Cynicism is bad for business

When someone we trust takes us for a ride, the bump back to earth is something we're unlikely to forget. But when we suspiciously reject an offer from someone else, we may never know what we've missed out on due to too little trust. Over time, such asymmetries in feedback can tip us toward an unwarranted cynical stance. It's clear that cynicism is as unhelpful a bias as naivety: it leads to guarded communication, reduced  sharing, and more self-serving biases, all of which may cause interactions to nosedive. A recent review by Chia-Jung Tsay and his team from Harvard Business School may help us understand cynicism and how it develops.

The review identifies some key triggers that enhance cynicism, including:

• Being new to negotiation - novices are more likely to believe that negotiation is always competitive;
• Thinking about the power of influence; for instance, knowledge that another party is a sales expert leads negotiators to suspect their offers more;
• Inclusion of a shady character - negotiating groups take the least trustworthy individual in the other group as the best indicator of group trustworthiness;
• Clear power asymmetries - people expect more misrepresentations from authorities with access to hidden information.

The authors point to a range of studies where participants reject offers that are in their rational best interest because of lurking cynicism that puts them off the whole venture. They warn us that the consequence is that "cynicism regarding others' motivations may become a self-fulfilling prophecy that leaves both sides worse off than would otherwise be the case." Happily, the review concludes with some advice we might take on to chart a better course:

• perspective-taking to recognise your 'opponent' is an active party in negotiations, cultivating a "healthy skepticism" that considers a full range of motives on their part;
• act with integrity - it increases the likelihood the other party will;
• encourage a level playing field that minimises hidden information;
• foster repeated exposure to specific negotiators to build a history of trust that is costly to undermine.

Try the techniques out, you won't regret it. Trust me.

Tsay, C., Shu, L., & Bazerman, M. (2011). Naïveté and Cynicism in Negotiations and Other Competitive Contexts The Academy of Management Annals, 5 (1), 495-518 DOI: 10.1080/19416520.2011.587283

Provoking behaviour: training roleplayers at assessment centres

Assessment days for evaluating work-relevant behaviours of applicants or job incumbents often draw on actors to perform as difficult team-members or curious clients in meeting simulations. A recent study has shown that these role-playing actors can be trained to effectively weave pre-written dialogue prompts into the improvised simulations. However, whether this helps measurement of participant behaviours is less clear.

The study authors Eveline Schollaert and Filip Lievens gave 19 role-players training, which in one condition included explicit guidance on using behaviour-eliciting prompts during assessment exercises; for example, "Mention that you feel bad about it" in order to provoke behaviours relating to a dimension of interpersonal sensitivity. Such prompts are often provided in prep material, but actual usage was unknown. The authors wondered whether role-players could realistically increase their prompt usage through training, or whether this is too much to ask an actor in the thick of a dynamic interaction.

At a subsequent assessment centre, the role-players interacted in simulations with 233 students from Ghent University. Role-players with prompt training were able to incorporate four to five times more prompts than those without such training, an increase from about two prompts per exercise to 10-12.

More prompts ought to elicit more relevant behaviours, so the authors expected observers to get a better picture of true 'candidate' performance. But this isn't clear. In the high-prompt condition, pairs of raters watching the same role-play didn't agree any more on their ratings, suggesting the behaviours remained just as obscured as without prompts. That said, there was better correspondence of some of the ratings to other measurements you would expect to be related - for instance, interpersonal sensitivity correlated better with an Agreeableness personality score acquired pre-centre. But half of the predicted increases in correlation weren't observed.

Regarding their unsupported hypotheses, the authors wonder whether the rating assessors should also have been trained on prompt use to encourage sensitivity to candidate reactions. I have additional concerns on the nature of the assessors -minimally trained masters students - used to draw conclusions about a professionalised domain. Nonetheless, this rare examination of role-player impact on face to face assessments suggests training can generate more dimension-focused contributions, which in turn may result in measurements with more predictive power.

