I love teaching MBA students. They are typically more experienced, motivated, and professional than undergraduate students. I learn something new from my students every time I teach an MBA class, which is exciting.

In every MBA class I have ever taught, the majority of people are to one degree or another good performers, a few are stellar, and a few in every class I’ve ever taught really don’t belong in a reputable MBA program.

And every few years, you meet the student from hell. Here is an excerpt of an e-mail that I received recently from an MBA student:

Professor Simmons:

The shortfalls we have as your students are directly related to your shortcomings as an instructor. My A- is simply a reminder to you that your instructing was not exemplary and certainly not up to par with the best instructors.

I am halfway through my MBA and the lowest grade I have received up to your class was one A-. I had no problem with that A- because I felt it was justified. I hope that you can improve your shortcoming as an instructor in the future for your students’ academic sake.

This class could have been such a good learning opportunity for students, and if instructed properly could have been so beneficial to us in our career paths. Unfortunately all I learned from this course is that grading can be quite “subjective” and not related to work quality at all. Best wishes to you and an improved future as an instructor.

Please understand that this person earned an A- in my course. I had sixteen MBA students in the course, and twelve of the sixteen earned an A-; four earned an A, and zero earned a grade lower than an A-.  I created a system that got all of my students to the A- level, yet I failed them?

Somehow, this person feels very bitter about not earning an A, and it’s entirely my fault. The attitude conveyed in these words is totally void of personal responsibility and accountability, which by the way was one of my main messages in the class. I think it is safe to say that this person missed that message.

After my initial irritation over this e-mail wore off, my fascination kicked in.  Even though I make my living explaining to others human behavior at work, every once in a while I just have to scratch my head in amazement. How can someone be so narcissistic that an A-, which was an excellent grade both absolutely and relatively, became the impetus for very unprofessional and borderline bullying behavior? This person also obviously has an extreme external locus of control, so how is it that they continue to achieve or at least manage the impression of achievement?

Can you imagine having to manage this person at work? Can you imagine this person managing others?

What do you see in the words of this person’s e-mail? Please share your thoughts with me.

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I am going to recommend that you read Robert Hogan’s book “Personality and the Fate of Organizations.” I purchased my copy of the book because Bob Sutton refers to it in some of his writings.

I want to make sure you understand that I strongly disagree with Hogan’s underlying premise – that it’s the people that make the place. My very first post at this site was entitled “Why do people do the things they do?”  If you follow my blog, you know I believe strongly that systems are stronger drivers of behavior than personalities. In the words of Pfeffer and Sutton (2006) “The law of crappy systems trumps the law of crappy people.”

But Hogan’s argument is important to understand, especially for systems thinkers. We need to understand the other side of the argument as well as possible so that we can be prepared to answer our critics, and Hogan makes the case for personality as well as anyone. I frankly learned a lot of new things from this book. And Hogan knows his history, especially the history of psychology, extremely well, and that contributes a unique perspective to his book.

I love Hogan’s no-nonsense writing style. From the moment I started reading I found myself chuckling aloud at some of the things he wrote (yes, I am a nerd). Here is an example of Hogan’s writing, partially explaining his point that two-thirds of the people currently in leadership positions in corporate America will fail:

New executives are often recruited from outside the organization, making it even harder to evaluate them because there is no track record or institutional memory. The most common selection tool is an interview; narcissists and psychopaths excel during interviews. Thus I believe many executives are hired based on characteristics that are irrelevant to their success as leaders. (p. 37-38).

And another excerpt from a section headed “The Origins of Psychological Taxation”:

Every large organization has two groups of people. The first and usually the largest group contains people who perform key work, the activities that actually define the organization…The second and much smaller group contains people who control important parts of the organization without contributing to its core work. These are the politicians who reside in the executive suite. Many of them are free riders – they participate in the profits of an organization without contributing in any direct way to the major work.

Unfortunately, Hogan understands the argument that “the place makes the people” very poorly.  When describing the American Quality Movement, Hogan states:

TQM is inherently hostile to personality; it is based on the assumption that individual differences in worker characteristics are relatively trivial influences on work process outcomes. Workers are “special causes” of errors in a system – they are replaceable cogs in a work process that account for perhaps 10% of the variance in team performance. (p.56).

