“Hunters for credit” meet “Bosses that love fan clubs” – A convenient nexus that hurts!

Let me recount an interesting story my friend shared last Sunday. He leads a team of analysts and managers, who team on short term client engagements and multiple initiatives across the whole group. My friend shared an observation which seems to be worrying him. Some of his managers seem to be having tough time engaging analysts to work with them on volunteer initiatives, while some others always have more volunteers engaged in the task, then actual requirement (adding more to confusion than effectiveness). In his assessment, those managers that failed to engage were not particularly that bad in human relations, teaming or emotional intelligence, nor the other category of managers spectacularly better in those aspects. But the outcome was clearly underperformance on volunteer initiatives that were essential for group’s sustained prominence.


So what explains this phenomenon? Title provides the hint. Yes?

Here are few questions I asked my friend?

1 Do you ensure that in all team initiatives, whole team is invited as a norm, and that the decision to choose who attends and who doesn’t is not left to Managers? (Assured Airtime with the leaders)

2 Do you ensure that in collective work, the individual level contributions are clearly called for and accounted for? (Social loafing)

3 Do you seek Manager’s reasons for team composition and size that seems to be disproportionate (and skill-wise inappropriate) to task at hand, as per your estimate? (Building fan clubs)

4 Do you ensure that you praise progress, BUT reward only outcomes and impact?

5 Do you ensure that all your managers know the difference between GOOD (fit for purpose), EXCELLENT (better, faster) or EXCEPTIONAL (radical and beyond)? , and use same barometer (consistent language) to evaluate performance? (Demonstrate by example)

He has agreed to consciously try to apply above measures and demonstrate appropriate behaviours to see if situation improves. My hunch is it should work.

What do you say?