The High Cost of Supervisory Inaction

1. The High Cost of Supervisory Inaction C. W. Von Bergen Southeastern Oklahoma State University Durant, OK

2. A Common Assumption … “doing nothing will have no effect on performance” —Hellriegel& Slocum (2007, p. 103)

3. What Do These Individuals Have In Common? • Pope John Paul II • Coach Joe Paterno • Major Nidal Hassan

4. Doing Nothing Does Something • Demotivates good performers • Decreasesthe probability of future desiredbehavior • Encourages poor workers • Opens the door for increased levels of undesired performance

5. Management Nonresponse to Desirable Employee Performance • Nonreinforced subordinate good performance leads to negative subordinate affective and behavioral responses • Dissatisfaction • Performance decrement • Extinction may unintentionally occur • “Just ignore it, and it’ll go away” • Analogy: houseplants that do not get watered wither away

6. Supervisory Inaction to Desirable Employee Performance: Why??? • Subordinates will see them as weak if they use too much R+ • Complimenting someone who may have to be fired or demoted in the future could backfire • People don’t need R+ for “doing the job they are paid to do” • The supervisor does not read people well enough to understand what is reinforcing to each specific individual

7. Great Leaders and Organizations • Provide occasions to acknowledge, recognize, and reward meaningful accomplishments, thus creating a culture where progress and appreciation prevail. • Great organizations create greater success by praising and celebrating good performance, that is, by positive reinforcement.

8. Management Nonresponse to Undesirable Employee Performance • Qui tacetconsentirevidetur. • Wrongdoing is often self-rewarding to a worker and involves an activity the person already finds satisfying so the behavior often continues • Creates disillusionment from the very people the business relies most upon—those who consistently produce good results. • Ignoring undesirable behavior generally tends to maintain or increase ineffective and inefficient actions; leads to more serious actions

9. Supervisory Inaction to UndesirableEmployee Performance: Why??? • don’t want to rock the boat, fearing that poor performers will retaliate with even worse performance • they dislike confrontation and possibly they are unassertive • fear hurting employee feelings or potential workplace violence • have internalized the dictums of “don’t be judgmental” and “don’t say anything at all if you can’t say something nice”

10. Functional Effects of Negative Feedback • Employees generally feel better about their supervisor, coworkers, and opportunities for advancement when their leaders hold employees accountable for poor performance. • Bad apples spoil the barrel (Felps, Mitchell, &Byington, 2006)

11. In Conclusion … • Managers seldom recognize the impact of their own failure to act on their subordinates • Many performance issues are created not only by what supervisors do but also by what they don’t do And • DOING NOTHING DOES SOMETHING

12. THERE IS A HIGH COST OFSUPERVISORY INACTION

13. … or am I making Much Ado About NOTHING?