Anyone that has read the works of W.E. Deming and understands what special causes of variation are will recognize that Hogan’s comments are void of credibility. It’s actually the attribution errors inherent to Hogan’s perspective that is hostile to most workers. I am heavily steeped in quality improvement logic, and you can see it in my statement of purpose “my purpose is to change your mind about the value of partnering with others to build healthy, responsible organizations where everyone can thrive.” This is hardly the philosophy of someone that views workers as replaceable cogs.

As I’ve stated before, I want to understand personality – first mine, then yours – so that I can learn to work better with you by adjusting the thing I have the most control over, my own behavior. I think that if we had a more specific understanding of and appreciation for how we differ as individuals, we could work better together and multiply our efforts to improve our organizations.

Hogan’s approach leaves you spending money on assessment tools like the one he developed so that you can select for personality. This selection approach creates a relatively homogenous organization that effectively minimizes the variation between worker personalities and behaviors. When everyone is more similar than different, it might make your organization easier to manage. But it is based on the very precarious assumption that your organization knows exactly what it needs to be doing and is currently executing with excellence. Systems thinkers strive to minimize the variation between worker behaviors so that they can better understand how to improve the system by shifting the average performance behaviors to levels beyond the constraints imposed by the current system and more in line with the voice of the customer.

Your company’s customers come from ALL different personality types; consequently, to best serve those customers, your employees also need to be made up of all different personality types.  Personalities are relatively stable, not subject to change. It’s important to understand that as a leader, you are not going to change anyone’s personality at work.  But your organization must change if it is going to survive and thrive. The ability to learn and improve is based on your assumptions, not your personality.

Read this book. You will learn a lot, and it will force you to think about what you really believe controls the fate of organizations.

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In this final video in my series on attribution, I give you my two-cents worth on how to use our knowledge of attribution when problems occur at work.  Attributions are explanations for behavior we observe in others and ourselves.  When behavior hits our radar screen, it’s usually because something unexpected or unacceptable has happened.  Because of attribution errors and biases, managers and employees are often left pointing the finger at each other, which leads to ineffective problem solving and poor relations among managers and employees.

Managers either fail to see or hate to admit that the systems (e.g. training, staffing, supervision) they control might be causing the behavioral problems they observe in employees.  It is much easier to blame employees (the fundamental attribution error) than it is to fix crappy systems. 

Employees are so used to being blamed when problems occur that their knee-jerk reaction is to become defensive and accept as little responsibility as possible for the problem (the self-serving bias). They have learned from experience that managers prefer to blame and flame instead of taking the time and effort to learn the deeper causes of behavior, so the employee’s main motivation is simply to survive.

If you want a more effective environment for solving problems at work, YOU are going to have to model the way.  You have to stop blaming employees and partner with them to search for the systemic causes of behavior.  And you have to be able to accept responsibility and admit when something YOU control might have contributed to the problem.  When you do this, you will teach your employees that you are fair and that it is safe for them to accept responsibility for learning from instead of running from problems. 

It’s your choice.  Get control of your attributions and teach others to do the same and you will be much more effective as a leader.

Related Posts:

Attributions: Explaining Our Own Behavior

Attributions: A Method To Explain The Behavior We Observe In Others

Attributions: The Fundamental Attribution Error And The Self-Serving Bias

Attributions: An Introduction

Attributions: Let’s Talk First About Locus Of Control

In this video, I discuss an attribution process we use to explain our own behavior. This is an abbreviated version of explanatory style that I got from Martin Seligman’s book Learned Optimism, which I recommend highly.

When we look to explain our own behavior, once again we try to determine if it was something internal – e.g. personality, attitude, values – or something external – e.g. process, training, staffing – that caused our behavior.  We also try to determine if that cause is stable (it will always be that way) or unstable (it is subject to change).  

For example, if I have a success, and I explain that success as something about me (my skill), and I think that explanation is stable (I am always going to be skilled), then I will probably feel pretty good about myself.  And if I have a failure, and I explain that failure as something about me (I don’t have what it takes) and stable (I will never have what it takes), then I am likely to feel pretty bad and possibly even depressed. 

Seligman suggests that we can learn to be more optimistic by changing how we explain the things that happen to us.  If you or anyone you know have ever suffered from depression, I would recommend taking a look at Seligman’s book Learned Optimism.

As a final example, let’s say I had a failure, and I reach the conclusion that there were things outside of my control (e.g. processes, policies, procedures) that played a big part in my failure, and those are potentially subject to change.  Now instead of being depressed I can feel optimistic and hopeful.

Does this suggest that we should never accept responsibility for our failures?  NO! 

