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Co-workers: Lovable fools or Competent Jerks?
June 03, 2005
"How do we deal with all the losers we have to work with?" That was a topic for the panel discussion at the recent NoFluffJustStuff conference in Reston. Everyone had a fun time venting and I didn't think about it again until now.
What reminded me? The June 2005 issue of HBR has a great article titled "Competent Jerks, Lovable Fools, and the Formation of Social Networks" that tries to answer this question in management terms. The authors conducted a study where people were asked to rate their co-workers along the criteria: competence and likeability. These were then used to create 4 archetypes:
- Incompetent Jerk
- Competent Jerk
- Lovable Fool
- Lovable Star
The findings? First, the authors concluded that "no matter what kind of organization [they] studied, everybody wanted to work with the lovable star, and nobody wanted to work with the incompetent jerk." Okay, we all knew that. Now, the much more interesting part:
We found that if someone is strongly disliked, it’s almost irrelevant whether or not she is competent; people won’t want to work with her anyway. By contrast, if someone is liked, his colleagues will seek out every little bit of competence he has to offer.
So, according to research likeability trumps ability. Ah! I call this the nice guy theory. If you just show up, put in some effort and go along to get along, most people will label you a "nice guy" and will seek out every little bit of competence in you—even if it's completely lacking. The bigger the team, the more pronounced the effect. Ever worked on a huge project with like 50+ people? There's always someone who does absolutely no work but still doesn't get fired. That's the "nice guy"!
And now, a disclaimer: by now you may think I'm some sort of prima donna for blogging this. Well I'm not! In fact, I'm lucky to have worked in 3 different office environments over the last 2 years where I was fortunate enough to work with cohesive teams with good people throughout. But if I think back farther, I can come up with a few good examples. If you've been around or worked in consulting (changing projects means lots of different faces), then you have your own stories I'm sure.
Back to the panel disscussion at the NoFluff conference. At one point, Dave Thomas mused that we should separate the people who care from the people who don't care. Which means we should also consider the criteria of motivation or apathy. Personally, I think apathy is a pretty common problem in software development circles. When I've seen the symptoms in people, the usual causes are:
- only in it for the money (never really cared to begin with)
- burned out, usually after a couple of death march projects
- corporate re-organizations moved the person into an ill-suited position
- personal problems spilling into work life
I used to care about this issue a lot more on a personal level but after a while I realized that it wasn't an entirely fixable problem, so I shouldn't worry that much about it. Some people are of the opinion "just quit and find another job". But I say that's a pretty extreme solution. After all, your workplace is just a small representation of the real world.
I'm probably going to regret saying this, but I've gotten used to working with different types of people and I don't really get bothered by the 3 negative archetypes anymore—"competent jerk" (work with them, but minimize contact), "lovable fool" (build your workplan to not rely on the person) and probably not even the "incompetent jerk" (try to avoid the person and never take anything they say personally).
Infact, in a way I'm glad for them because they make the "lovable star" stand out even more. Now, I just can't figure out why everyone isn't a lovable star. All you have to do is: show deference to those you report to, go out of your way to acknowledge and help those around you, and become really really good at what you do. What's so hard about that? ;-)
Update: Read one of the panelists blog post about this topic: Honeypot Projects
June 3, 2005 at 10:30 AM in Opinions | Permalink
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