

Why Fair Bosses Fall Behind - jkuria
http://hbr.org/2011/07/why-fair-bosses-fall-behind/ar/1

======
axiom
I've had 3 kinds of bosses:

1\. Hardass who pushes everyone to the limit, tends to micro-manage,
frequently overrules consensus with his own views.

2\. Total pushover who agrees with everything. Constantly seeks consensus and
rule by democracy, never pushes anyone and just tries to be everyone's friend.

3\. Somewhere in between the two above. Seeks consensus and lets people make
mistakes in order to help them learn. Sometimes overrules people in order to
make sure things don't get too far off track. Doesn't try to be people's
friend, but is sensitive to people's needs and gives a reasonable amount of
leeway.

The somewhat counter-intuitive thing is that #2 is by far and away the worst
kind of boss to have. It's fun for about a month, and then everything falls
apart. The teams never seems to get anything done. All the best people
eventually leave because there is never any consequence to incompetence and so
tons of people just default to being lazy (think: working in government.)

Although #1 is tough and often unpleasant, he tends to get things done (albeit
with higher turnover and more grumbling) and most often at least ensures that
the company succeeds (think guys like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, who are
notorious for being insanely demanding and insensitive.)

Lastly, it's _insanely_ hard to hit the right balance between #1 and #2.
Really it's damn near impossible and requires some kind of magic innate talent
to be able to inspire and push people to work hard without crushing their
spirits.

~~~
j_baker
The thing about #1 is that they probably _aren't_ trying to help the company
succeed. It's more likely that they're trying to take the company for a ride
to meet their own ends. Any success they have is only going to be in the short
term and only in the interests of posturing. Steve Jobs and Bill Gates can get
away with this because their companies by and large _are_ theirs.

While #2 isn't a very effective leader, their heart is usually at least in the
right place. Plus, given the right people, it's amazing what you can get
accomplished by simply leaving them alone and letting them do their job.

But then again, I'm of the opinion that we focus too much on the leadership
and not enough on the people. Maybe I'm just naive. Great leaders are like
surfers riding a big wave. It's easy to get distracted by the surfer and
forget that the wave is really the important part.

~~~
jerf
"Great leaders are like surfers riding a big wave. It's easy to get distracted
by the surfer and forget that the wave is really the important part."

I used to think that. I've recanted. I'm still not 100% sure why leaders are
so important, but the evidence I've personally seen over the years is pretty
clear.

My best guesses are some combination of:

1\. It is true that the performance of a team is given an upper bound by both
the quality of the team and the quality of the leadership, but people tend to
badly underestimate how much quality and talent there is in the world. The
average person is above average in some significant way. I would agree world-
class results require a world-class team, but I think in general, for a given
"random" [1] selection of team and task, it's a rare time when the core
problem is a true lack of talent. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure it happens, but
I've never personally witnessed it in 15 years. Whereas, I've personally
witnessed many teams failing to live up to their obvious potential because of
bad leadership. So, in a sort of mathematical sense it is true that neither
leadership nor team talent is more important, in practice, leadership is the
thing for which demand is much higher than supply, not team talent.

2\. It is true the team is who provides the day-to-day progress on a problem,
but it's generally the leadership making a lot of little decisions that add up
over time; little words that affect morale, small key decisions that affect
efficiency by a few percent, that little bit of vision-from-experience that
avoids blowing a few days on a bad path, the careful selection of problems to
personally take on. It adds up to a lot, and especially when the leadership is
blowing these little calls consistently, no team is good enough to undo the
damage... especially when the leadership actively prevents it!

I do agree that it's important not to fetishize leadership and never to forget
the team gets much credit too, but over the years my estimation of the
importance of true leadership has been going consistently up, not down.

