Horns or Halo 😇 Part 1
Coping with angels and devils at work.
🆕 My Career Skills Workshop and Job Search Boot Camp is on December 12, enrollment is open now. I designed this coaching program to enable you to spend some time during the last few weeks of 2023 getting your shit together, so you’re ready to attack your job search in 2024 when budgets are topped up and hiring managers are back in action. 🆕
There are only a few spots remaining for this program, so take a look. If you have any questions at all, just hit reply to this message.
When leaders meet and there’s some unscheduled time on the agenda, the conversation often turns in a predictable direction. You can bet that managers will be talking about the performance of the people on their team. (The exception is when one of the management team has missed the meeting. Try not to do that, because you’ll know for sure that on that day, the casual conversation will be about you!)
On a good day, this talk sounds like coaches huddled on the sidelines, sharing ideas about how the team can work together to improve. On a bad day, it might sound a little more like gossip in a high school locker room.
There’s a particular kind of groupthink that occurs frequently in these conversations, and it’s bothered me for a long time. I am certainly not above it, in fact I’ve been guilty of it myself.
Leaders often seem to see team members in a polarized way — as angels who can do no wrong, or like devils who are evil, incarnate.
Accomplish something notable in the eyes of the bosses, and you might earn a long-lasting halo. Make one memorable mistake, and you might find it haunting you for all time.
Today I’m going to talk about how this kind of biased thinking influences the way managers see the angels walking among us. In another post, I’ll talk about how the devils get their due.
Sheep go to Heaven, Goats go to HR
All of this reminds me of high school, in a very petty way. The golden aura of the popular kids swaddles them safely through almost any misadventure. The nerds and the geeks can’t get noticed even when they do everything right.
It’s forgivable for teenagers, but I expect more of myself. When I find myself falling into this lazy way of thinking, I feel impatient and disappointed.
I think it’s partially rooted in a collection of cognitive biases that are well-known and copiously studied, like the halo effect, confirmation bias, and especially the availability heuristic.
That last term refers to behavior that can be hard to overcome. In a review, for example, a manager might ascribe to someone qualities exemplified by their most recent or memorable action, when a more accurate picture is based on a longer view of their significant and major accomplishments.
(In a previous job, I made the mistake of asking a long-winded question in a meeting on my second day at work. I later learned that meeting was meant to run with the precision of a Swiss watch. My boss’s boss called to express their displeasure, and my own boss reminded me of this error before our future meetings together. Every… single... one of them.)
Nobody’s perfect. Managers don’t want to give feedback that punishes people for learning, and they don’t want to think about people in a way that doesn’t reflect their real contribution. Still, I these patterns will occur again and again.
Cognitive bias is in some sense inescapable. Our brains are wired for it, so the same way that a doctor confirms your reflexes are working, we expect to find cognitive biases occurring in a healthy and functioning brain.
However, emotionally intelligent leaders are always on the lookout for their pernicious effects. Naming and recognizing them are the first steps in mitigating their influence.
I’m on the lookout for ways of thinking that can undermine my effectiveness as a manager. This is essential for leaders who want to leave the workplace better than they found it.
Take These Broken Wings
People who are new to management are sometimes stung by how the perception of favoritism impacts their work as a leader. I struggled mightily with this when I was starting out. It was hard to accept that talented adult professionals could be impacted by what seemed like the grade school idea of “teacher’s pet.”
It might not be the worst thing we’re facing at work, but research shows that many if not most workers believe that favoritism among their managers does occur. In one study, 25% of federal employees felt their own manager practiced favoritism, and 50% suspected that other managers in the organization did1.
Managers with a “horns or halo” mentality are prone to amplifying the challenges of perceived favoritism. When a manager unfairly seems to favor the working style, company, or opinions of a particular colleague, all kinds of problems can emerge.
Intention matters in terms of how leaders are judged, but perception often matters more than reality. Even when my intentions are pure as the driven snow, if my perspective is misaligned with objective reality, my judgement as a manager will be called into question.
The person who is favorited can also get hurt if they find themself resented by others on the team, who feel — rightly or wrongly — that they’ve been singled out for special treatment.
Meanwhile, Back on Earth
Workplace bias has the worst effects for people who are already disadvantaged, marginalized, or discriminated against. Those harms are much greater than the kind of workaday errors that prevents someone from getting the recognition they deserve.
As a manager, I’m trying to remember that my biases can cause my choices to deviate from my intention. For those of us who have signed up for the role as a leader, the fact that it’s unintentional doesn’t make it okay.
There’s a lot of good writing on how leaders can interrupt bias on their team. One way I’ve found to bring my choices in line with my intentions is to slow down when I’m communicating about my teammates, or when I’m making choices that could affect them.
The expectation that you’ll be treated fairly at work is an essential element of psychological safety, which research shows is a prerequisite for high-performing teams.
Everybody deserves to be treated fairly at work, so I’m trying to work harder to see people as they really are. Good intentions help, but they’re not always enough. If you want to get into manager heaven, you’ll want to remember that adage about how they’ve paved the road to hell.
I love the cognitive dissonance here: these data suggest that employees don’t believe their own managers are practicing favoritism, but other managers are. That something that sounds like something the manager’s favorite person would say!