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Some high-performing employees suffer for their success
Aug 20th 2016
WHO wouldn t want to be a star employee? The salary is nice, as is the chance
to climb to the top and tell others what to do. The downside is that your
co-workers may hate you. The notion that jealous managers bully high-performing
underlings, whom they see as a threat to the social order, has been well
researched. But management theorists now say it is not only small-minded bosses
that star workers need to overcome; it is also their colleagues.
A study by Theresa Glomb of the University of Minnesota and Eugene Kim of the
Georgia Institute of Technology suggests that workers have a tendency towards
what Leon Festinger, a social psychologist, defined as upward social
comparisons . They overestimate their ability and judge their standing in the
office against those with more talent. Falling short leaves average Joes
envious and spiteful. Tall poppies, says Ms Glomb, are chopped down in a
variety of ways, including ostracism at social events and humiliation before
the boss.
All this rarely happens in industries such as the technology business, where
outperformance is, by and large, admired by all. It is typically found in
stagnant environments, says Sue Filmer of Mercer, a human resources (HR)
consultancy: the more dynamic the business, the less the scope for peers to sit
and stew. An HR manager at a property firm, employing around 400 staff, says
that when he implemented a talent-management programme, those excluded
immediately came to tell him why the chosen ones were undeserving. In small
organisations, too, there can be little chance of a sideways move to escape the
rut. Ivor Adair, an employment lawyer at Slater + Gordon, a law practice, says
such cases are widespread. In one recent instance he dealt with, a jealous
worker at a professional-services firm was cited for leaning over a desk and
screaming, hairdryer-style, into a talented colleague s face.
High performers have their lives made difficult in other ways, too. A study by
Gr inne Fitzsimons of Duke University showed that the most talented employees
tend to have extra work dumped on them not only the high-powered tasks they
might relish, but also mundane chores, such as organising meetings.
In some cases, the stars have themselves to blame. It can be in the nature of
successful people to display a level of ambition and self-absorption that can
get up colleagues noses. And because high-flyers tend to have better cognitive
skills, they could simply be more adept at spotting slights that stupider
employees would overlook. If you find e-mails terse or colleagues offhand, in
other words, it means you re a high performer.