[1]: By "random" I don't literally mean five people uniformly randomly chosen
from everybody on planet Earth, but something more like, go out to a random
company and get a random team working on some problem, and it is unlikely that
the most pressing problem the team has is a raw lack of talent to complete the
assigned task. Again, totally non-zero of course.

~~~
kenjackson
_in practice, leadership is the thing for which demand is much higher than
supply, not team talent._

I'm not sure I buy that. I don't have strong evidence against it, but its a
gut based on experience. What I've tended to see is that great leaders tend
not to be able to replicate their success. But talented people/teams tend to
be succesfull, regardless of the leader.

To put it another way, a great leader, moved to a new team often is not a
success. In fact, when they are, it is usually somewhat unusual. A great
talent moved to a new team is rarely not a success. And when they aren't is
somewhat unusual.

And what I've found is that the great leaders who can replicate success are
those with huge personalities that draw in great talent. Or their reputation
from their first success gives them considerable leverage to use in new
ventures.

For example, look at pro basketball coaches. Getting a great head coach almost
never drastically changes the record of a team the following year or years,
more than chance would. But getting a great player almost always increases a
team's record. What a great coach does though is bring in top talent -- but
usually slowly, given it has to be done via free agency.

Jobs could go anywhere and get top talent. His ability to lead is also his
ability to recruit. I'm not saying he doesn't bring other things to the table,
but I'd say that a good percentage of it is recruiting.

Let me put it another way... given two choices, what would you take:

1) Steve Jobs's mind transplanted to some average mid-level manager at HP. No
one know him as Jobs, but he would have Jobs's managerial chops.

or

2) Steve Jobs body and name, but his mind replaced with some mid-level manager
at Apple (who of course is aware of the fact that he needs to keep up the
charade of being Jobs).

There's a reason why entreprenuers who are successful, but when they leave
their domain (go into a completely new field) are no more successful in future
endeavors than anyone else. The second hit borrows greatly from the fact that
people recognize you have already hit it out the park once.

~~~
abalashov
_Jobs could go anywhere and get top talent. His ability to lead is also his
ability to recruit. I'm not saying he doesn't bring other things to the table,
but I'd say that a good percentage of it is recruiting._

I'm inclined to agree with you, but the problem with that claim is that it is
practically unfalsifiable. Nobody has or is going to try an experiment where
they put someone like Jobs elsewhere and deliberately constrain his
recruitment access only to average or slightly mediocre people. So, we can
assume it's because dynamic, powerful leaders attract good talent, but I don't
think there's a solid empirical basis for that without consistently studying
what happens when they are specifically denied good talent.

------
SoftwareMaven
The first time I managed a team, I learned a critical lesson: a managem _must_
manage upwards and sideways as well as down.

I had a great team and I busted my butt for them. They had better hardware
than other teams, were better educated (conferences and working with others in
the company besides engineering), and had more fun doing their job.

Mostly, this was able to happen because _I asked my boss_. but due to my
sibling managers not being willing to ask, a lot of hostility grew between
other teams and me.

Instead of addressing that, i said "F it" and kept focusing on my team. By the
time I figured out I shouldn't have done that, it really was too late. Seven
years busting my butt to make a project successful under very bad conditions
with reasonable success, and I leave with few people who know what I
accomplished, how i did it or anything, but instead, they have overall
negative feelings towards me.

In short, if you are a manager, you're job is much more than just the people
on your team. Don't forget it.

~~~
skarayan
I've had a similar experience. While I had a good relationship with my team,
other managers (that worked for my manager), and the business, I had a very
poor relationship with the infrastructure team.

If you have worked in an Enterprise, you realize that nearly all deployments
have to go through the infrastructure team including DBAs, Unix/Windows teams,
and Network.

Instead of trying to work with them, I tried to bypass them at every
opportunity. I wanted to get things done faster, but in the long term
everything became an uphill battle.

Now I realize that part of being a good manager is also being a good team
player with everyone involved. Instead of trying to bypass them, I should have
communicated better to come up with mutually benficial solution.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
Ouch! You tried to bypass infrastructure? That isn't going to go well! :)

I know the feeling, though. I had a different position that had me
strattelling the line between dev and ops. I reported to the dev side, but my
team really need to control the servers we were deploying to because ops
expected push-button deployments and didn't know much beyond Oracle.

That was the most painful position I've ever been in. It was also the position
that ultimately pushed me away from development. Of course, now I'm leading a
startup, so if code needs to be written, I'm slinging code. :)