Schollaert, E., & Lievens, F. (2011). The Use of Role-Player Prompts in Assessment Center Exercises International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 19 (2), 190-197 DOI: 10.1111/j.1468-2389.2011.00546.x

MBA early career challenges: handling others and reconceiving yourself

MBA courses are meant to prepare their students to become effective business leaders, and give a lot of attention to that goal. This mid-late career focus makes it reasonable to wonder how MBA graduates are equipped for their earlier career, when they take their classroom knowledge to a managerial role with significant responsibilities. Beth Benjamin and Charles O'Reilly of Stanford University conducted a qualitative investigation into early-career challenges for 55 such “manager-graduates”, to understand the near-term needs of a newly minted MBA, and hence how their course could leave them better prepared.

Their interviews, exploring especially challenging episodes in the early career of these manager-graduates, illustrated how an educational experience emphasising analytical problem solving, graft, and individual success, inevitably shapes a more task-oriented approach. Often knowing 'what' to do, the manager-graduate is less sure on 'how to do it', notably in the social dimension.

Aggressively outdoing his peers to wind up with a promotion, one interviewee entered his role only to have several team members - once his peers - walk out. His learning from this was to “treat your peers as though they might someday be your boss or direct reports.” Another trap was assuming that others share your approach, motivation and skills towards work issues; this can lead to overly relaxed expectation-setting or misjudging how to motivate others for a new direction. One interviewee baldly stated "[Business School] doesn’t prepare you to manage a wide swatch of people", such as those whose life doesn’t revolve around business excellence.

Another theme of the research was the need for manager-graduates to shift mind-set. They needed to flourish when their role didn't provide opportunity for direct personal achievements, by embracing being a "caretaker for something larger than myself". They also needed to cope with, and learn from, personal disappointments, which can be a real challenge for a perennial straight-A student unused to such situations.

All the challenges represented some form of transition point, where the manager-graduate had to drop old assumptions, turn to different skills, renegotiate relationships or take a new approach. Such transitions are vital times for spurring learning forward, but can be problematic if they come before the individual is ready for them.

Benjamin and O'Reilly fear the MBA system doesn't accomplish this preparation, as "teaching leadership principles without sufficient application opportunities runs the risk of making complex leadership concepts appear simple and obvious"; for instance, we should be empathic leaders - but how do we manage that? Although applied learning does occur in MBAs, they feel there is a need for better integration, to understand the how in the context of the what, to provide their students well-practiced strategies to carry them through the situations of stress that will undoubtedly define their early career.

Benjamin, B., & O'Reilly, C. (2011). Becoming a Leader: Early Career Challenges Faced by MBA Graduates The Academy of Management Learning and Education, 10 (3), 452-472 DOI: 10.5465/amle.2011.0002

Extreme numbers influence initial salary offers

Despite some schools of thought, it's generally to your advantage to name a price first in negotiations. This is thanks to the anchoring effect, where presenting a value skews later judgments towards it.  There is plenty of evidence that setting salary for a new role is influenced by relevant anchors, such as the applicant stating their previous pay or expectations for this job. But decision-making research suggests that estimates and attributions can be influenced by even arbitrary and extreme anchors. Todd Thorsteinson at the University of Idaho set about seeing how crazy numbers might also shape take-home pay.

206 psychology students were asked to make a salary suggestion for a desirable job applicant question. Participants were presented with the applicant's description including two anchors: a realistic one of the applicant's previous salary ($29,000), and an unusual one of either $100k or $1, embedded within a joking statement they made about their salary expectations. The joking context was considered necessary to allow the unusual anchor to be presented without triggering other effects, like being considered overly arrogant or having poor judgment. Participants given the high unusual anchor awarded a higher salary than both those given the low unusual anchor and a control condition with just the realistic anchor.

A second experiment asked its 150 participants to additionally record their perceptions when reading about the applicant, and introduced an even more extreme anchor: one million dollars. Participants were not put off by the extreme anchor, perceiving it as just as plausible and influential as  the $100k reference, and in both cases ended up offering the applicant a higher salary than when these high anchors were absent. So, just as in the literature on estimation, even radically inappropriate anchors can sway decisions. It's worth noting too that the unusual anchors had their effect despite being presented alongside realistic ones, as some studies have suggested that in such situations we may simply defer to the more plausible. That wasn't the case here.

