Management gemsFind here some gems from our monitoring of the best publications on leadership and management

If you presented your team with a flawed project, would they have the courage to suggest ways of improving it? That was the experiment undertaken by the managers of a financial institution, as part of a study conducted by Imperial College Business School. The results indicate that certain managerial behaviors have a decisive impact on encouraging constructive criticism, and notably the following:

– Asking precise questions. When questions were too broad (“What do you think of that?”), few team members dared to challenge the idea being put forward. More targeted questions, highlighting the possibility of improving the idea (“What do you think might go wrong?”), were far more effective.

– Acknowledging concerns as valid and legitimate. The way in which the manager receives the first critical contribution is decisive. Contrary to what one might think, thanking the person is insufficient. Responses that explicitly validate the objection, such as ”That’s a legitimate concern”, encourage a higher level of constructive feedback.

– Making team members co-responsible. Directly engaging team members’ responsibility—for instance, through a vote—encourages them to share their concerns.

Source: Five Ways Leaders Can Get People to Speak Up, Celia Moore, Kate Combs, MIT Sloan Management Review, November 2024.

Among the challenges facing executives—the generalization of AI, the war for talent, climate change—, what place should be reserved for geopolitics? According to Nikolaus S. Lang, Global Leader of the BCG Henderson Institute, this is an issue that remains largely underestimated by companies. In an informative TED Talk, he exhorts executives to prepare for the advent of a multipolar world, with, among others, the following recommendations:

– Reinforcing the resilience of your supply chain. Global supply chains have become vulnerable in the face of the increased risk of tariff barriers, economic sanctions or war. It is best to work on the flexibility of this chain, by reducing your dependence on a particular site and identifying the potential alternatives.

– Reinforcing your “geopolitical intelligence”. To face up to geopolitical reversals, companies must enhance their internal aptitude, by getting their teams used to working according to different scenarios, and by recruiting talents capable of anticipating these challenges and adapting to them.

Source: 5 ways leaders can adapt to shifting geopolitics, Nikolaus S. Lang, TED@BCG, September 2024.

Paradoxically, people promoted to the highest ranks are far from systematically being those most suited to leadership. Tomas Chamorro-Premuzic, Professor of Business Psychology at University College London, deciphers this phenomenon in a McKinsey podcast.

One of the main causes of this paradox is the confusion between competence and self-confidence. Expressing one’s opinions with confidence, charisma and strength of conviction conveys the impression of possessing strong leadership potential. This overlooks the importance of empathy, of integrity, and of the ability to motivate one’s teams to engage in a collective effort. In this way, an insidious discrimination is established in favor of people displaying excessive self-confidence, or even narcissism.

In order to counter this bias, the priority is to review promotion processes so as to place greater emphasis on emotional and interpersonal skills. Which, observes Chamorro-Premuzic, has a far greater effect on increasing diversity than the implementation of quotas. Furthermore, orienting leadership development programs toward the reinforcement of these qualities within all potential leaders will allow not only the improvement of leadership quality, but also the development of a corporate culture that is at once more inclusive and more effective.

Source: Why so many bad bosses still rise to the top, McKinsey Talks Talent podcast, May 2024.

We often hear this nostalgic chorus: “We can’t trust one another like we used to; people are more and more individualistic; incivility and violence are on the rise…” According to this ditty, our society is facing a form of moral decline.

Psychologists Adam Mastroianni and Daniel Gilbert reviewed hundreds of studies to analyze this worrying phenomenon. They discovered that the myth of “moral decline” has in fact been around since antiquity. In parallel, the study of actual behaviors shows, at worst, stability, and most often a progression of positive behaviors. We are less frequently at war, rules and laws provide a better framework for relationships and reinforce trust, we continue to help one another…

Why do our perceptions differ so significantly from reality? Two cognitive biases are involved: the negativity bias and the memory bias. Our brains give greater importance to negative information, which originally constituted a protective reflex. On the other hand, our negative memories fade more quickly than our positive ones, which allows us to distance ourselves from negative experiences, but can also lead to our idealizing the past.

As a result, we cannot help thinking, often erroneously, that things were better before. But knowing why we have this biased perception can help us put it into perspective.

Source: Déclin moral : pourquoi pense-t-on toujours que « c’était mieux avant » ? [Moral decline: why do we always think “things were better before”?], Adam Mastroianni, Polytechnique Insights, November 2023.

There is no dearth of inconveniences over the course of our professional lives. What we do not always realize is that a huge proportion of these arise from our propensity to add rather than subtract. By way of illustration, when a university president solicited ideas for improvement from students, professors and administrative staff, only 11% of the proposals involved removing an element or discontinuing an activity. A striking figure, but a fairly universal one.

How can we fight this reflex? Urging everyone to show self-discipline proves exhausting and largely ineffective. The authors of this article instead recommend organizing sessions to suppress any unnecessary irritants. One criterion: telling yourself “good riddance”! This was the approach taken by the chief quality officer of Hawaii Pacific Health, a healthcare network. She asked the entire medical staff to point out what was ”ill-conceived, unnecessary or simply stupid”. As a result, 188 cuts were recommended and 87 implemented, providing clear gains in time and motivation for all concerned.

To your dustbins! …

Source: Rid Your Organization of Obstacles That Infuriate Everyone, Robert I. Sutton, Huggy Rao, Harvard Business Review, January-February 2024.