The survey indicates that men who measured below average levels of ‘agreeableness’ earned approximately 18 percent more than their friendlier male counterparts, while less agreeable women earned around 5 percent more than their more affable female colleagues.
The study, which looked at data collected over approximately 20 years and is entitled “Do nice guys – and gals – really finish last?”, was carried out by the University of Notre Dame and by the University of Western Ontario.
Derek Irvine, has made the following comments:
“This is certainly a headline grabbing survey: the meaner you are, the more you’re likely to earn. What is particularly worrying about these findings is that they suggest organisations are actively rewarding bad corporate behaviour, or disagreeableness, rather than trying to instil more positive values. Every organisation has a series of values which it expects its staff to align with and it’s highly unlikely that rudeness falls into that category. Why, therefore, are organisations choosing to reward these employees over others?
“The problem here is that in the majority of cases individual managers are being left with the responsibility of rewarding employees and it seems that those who shout the loudest win. What’s needed within organisations today is a strategic employee recognition programme which aligns rewards with corporate values. This would ensure that those employees who are exhibiting the most positive behaviours will be recognised and rewarded.”
This is hardly a surprising finding. Gender differences are very important – there is a lot of research which finds women and men are evaluated differently – angry women are not valued, whilst angry men are. My own research points to other differences between men and women. Women’s experiences of performance appraisal and development was quite poor, for example.
There are many psychological issues at work here – attributions are made differently depending on whether one is a man or woman, so often the difference in treatment is not deliberate or even conscious. However, good diversity training should counter this and understand all of these issues. In addition, isn’t the point of HR departments to monitor these issues and indeed ‘align rewards with corporate values?’. Organisations can do very small things to improve, and this kind of research should be done as a matter of course, or a system where employees can express their views. Organisations for some reason often don’t do this. Organisations would be wise to have on board or engage organisational psychologists who have a deep understanding of human and organisational behaviours, and how to remedy issues to enhance wellbeing, keep employees motivate and productive and enhance organisational functioning.
It’s boring but true – if organisations don’t measure and evaluate what they do, they’ll rely on managerial “gut feel”. If they don’t make consistent efforts to find out the perceptions and issues experienced by the “managed”, they’ll necessarily be dependent on the world view of a few “managers”.
“Gut feel” is often wrong – but you won’t know whether it’s right or wrong unless you have objective data to hand and examine it carefully.
Employers often don’t put together comparative data on staff turnover, performance standards, etc when evaluating managers’ performance.
They rarely get to hear the voice of staff unless the work situation becomes so awful employees are prepared to speak up.
Our work includes developing positive solutions for workplace conflicts. It’s painfully evident how much suffering goes on – unobserved – because SOME managers bully.
This is an interesting article. As is frequently the the case, we are able to read into these short articles whatever we choose. It is not surpirsing that the less agreeable people are paid more and it is quite interesting that it takes a 20 year study to reveal this finding. In terms of behaviour, the less agreeable a person is likely to be, the more likely they are to be surpremacy oriented. Competition sits neatly at the bottom of a Supremacy Oriented mindset. If someone demonstrates a competitive behaviour pattern, then ultimately the root of that behaviour is to win – beat the other people, i.e. have more that the other people around them. This means they are almost always going to seek to be paid more.
However, the deeper issue at hand is that it is unfair to suggest that a more agreeable person is a nicer person. Nice-ness is a subjective opinion. What one person perceives as nice, another perceives as something else. One individual might appear to be nicer to another individual – on the surface. However, we ought to be considering what is going on beneath the surface (the deep level behaviour patterns) of that nice person.
Bullying in the workplace is not acceptable. This form of Toxic Behaviour can be seen in organisations frequently. It always has damaging consequences for an organisation and for the people working in the organisation. Bullying, as a Toxic Behaviour is often quite evident to see: you can see the aggression, hear the shouting, experience the anger. However, there are other styles of Toxic Behaviour that are equally as damaging but are often difficult to identify. These fall under the title of Manipulation. Some ‘nice’ people appear nice – on the surface but actually there is something deeply toxic about their behaviour patterns – beneath the surface. They appear nice so that they can manipulate situations. This is happening more and more in society.
All Toxic Behaviour, whether it seems nice on the surface or not; will always have damaging consequences. Therefore, you need to know what is going on beneath the surface of your employees rather than making judgements and assessments on the surface!
Remember this fact: The titanic sank because of the part of the iceberg that was beneath the surface of the water, not the part of the iceberg above the surface of the water!
Therefore, make sure you identify the deep level behaviour patterns when you next recruit someone into your organisation, they might be thoroughly agreeable BUT thoroughly toxic!
It’s possibly a bit dangerous to jump to the conclusion that “disagreeable = bully” or “disagreeable = more money” – I would be interested to see whether other factors like “high performer” or “delivery orientated” were also correlated against the increased earners. Not least of which “disagreeable” is very much in the eye of the beholder.
Any high performing business or team would likely agree that having strong leadership and driven team members requires a bit of grit, and most measure alignment to values these days too.
I hope that’s not too disagreeable a comment.
Carl, I agree…! “Disagreeable does not equal bully” and I would suggest it is exceptionally dangerous (not just a bit) to jump to this conclusion. Frequently the person demonstrating the “disagreeable” behaviour is quite often right to disagree. The challenge is to disagree in the most effective and careful way and to maintain the relationships where possible. I also agree that performance and productivity would be interesting to assess.
However, the definition of the use of the term “agreeableness” is at the heart of the survey and therefore we are at the mercy of this definition. If the measurement is purely: ‘to promote social harmony or to be pleasant and accommodating in social environments’, then this is a challenge that is a touch too binary to assess!
Agreeableness defined like this promotes a subjective perception. Would “ingratiating” be over the top? Or further still, would a sycophant be seen as top of the list? At what point does this become toxic?
Consider this dilemma: In a team of six, where five agree and one disagrees, but the solo person is right and the five are wrong… Here, the five are – in agreement with each other that the one is wrong – they are in disagreement with the one.
Subjectively, who would be seen as the disagreeable one?
Objectively, who is right to disagree?
Clearly this is just an isolated case, but it demonstrates that there is more to consider in the survey than just agreeableness.