The Resilient Manager

Navigating the Challenges of Working Life

A. Furnham

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN:
  9781137361066
• eBook ISBN:
  9781137361073
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Strategy
• Index: Business

Resilient people are happier, healthier, and more productive. Psychologist and business writer Adrian Furnham takes a sideways and entertaining look at the challenges of being a leader, demonstrating how resilience can be honed, developed, and used as a personal life raft to keep afloat in the face of adversity.

PART I

Building a Team

People can be both the greatest source of strength and support but also the greatest source of stress at work. It all sounds rather easy: all you need to do is attract, select, engage and motivate a group into a high-performing team that is superior to your competitors! It starts with selecting the right people. Easier said than done – the divorce statistics speak volumes on that score. People are complex. They are on their best behaviour at the interview.

The resilient manager needs to select people like him/ herself: able to ride the waves, stay focused and upbeat, and reframe setbacks as opportunities to learn. Spend time on recruitment and selection – it is worth it.

A. A GOOD LUNCH

Theatre directors faced with putting on a great classic often go a trifle ‘off-piste’ in an attempt to bring something new to the play. So they set Macbeth in a Disneyland theme park or try Anthony and Cleopatra in the nude.

Management consultants, too, often feel the urge to add a bit of novelty and excitement to the recruitment and selection business. Every so often they think of daft activities to provide ‘new and rich insight’ into candidates’ ‘real abilities, personality and motives’. This goes well beyond asking some rather bizarre questions and may involve a rather odd task, perhaps with others, in a quasi-assessment-centre situation.

Selection is an area full of superstition, bogus claims and sheer piffle. We all know that choosing people is difficult. We all know that the heart can rule the head. We know that people are complex and capricious . . . and that they are hardly at their most natural and sincere during a selection interview.

In the old days, however, when one ‘good chap’ could spot another, all you required was a good lunch to assess what is now called variously ‘corporate culture fit’, ‘high potential’, or ‘executive talent’. What you wanted to know was: do you trust this fella, are you on the same page with regard to ethics and values and is he (always a he) one of your people?

It was not, as has been supposed, a close-up inspection of the candidates’ cufflinks and tie to see whether he had been to a ‘college on the right side of “The High”’ or was a member of a ‘good club’. Nor was it about knowledge of the wine list or pushing peas onto the fork. That most elemental of social activities, sharing hot food together, offers opportunities to assess potentially important skills.

Social skills, emotional intelligence and charm . . . can the candidate do small talk? Never ignore or downplay the ability to do chit-chat, to pick up on cues and keep a conversation going, to understand the importance of turn-taking, to express an interest in others and be interesting, to be aware of their own and others’ emotions and motives.

One organization includes a test based on chit-chat in its selection process. In pairs, people are asked to pick a card on which there is a question. The questions are pretty simple: What characteristics did you inherit from your father? Have you ever been seriously ill? What is your greatest life achievement? Each person has a very different question. The task is threefold: (1) to get the answer to your question while (2) disguising so that the other person has no idea what it is and (3) listening to find out what their question is. It is a game of listening for hidden agendas during bland, everyday conversations. It is a very important life and business skill.

Next, a one- to two-hour lunch offers people the opportunity to visit many issues that may seem inappropriate in a traditional, stilted office atmosphere. For example, a chat about previous jobs, bosses they admired, policies they thought innovative, what factors had the most influence over their career and, indeed, their out-of-work activities. Also, people drop their guard in such events, unable to keep up various pretences for all that time.

It may also show their understanding of etiquette and politeness. Most would (usually) refuse alcohol, but what if the host said: ‘I fancy a glass of wine, will you join me?’ The skilled executive knows the power of mirroring when it comes to negotiation and general ‘friend raising’.

Dealing with staff . . . it is possible over the course of lunch that the candidate might interact with a range of serving staff. Does the candidate treat them like ‘plebs’ or is the candidate intimidated by them? Is the candidate annoyed by over- or under- attentiveness? What does the candidate think of how the restaurant is run? How does the candidate react to tipping?