Recall that if you have an internal locus of control (LOC), you inheriently want to assume responsibility for the things that happen to you and take action to affect your future outcomes.  So people with an internal LOC can see the systemic causes of their behavior, but they assume responsibility for taking action to change those causes so they don’t experience the same failure over and over again.  They don’t dump on their leaders (this sucks and so do you!); instead, they partner with them to fix the crappy system.

In my final article in this series on attribution, I’ll give you my two-cents worth on how to deal with the fundamental attribution error and the self-serving bias, so stay tuned!

Related Posts:

Attributions: A Method to Explain the Behavior We Observe in Others

Attributions: The Fundamental Attribution Error and The Self-Serving Bias

Attributions: An Introduction

Attributions: Let’s Talk First About Locus of Control

Behavior occurs all around us everyday at work and the vast majority of it never catches our attention. But when someone does something unexpected or unacceptable, we automatically begin to develop an explanation for the behavior we observed.  Unfortunately, the search for an explanation is often clouded by our negative affect (we are pissed!), and our knee jerk reaction leads to the fundamental attribution error (FAE).

Systems don’t behave, employees do, and it is much easier to blame employees than it is to search for systemic causes of behavior.  But since YOU now understand the FAE, you know you should take a deep breath, get over your negative affect, and do some more investigating before you reach a conclusion about why your employee did something.

Harold Kelley’s work on attribution theory tells us to look for these three informational ques as we seek to reach an internal or external attribution:

In the video, I go through an example of how each of these three ques are applied to reach both an internal and an external attribution.

If you reach an internal attribution, I would suggest that you approach the employee with the intent to learn more about why they behaved the way they did so that you can help them improve.  Be transparent, tell the employee everything you know and everything you have done up to this point to investigate the situation.  Then, I would ask the employee what I believe is one of the most effective questions you can learn to ask as a manager, “Can you help me understand why you did that?” There could be other things going on that you are not aware of. The point is the behavior has to change and you want to help, but to do so you need to know as much as possible about the situation.

If you reach an external attribution, the advice is similar.  I would still approach the employee, put all your cards on the table, and then ask “Would you be willing to partner with me and others to help improve this process so we can eliminate this problem?” With their help, you can fix that crappy system.

It is much easier to just blame employees when things go wrong, but don’t surrender to expediency.  If you will take the time and effort to go through this process, you will be much more effective as a leader.

Tomorrow I will discuss an attribution process that can help us explain our own behavior, so stay tuned!

Happy Thanksgiving!

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Attributions: The Fundamental Attribution Error and the Self-Serving Bias

Attributions: An Introduction

Attributions: Let’s First Talk About Locus Of Control

In this second video in my series on attribution, I discuss some of the basic concepts of attribution.  An attribution is your explanation for the behavior you observe at work in others and in yourself. 

There are two types of attributions: internal and external.  An internal attribution means that your explanation for the behavior you observed is something internal to the individual that they can control - e.g. their personality, attitude, values.  An external attribution means that your explanation for the behavior you observed is something outside of the individual’s control – e.g. policies, procedures, staffing, training, supervision, equipment, materials, methods.

Attributions are critical because the action you take as a leader is contingent upon your attribution or explanation.  If your attribution is not accurate, then you will take the wrong action and be less effective as a leader.  For example, if the real reason your employee failed to perform was something outside of their control (external attribution) but you blame them for their failure (internal attribution), you have essentially failed your employee as a leader.

Tomorrow I will discuss two powerful attribution biases – the fundamental attribution error and the self-serving bias – so stay tuned!

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Attribution: Let’s Talk First About Locus of Control

I am going to start a series on attribution – how we explain the behavior we observe in ourselves and others – which I think is one of the most critical concepts leaders need to be aware of.  But before I get started on attribution, I need to cover the concept of locus of control again because I will reach a point in my discussion of attribution where I will need to reconcile an apparent conflict between the two concepts.

Locus of control (LOC) is a personality trait, and it’s one of the most important things I look and listen for when I develop new relationships with people.  LOC is the belief an individual holds about who or what controls events and behavior.  Those with an internal LOC believe they are responsible for and in control of their behavior, while those with an external LOC assume less responsibility for their behavior based on the belief that their behavior is strongly influenced by factors outside of their control.

Most people believe they have a strong internal LOC but in fact are probably more external than they realize or want to admit.  As leaders, we don’t want to say that internals are better than externals, but we do need to realize they are different and need to be managed differently.

Tomorrow I will start my series on attribution with an introduction to the concept, so stay tuned!

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