~~~
skarayan
There were some severe problems with our infrastructure team, I felt like I
had no choice but to bypass them. I also felt that they should treat me as
their client, much like I treated the business. It didn't go very well. :)

Things go way faster in a startup -- really the pinnacle of productivity.

------
frossie
I suspect the etiology is quite simple - if somebody is behaving like an ass
and getting away with it, it must be because they are powerful, otherwise
somebody else would stop them. And so it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

~~~
mattgreenrocks
This is easily shut down by anyone with a modicum of introspection: "or maybe
he's just a self-important ass?"

Is this asking too much of people?

------
hagyma
As a boss you consider many aspects of your action. You can be friendly or
aggressive, but every decision in my opinion is based on the individual or the
team you are in conversation with.

You don't treat everyone equally even if it sounds unfair.

Some guys are reliable and do their best, some just act like junkies and have
to be "regulated".

If you are democratic and friendly you can find yourself in situations where
your guys feel they can just overrule your decisions... that is when you turn
into a hardass monster. :)

As a boss you are the only one with the pressure to deliver something as a
complete product. The team just feels portions of it. This will and should
make you act as required in any situation.

Still, no matter what your style is... you have to be consistent and reliable.
This is crucial for earning trust.

------
paganel
Machiavelli wrote about this 500 years ago
(<http://oll.libertyfund.org/simple.php?id=775#chapter_76114>), and
interestingly enough he could not find any definitive answer one way or the
other, maybe these guys are smarter than him, I cannot tell:

> how manlius torquatus by harshness, and valerius corvinus by gentleness,
> acquired equal glory.

> I conclude, then, that the character and conduct of Valerius is advantageous
> in a prince, but pernicious in a citizen, not only as regards his country,
> but also in regard to himself; pernicious for the state, because they
> prepare the way for a tyranny; and for himself, because in rendering him
> suspect to his fellow-citizens, it constrains them to take precautions
> against him that will prove detrimental to him. And, on the other hand, I
> affirm that the severity of Manlius is dangerous to the interests of a
> prince, but favorable to a citizen, and above all to the country. And it
> seldom turns to his prejudice, unless the hatred which it excites should be
> embittered by the suspicions which his great reputation and other virtues
> may inspire; as we will show when speaking of Camillus in the next chapter.

~~~
iam
Interesting link. I took a read of that chapter, and found this paragraph
additionally enlightening:

> I say that the conduct of Manlius is more praiseworthy and less perilous for
> a citizen who lives under the laws of a republic; inasmuch as it operates
> entirely for the benefit of the state, and can never favor private ambition.
> For by such conduct a man can never create any partisans for himself; severe
> towards everybody, and devoted only to the public good, a commander by such
> means will never gain any particular friends, such as we have called
> partisans. Thus this course of conduct can only be of the greatest benefit
> and value in a republic, as it looks only to the public good, and is in no
> way open to the suspicion of individual usurpation. But with the system of
> Valerius, quite the contrary is the case; for although it produces the same
> effects so far as the public service is concerned, yet it is calculated to
> inspire doubts and mistrust, on account of the special devotion of the
> soldiers to their chief to which it will give rise, and which might be
> productive of bad effects against the public liberty, in case of his being
> continued in command for any length of time.

So Machiavelli is basically saying in the context of a republic, it is better
for a commander to rule through terror/harshness (what the article calls
power) rather than respect. The reason being is that gaining respect will
cause the commander to gain friends (the person commanding via terror will
have none/few friends) and make that commander a risk to the state by being a
potential tyrant.