There are risks to naming a salary first, such as underselling yourself or pricking the sensibilities of the hirer. So using a joke to introduce an anchoring value may be a safer bet. Organisations may of course respond: using clearly defined pay ranges and clear criteria to shape a fair financial offer for a desired candidate. Both parties should take seriously the power of framing the financial borders of a negotiation.

THORSTEINSON, T. (2011). Initiating Salary Discussions With an Extreme Request: Anchoring Effects on Initial Salary Offers1 Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 41 (7), 1774-1792 DOI: 10.1111/j.1559-1816.2011.00779.x

Stuck on your ideas: fixation in group brainstorms

Brainstorming, when people gather to generate ideas together, is great in theory: many perspectives mesh to generate diverse outputs. In practice, evidence shows that brainstorming groups often perform more poorly than an equivalent number of soloists (often called a 'nominal' group). Some reasons are social, such as a pressure not to offer wild ideas in public; these can be mitigated by changing norms or tweaking process, e.g. sharing ideas anonymously using computers. A recent article focuses on the other side of the equation: the mental or cognitive narrowing that happens when you hear others' ideas.

Nicholas Kohn and Steven Smith ran a series of studies with undergraduate students, who spent twenty minutes on a computer responding to the challenge "List ways in which to improve Texas A&M University." Half the participants were in brainstorming groups, accessing the ideas of three other group members in a chat window, whereas the others worked independently with their outputs combined after the fact to make nominal groups. The first experiment affirmed that nominal groups did better – they accessed more categories of idea, and had more ideas overall.

Kohn and Smith suspected something called cognitive fixation, where being exposed to another's idea makes it more salient in your mind and blocks ideas of other types. They examined this in experiment two, where each participant was grouped with a single partner who was actually a confederate of the experimenters. This allowed them to systematically manipulate the number of ideas a participant saw in their chat window, presenting between one and twenty typical ideas from the most common categories generated in experiment one, such as Transportation or Food.

As expected, a high number of cues led to less novel ideas within fewer categories, which were rarely the uncued, uncommon ones. However, the overall number of ideas was not significantly affected, meaning candidates went more deeply into those fewer categories that they did consider. This suggests fixation: inspired by – but stuck on – the concepts presented to them.

A final experiment suggested that fixation can be shaken by taking a break. Participants who had been fed typical cues during just the first half of the study generated 86% more ideas and explored 57% more categories in the second half if they were put to work on an unrelated five-minute task in between. The break had no effect when participants were not exposed to fixation cues in the first half.

Although brainstorming didn't outperform a nominal group, the study suggests instances where it might be preferred: "if the goal is to explore a few categories in depth, then interaction among the members should be encouraged", preferably with a break and time to work more independently. Conversely, when you are after variety and uniqueness of ideas, cognitive fixation on obvious topics may be a risk. One solutions is to elicit opportunities for solo free thinking, and have these outputs brought to the table instead; another might be to use techniques to guide thinking towards the fringes rather than gravitating back to our common concerns.

Kohn, N., & Smith, S. (2011). Collaborative fixation: Effects of others' ideas on brainstorming Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25 (3), 359-371 DOI: 10.1002/acp.1699

Black and white applicants more engaged by diversity-friendly recruitment websites

Organisations don't make recruitment websites for their own gratification, but to attract applicants. Ideally, they want informed ones who've gathered a realistic sense of whether the organisation is for them. So recruiters should take note: a recent study has shown that sites that present cues of racial diversity encourage both black and white applicants to browse for longer and encode more information about the organisation.

H. Jack Walker and colleagues had expected that racial diversity cues such as images and testimonials would appeal to black applicants, by indicating that the organisation was sympathetic to their identity. Rather than just surveying attitudes, the team went beyond previous studies by looking at what applicants did during and remembered following site browsing.

