Career Mantra’s Official Blog

In the June09 issue of Har­vard Busi­ness Review, Mr Robert I. Sut­ton writes about How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Econ­omy. His reme­dies for the Boss were pre­dictabil­ity, under­stand­ing, con­trol and com­pas­sion. He gives exam­ples to fur­ther his argu­ment about his reme­dies. While his expla­na­tion fol­lowed his rem­edy — it was pre­dictable – his exam­ple on com­pas­sion had me bris­tled.

First, a lit­tle digres­sion on com­pas­sion. These days we are bandy­ing around com­pas­sion as a skill. As if it were some­thing that one learns at the blacksmith’s or at the carpenter’s. It is our very innate nature, for God’s sake. It has noth­ing to do with man­agers or employ­ees or with roy­alty; it is mine because of being a human being. It is our sev­enth sense. Don’t ever call it a soft skill. Com­pas­sion is not a good thing to have. It is the right thing to have.

Now, for that exam­ple on com­pas­sion. Let me quote Mr Sut­ton:

Quote

Jer­ald Green­berg, a man­age­ment pro­fes­sor at The Ohio State Uni­ver­sity, pro­vides com­pelling evi­dence that com­pas­sion affects the bot­tom line in tough times. Green­berg stud­ied three nearly iden­ti­cal man­u­fac­tur­ing plants in the Mid­west that were all part of the same com­pany; two of them (which man­age­ment chose at ran­dom) insti­tuted a tem­po­rary 10-week pay cut of 15% after the firm had lost a major con­tract. At one of the two, the exec­u­tive who con­veyed the news did so curtly, announc­ing, “I’ll answer one or two ques­tions, but then I have to catch a plane for another meet­ing.” At the other one, the exec­u­tive who broke the news gave a detailed and com­pas­sion­ate expla­na­tion, along with apolo­gies and mul­ti­ple expres­sions of remorse. He also spent a full hour answer­ing ques­tions about why the cost cut­ting was nec­es­sary, who would be affected, and what steps work­ers could take to help them­selves and the plant. Green­berg found fas­ci­nat­ing effects on employee theft rates. At the plant where the curt expla­na­tion was given, the rate rose to more than 9%. But at the plant where management’s expla­na­tion was detailed and com­pas­sion­ate, it rose only to 6%. (At the third plant, where no pay cuts were made, the rate held steady at about 4% dur­ing the 10-week period.)

Unquote

It is unfor­tu­nate that he gives thiev­ing of employ­ees as an exam­ple to but­tress his idea about com­pas­sion for employ­ees. It would appear that researchers such as Mr Green­berg — as quoted by Mr Sut­ton - think that employ­ees by nature are prone to thiev­ing. Why else would one do such a gra­tu­itous research?
I would imag­ine that Mr Greenberg’s research hypoth­e­sis read:
This research estab­lishes a cor­re­la­tion between increase of theft by employ­ees and the abrupt­ness of lan­guage used by CEOs con­vey­ing salary reduc­tion news.
And from this research Mr Sut­ton got com­pelling evi­dence that com­pas­sion begets less thiev­ing!
I think this is absolutely unfair to employ­ees.