Can social engagement reduce the risk of losing face and boost performance?
Have you ever been reluctant to seek assistance from someone inside your organisation, perhaps afraid of losing face because you need help?
Extent of communication with colleagues
High performers communicate with their colleagues
In a series of experiments, MIT Professor Tom Allen1 found that people are more likely to look outside their own organisation for ideas, while at the same time these ideas sourced from outside are less useful than those sourced from inside the organisation. The paradox is described succinctly by Allen, “Those information sources that reward the user by contributing more to his performance are used less than those that do not”.
I was reminded of this paradox during recent conversations at the L&D connect unconference and during a meeting with an R&D team at a multinational electronics company. The scenarios described in these conversations were similar; individuals reaching out to their network, reading the literature, attending conferences to seek information and ideas, while in the organisation there existed a rich, untapped resource of people and ideas.
It is essential to take new knowledge and information into an organisation. However, most of the time, most of us should also look to our colleagues if we want to achieve superior results.
Risk adverse behaviour and the cost of loosing face
The paradox can be explained when the decision process of the information seeker is examined in more detail. Gerstberger and Allen2 examined the cost, as well as the benefits, to be expected from an information source. Asking a colleague was perceived as high cost, as it was an admission that you needed help, didn’t understand something you may have been expected to know and the risk of losing face was perceived to be high. In contrast seeking information from outside was perceived as low cost. Interestingly they found that the decision makers were risk adverse, focusing only on the cost of the information source. In fact the higher benefit of sourcing information from a colleague had no impact on the decision. This risk aversion is a common finding in the psychology of decision making and helps explain the apparent paradox described by Allen.
Social engagement – Lowering the perceived cost of consulting colleagues
In another study Allen et al3 looked at the role of informal relationships on communications networks in companies. He concluded, “Simply stated, people are more willing to ask questions of others whom they know, than of strangers”. His advice to management is to increase the number of acquaintanceships within the organisation. He recommends an active program of transfers of personnel between different parts of the organisation and also support for cross functional projects where acquaintances can form.
There is a lot of discussion at the moment in learning and development circles about social learning and it means different things to different people. John Curran wrote a good summary of this in his recent blog post ‘What is social learning?’ . Some see it as learning through social media content (i.e. youtube etc) and others that it’s about learning from each other on social networks.
I suggest that company social networks can contribute to social learning by building acquaintances and lowering the perceived cost of consulting colleagues on important work related tasks, leading to better outcomes and higher performance.
You could counter that real relationships, and high bandwith exchange of information, require face to face communication. I have personal experience of work relationships beginning on-line and then moving offline for high quality exchange of ideas and building deeper relationships. My point is that the online relationships allows people to gain enough trust in one another to make it more likely that they will progress to an off line relationships and to helping one another out with ideas and information that benefit the organisation. This tweet from @MervynDinnen highlights the point “Friendships are made eyeball to eyeball not on social media says @ProfCaryCooper – ignoring that many take online relationships offline”
The research that I have cited is quite old, however I believe still valid. I have heard Tom Allen speak several times in recent years and he has continued his research in this area right up to this day. I’ll be attending ‘ConnectingHR Unconference – The Power of a Socially Engaged Organisation‘ on the 16th of May 2012, and I hope to learn more on this topic there. It would be interesting to hear your experience. Can social engagement reduce the risk of losing face and boost performance?
References:
1 T.J. Allen “Communication networks in R&D laboratories”, R&D Management, 1971, vol 1, 14-21
2 Gerstberger, P. G. Allen, T. J. (1968) ‘Criteria used in the selection of information channels by R&D engineers’. Journal of
Applied Psychology, V01. 52.
3 Allen, T.J., Gerstenfeld, A., Gerstberger, P. G (1968) “The Problem of Internal Consulting in the R&D Laboratory”, Cambridge, Mass.: M.I.T. Sloan School of Management, Working Paper No. 319-68.
John Costello
Gerard Cunningham
Kevin Sorohan
Hi John, I agree that high performers communicate with their colleagues. In fact I would take it one step further and state that high performers communicate for the benefit and development of their colleagues. I love the phrase “You are what you share not what you know” (not sure who it was from sorry), I love this because it recognises that in a connected world knowledge hoarding is no longer how individuals and organisations develop and progress. We are seeing much more open collaboration and a greater emphasis on sharing information and connecting people with ideas and new information. What I have seen is if you provide the tools (with guidance /support / patience) then the people who are open to sharing will share, they will discuss, they will try new things and encourage others to do the same, they might at first share things from outside the organisation but then over time they will share “what they are working” on – hey that sounds like a status update doesn’t it. Well if an organisation has the mindset to share what it is working on and sees sharing and communication at enablers to better business then this will open the door to a whole host of high performers, performers who before had no visibility, no way to express themselves, no stimulus or new information, no way to share ideas outside of their own team. Networks remove silos and barriers and allow people to connect and share and drive more value whether it’s online or face to face, for the individual its can mean opportunities, recognition for sharing ideas, reputation is enhanced with peers and for the organisation (depending on the type of organisation) they could drive culture change and challenge the traditional approaches to performance management, talent and personal development. I too am looking to forward to the Connect HR unconference…. I hope we can chat some more about this
Delighted to get your input Mike.
I’m interested that in your experience the open communications, networked mode, which is dominant outside the work place, is also taking root inside organisations. There is no doubt that it’s the way things are going, but it’s always good to hear evidence.
You raise an important point about high performers. Many companies try to select high performers and give them greater development resources, mentoring etc. This was described by someone in a conversation I had this week as like ‘ trying to select the grand national winner a few years from now on the basis of this seasons novice hurdle’, he went on to say that you’d get good odds from the bookies too! In a more connected organisation can more people reach their potential and more high performers emerge? As you point out culture change and a move away from traditional performance management and personal development are likely long term consequences of a more networked organisation.
Many thanks for the thoughtful comments. We’ll continue the conversation at the ConnectingHR unconference.
Just re-reading John thinking about a post I’m working on and reflecting on how organisations select or even identify high performers. Sometimes high performers are high performers because they are visible in terms of high visibility / profile projects or because they are quite confident / vocal and ‘always’ working late and telling everyone how hard they are working. It’s also in some cases quite a subjective process depending on the relationship between line manager and employee. High performers should be judged on more ways and if the connected workplace allow the ‘unsung’ heroes to flourish and add more value through their interactions with others and to role model the right behaviours ADD add value that they can evidence easily – performance management, talent, reward and recognition approaches start to look a little bit different in this open, transparent & connected world. What does the 21st century org approach to all these things look like when knowledge is no longer power?
Thanks for the comment Mike. Made me think a bit. I went back to some of the research that this post was based on and found two interesting things. One is that Allen found that the informal network was operating very effectively in the organisations studied, “In fact, if one were to sit down and attempt to design an optimal system for bring in new technical information and disseminating it within the organisation, it would be difficult to design a better one than that which exists.” The second thing is that these informal networks developed without management interference, “In fact, there was scarcely a suspicion on the part of management that the network operated in this way.”
Allen identified individuals in the network who played a key role and observed that their position in the formal hierarchy was typically modest. In fact I wonder if these individuals are promoted for their performance in facilitating the network will they find that their ability to continue in that role is impacted?
I know that most competency frameworks have a collaboration aspect to them, perhaps the behaviors should encompass sharing and connecting on the enterprise social network, where it exists. The next question is what are the best roles for individuals who excel in these behaviors?