Dealing with Competent Jerks and Lovable Fools in the Workplace
Can you manage someone you don’t like or work with someone you don’t get along well with?
Given the nature of today's workplaces, we are really not asked these questions before starting to work with our subordinates or bosses. In most cases, employees or managers are expected to quickly get along with the teams to which they are assigned.
If you have a work problem that is unsolvable by you, who would you turn to first to help find a solution? Would you choose a person who is competent but really difficult to talk to or a person who is easy to get along with but not that competent?
Tiziana Casciaro and Miguel Sousa Lobo addressed this question in their famous HBR report and called the former "competent jerks" and the latter "lovable fools." They argued that competence of course plays an unquestionable role in workplaces, but likability is also a critical factor in determining the health of work relationships. People generally tend to choose lovable fools over competent jerks or likability over ability in most cases of work interactions. The unwritten rule in workplaces is that likability matters.
Can you transform from being a competent jerk to a lovable star?
Casciaro and Lobo mention that likability can be manufactured by promoting familiarity, redefining similarity, and fostering bonding. Familiarity breeds proximity and can be reinforced by methods such as changing people's work spaces or other such things with the team.
Redefining similarity deals with helping people explore the common areas and even personality types, so group exercises like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator could help people better relate to each other. Fostering bonding is commonly done in teams—such as by conducting outward-bound events that help build trust among team members.
Likability change is akin to behavioral change and cannot be simply directed—a leader cannot force an employee to like another employee. A leader can only positively influence the right behavior by rewarding the people showing the right behavior.
Human personality is very complex, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution to human-related issues. "People liking each other is not a necessary component to organizational success," says Ben Dattner, an organizational psychologist.
There are of course contrasting views on this, probably more skewed toward it's hard if not impossible to manufacture likability among opposing personality types. But as Dale Carnegie says in the all-time classic How to Win Friends and Influence People, "When dealing with people, let us remember we are not dealing with creatures of logic. We are dealing with creatures of emotion, creatures bristling with prejudices and motivated by pride and vanity.”
There is no denying the fact that informal work relationships play an important role in organizations, and the pleasant, competent personalities are a basis of those relationships.
Do you agree?