Given this, it's not surprising that Machiavelli advocates Manlius over
Valerius, since the behavior of Valerius is in the end disadvantageous to
everybody else.

However, does this really apply to a company? Most simply aren't run as a
republic, but more of a benevolent dictatorship. So even if a if a manager
does rise up to be the new CEO (a "tyrant"), it's probably because whoever
appoints the CEO (the board?) thought he would make a better CEO than the last
guy, so in the end the company is the one that benefits -- not just the
individual.

In fact the article later points out (on the second page) that the CEO who
ruled through harshness/terror was later kicked out for poor performance.
Maybe commanding through respect is better for companies after all?

------
Meai
There is a very simply misunderstanding most people have: Fairness != being
nice.

~~~
wccrawford
I have to agree. While I prefer both in a boss, it's totally possible to have
either one without the other. And I'd prefer fair over nice if I had to pick.

------
stayjin
Last year I've been working on an unconventional idea of mine: After a project
at which I was the project manager, I get into a project managed by someone
else, as a team member. This has several advantages: -It gives me perspective:
manager is a function, not a position or a personality obsession. -I get to
see things from the other side regularly: sometimes I find that in the
previous project I was managing I have been unreasonable. -I lead by example:
people become very motivated when they see me coding or testing ( as a bonus,
I get to keep my coding skills sharp :-)

Of course, this is Japan and one can still get the credit for doing work
behind the scene but I think it is an interesting idea to hack the "soft boss-
hard boss" paradigm

------
uast23
This almost sounds like a comparison between growth of China and India, where
China just gets the things done when it needs to while India lags behind
trying to gather people's consensus; and I believe that neither of them are
correct. Reasons are pretty simple. If you are a bully, things are bound to
fall apart sooner or later while if you are a total pushover, you don't even
own what you are doing. I have seen both the approaches working and then
failing, at work. As a boss, being a bully can only work when you are sure
that you have hired the last pieces of talent who did not have any other
option. Well, if that is the case then you better be a bully. Otherwise if you
have a got an extremely talented programmer whom you want to run on your
terms, then it ain't gonna happen. Pushover - this can only work when the boss
has got another talented boss in disguise amongst his own workers who actually
works and makes the decisions on behalf of him. It happens; but if everyone is
unsure and starts making his own decision then failure is inevitable. In fact,
contrary to the article, push over boss has a better chance of sharp success
in case he finds a brilliant worker who does not hesitate in taking the lead.
Of-course that is not going to work for ever, but might work long enough.

Edit: In fact, as I think about it more, a pushover/fair boss does not have a
better but a far better chances of succeeding.

1\. A pushover boss earns respect because he listens to everyone - Win

2\. The probability of finding an extremely talented worker is equal for both
kind of bosses - Win

3\. The chance of retaining a talent is higher just because he does not
interfere much in the work - Win

4\. The chance of succeeding the project is higher because he lets other
(might be better) people in team make/alter the decision - Win

~~~
sateesh
Why put the comparison between two countries in our point about leadership
styles. Countries are not people , a leader in a corporate setup has a fairly
definitive goals (increase revenue) and can hire/fire people. But countries
are to be governed so that every one has a equitable choice.

------
Dylan16807
I don't follow the logic in the examples at all.

First, we have a comparison between the assertive McKinnell and the respectful
Katen. But there is no mention of 'fairness' to be found.

Then we have a study of students that found that ruder people seemed to _be_
more powerful, but I can't figure out how that relates at all to wanting to
_give_ more power to less _fair_ people.

