, the congruence indices had a much stronger relationship, on average .36. Highest correlations were found around organisational citizenship behaviours, which makes sense: if you enjoy what you do you are more likely to go over and above what the job asks of you. Across the measures, the team found that "interested employees are likely to perform better, help others in the organization, and stay with the company longer." These correlations are substantial and suggest that interests are of greater value than previously believed.

The analysis also made it clear that choosing the right measure is critical. In Holland's taxonomy certain domains are more closely related than others: social interests can be partly compatible with artistic or enterprising job features, but opposed by realistic features. Following that example, studies that correlated a social interest measure with job performance found stronger relationships when the jobs were dominated by social features, weaker ones for artistic, and weakest for jobs that were essentially realistic. This re-emphasises that for interest to be valuable, it must be considered in terms of fit to a particular role, rather than as a more-or-less proxy of motivation. “Because past research has  indicated that interests are not strong predictors of performance, vocational interests have seemingly been ignored in selection contexts”, concludes Nye's team, inviting a new wave of research to fill in the gaps.

Christopher D. Nye, Rong Su, James Rounds, & Fritz Drasgow (2012). Vocational Interests and Performance: A Quantitative Summary of Over 60 Years of Research Perspectives on Psychological Science (7), 384-403 DOI: 10.1177/1745691612449021