In a first study, 141 students evaluated a website of a fictional website, which under one condition included a diversity cue - two of four company representatives on the "Meet Our People" page were black - whereas under the other condition all four reps were white. A second study increased real-world validity by asking 73 students to make judgements about two genuine company sites with high or low diversity cues.

In both studies, the black students (around a third of each sample) were able to recall more details about the organisation when tested two to three weeks after when they had been browsing a website containing strong diversity cues. The first study measured browsing time too, and found the black students spent more time on those websites. But all this was also true of the white students: the effects were slightly less pronounced - there was an interaction between presence of cue and applicant race - but they were there nonetheless.

Straight off, I should emphasise that use of diversity cues needs to be sincere: misselling an organisation as diversity friendly is a clear recipe for disaster for applicant and employer alike. With that in mind, there would be ample reason to put sincere diversity cues in recruitment websites even if the effect had been limited to black applicants. Even neglecting the wider social effects, increasing diversity in an organisation widens its talent pool, can improve its performance and makes it more attractive to a broader customer base. But the current study suggests that for black and white applicants, sites containing such cues "are more likely to maintain applicant interest so that website viewers evaluate and retain more website information". In a world of short attention spans, that's got to be worth a lot.

Walker, H., Feild, H., Bernerth, J., & Becton, J. (2011). Diversity cues on recruitment websites: Investigating the effects on job seekers' information processing. Journal of Applied Psychology DOI: 10.1037/a0025847

Charisma involves teachable behaviours

Is charisma innate or can we acquire it? This question has preoccupied scholars of leadership certainly since Max Weber proposed it was a gift "not accessible to everybody" over a century ago. Research suggests charismatic leadership - the use of ideology and emotion to rouse feeling and motivations - involves explicit behaviours, such as body language techniques, showing moral conviction and using metaphor. Is it possible to teach these so-called charismatic leader tactics (CLTs), and does this lead to higher attributions of charisma? There have been promising studies, but to date there hasn't been a study that investigated mature working adults and used a control group.

Enter a team from the University of Lausanne, headed by John Antonakis. Their first study recruited 34 managers who underwent a 360-degree process, each receiving ratings of charisma and leadership prototypicality (how much they resemble a leader) from themselves and around ten other co-workers. One month later, half the managers experienced a charisma training intervention, which included presentation of the various CLTs and practical sessions. Three months after the intervention, all managers again received 360 ratings using an altered rating scale to avoid undue influence from the last process. Managers who underwent training saw their charisma ratings significantly grow, relative to those who didn't.

There remained a possibility that these effects weren't the result of CLTs but due to raised confidence or self-awareness due to the training. So a second, study looked directly at the effects of CLTs in a controlled laboratory setting. 41 participants from an MBA course made speeches as part of their course requirements. After a bout of charisma training, they were asked to give the speech again, making changes in light of the training but preserving its core content. Films of every speech were given to trained coders who determined how many of the CLTs were present in a given speech, confirming they were more frequent after the training. Speeches with more CLTs - determined by the coder group - received higher ratings from a separate rater group on trust, competence, influence, affect (emotion) and leader prototypicality.

The authors emphasise there are no quick fixes - the training involved a real commitment of time - and that inexperienced overuse of CLTs can lead to self-parody, with pantomime hand gesture and excruciating metaphor. But as the study demonstrates, charisma is at least partly the result of adopting tactics that are transferable and learnable.

Antonakis, J., Fenley, M., & Liechti, S. (2011). Can Charisma Be Taught? Tests of Two Interventions The Academy of Management Learning and Education, 10 (3), 374-396 DOI: 10.5465/amle.2010.0012

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For those interested, here are the Charismatic Leader Tactics: the verbal techniques

• framing through metaphor
• stories and anecdotes
• demonstrating moral conviction
• sharing the sentiments of the collective
• setting high expectations
• communicating confidence
• using rhetorical devices such as contrasts, lists, and rhetorical questions

together with non-verbal tactics such as body gesture, facial expression, and animated voice tone.