I'm not going so far as to say the conclusion is wrong, just that this
particular article seems to provide no evidence for it.

~~~
kahawe
I have the same impression - their conclusions must have already been there
and they just plugged in a few studies that might sound relevant and they left
quite a few gaping holes there.

------
lsc
"At Pfizer, a cohort of promising executives associated with Katen resigned
after McKinnell took over. He himself was pushed into retirement by the board
in 2006 because of the company’s disappointing performance. Shareholder
outrage over his rich retirement package followed."

sounds like the real problem here is the board valuing the perception of power
over actual managerial competence.

I think this problem is endemic; the thing is, business is hard. Most people
give up on trying to find the best person for the job and go with the best-
looking person, or the person who other people think is the best.

The thing is, "the wisdom of the crowd" works fairly well if all members of
the crowd make up their own mind independently. But that's not how it works;
nearly everyone decides largely based on what they think other people think,
which breaks the whole system.

I think the rise of mutual funds, index funds, and other vehicles to invest
without thinking about the companies you are buying are making this problem
worse. People are giving their money to people who make money as long as they
don't do anything wildly divergent from the herd.

------
brandall10
Is the question really whether someone is fair or unfair, or is it simply
being the type that can cut thru the crap and be blunt... don't try to sugar
coat, don't try to let people down softly, just tell it like it is in as few
words as possible?

To me that's the fairest supervisor you could possibly have. I had a
supervisor like that once... he had a reputation for being a hardass, but
everyone loved him.

------
frankwiles
These types of studies are flawed in that they assume the same technique works
with different people in different situations. The best managers, bosses,
founders, etc realize you have to treat different people and situations
differently, it's constant adaptation to the situation at hand. Doing that is
hard and more art than science.

------
nate23342
This does not take into account the company they work for. Bosses at a company
that pay 40% more than average have more options that bosses that work at
companies that pay 10% less than average.

~~~
fedd
to make people work for 10% less than average is a real managerial art.

they use irrelevant motivations (like 'are you a man', 'you gave a word'),
deceive people, flatter, promote jerks to make tension in the team and so
forth.

and even make some bullshit (rarely good things, i think) done. at least what
i see here in my city/country.

it's easy to have power based on money, but sometimes not that efficient, they
think.

~~~
Duff
You're describing a bully.

As long as compensation is enough to afford whatever you need to live,
bullying is generally the worst motivator. Employees learn quickly that they
can produce just enough to not get fired -- then they do so.

------
known
Leading, managing & administering are 3 different aspects.

------
omouse
Our society is built upon capitalist competition. Being fair doesn't count
unless you can see its impact on the bottom-line and unfortunately it's
difficult to quantify something that's qualitative. Also, fair leaders are
rarely shown in tv, propaganda, etc. which makes it harder for people to see
them as having power.

------
anonymous246
Interesting experiment which suffers from the problem that all psychology
experiments have: based upon observations of college students. I've been
around the block a few times and I definitely don't now perceive respectful
people as weak.

~~~
j_baker
_Our research, which included lab studies and responses from hundreds of
corporate decision makers and employees..._

That doesn't seem to be the case to me.

~~~
rosser
FTA: "The same bias was exhibited by students in a laboratory setting."

The GP was talking specifically about the experiment design. Surveys are also
notoriously unreliable as sources of meaningful data. Not that either point
discounts the value of the research, of course.

------
kahawe
The CEO decision at Pfizer is a horrible example, if you ask me. All we know
is that one manager was perceived as assertive and occasionally "abrasive"
while the other one was "fair" and then when the abrasive guy was picked, they
conclude it was because of his "toughness" because some random analyst said
so.

There could be a million different reasons why he was picked over her. For
one, it might simply be discrimination from the owners and/or share holders or
one particularly influential share holder. Or he was better connected and/or
was playing politics better than she did. Or for many other reasons...

And the other study just showed how a first impression will influence how we
perceive people. They have absolutely nothing backing up the theory that a
"fair" manager will lose to an "unfair, tough" manager in promotions.

If you ask me, they are missing quite a few links and connections in their
theory and are mixing correlation with causation.