Peculiarities will out at luncheon. It is difficult to believe that food fetishes are not related to social difficulties after watching an episode of the Channel 4 television series Come Dine with Me. Strong dislikes, intolerances and restrictions may reveal rigidities of one sort or another.

It is quite possible to bring up issues of health over a meal, as well as other habits. This is important stuff, especially if the job involves a lot of travel to foreign countries, entertainment and selling.

Is the cost of time and money worth it? And what about the retributive, litigious interviewee who, having been rejected, is convinced it was pure prejudice against teetotal vegans who insist on bringing their own cutlery to meals?

And do not forget that an interview, be it over lunch or not, gives the candidates a much better understanding of the interviewers who may turn out to be their boss. Both parties may disclose more, which must help good decision-making. Unfortunately, however, interviewers themselves often appear too guarded and socially insecure to carry off luncheon interviews successfully.

So does the old-fashioned lunch allow a recruiter to get a much better idea of the social and negotiation skills of a (reasonably) senior manager? Of course it does. A good investment? For a major job, certainly.

B. INTERVIEW LIES

How much deception in selection is there? How many porky pies are told by whom? There are certainly enough nouns to choose from when thinking about the act of deceit in the job interview (or elsewhere). There are the ‘grown-up’ words for the articulate and literate nit-picker, such as ‘casuistry’, ‘perfidy’ or ‘sophistry’ . . . or perhaps the detached, academic kind of words, such as ‘dissimulation’, ‘falsehood’ and ‘understatement’ . . . or you may prefer something a little richer, such as ‘whopper’, ‘humbug’ or ‘scam’.

We all recall memorable phrases people used when caught out – like Churchill’s ‘terminological inexactitude’ or Sir Robert Armstrong being ‘economical with the truth’.

Most lies in interviews are high-stake lies. The nature and function of the lie, of course, depends on the type and purpose of the interview. The interview with the policeman is different from that of the journalist. Being interviewed by a potential employer or a tax authority can tempt people to ‘adjust the truth’ for many reasons.

High stakes means taking a serious calculation about potential important gains and losses. In some interviews it’s a game. Politicians are masters of the art. They believe they have to be.

We know quite a lot about the characteristics of successful liars. Certainly, the best are natural performers with acting ability. They can convey just the right and timely emotional expression. And they do not have ‘stage-fright’ at being confronted with ‘issues’ in interviews. Often they are good-looking because attractive people are judged (unfairly, certainly) to be more honest. Naturally, they are highly confident and fluent. Many, being competitive, really enjoy the thrill of the interview and being able to ‘dupe’ the less successful interviewer. They intuitively know how to appear trustworthy.

Max Eggert, an expert on selection, has argued that there are many different types of lies. They make a good checklist for the potential interviewer.

1. White lies. These are found in the ‘puff’ statement that gormless people are encouraged to write on their CV: ‘I am a totally committed team player.’ ‘I have excellent social skills and the ability to read people.’ ‘I am utterly trustworthy and loyal.’ The question, of course, is: ‘Who says and where is the evidence?’ The best solution is to ignore all this flim-flam and say: ‘I will be the judge of that, thank you.’

2. Altruistic lies. These are lies that attempt a cover-up, but look as if they are helping others. So rather than saying they left their last job because their manager was a bully, or the company was patently dodgy, the candidate says that they resigned to look for new challenges.

3. Lies of omission. For many people, these are the most frequent and easiest of lies. They might omit details of school or university grades because they had poor marks. Whole periods of their life are obfuscated. The most common lie concerns dates, often to disguise the fact that the candidate seemed to spend a surprisingly short amount of time in a succession of jobs. It is no more and no less than concealment.

4. Defensive lies. The defensive lie is one that conceals through generalizations or vagaries. Ask a person about their previous boss’s management style, their reason for leaving or their health record, and you are often faced with a string of vague expressions, such as ‘like others in the company’ or ‘much the same as my co-workers’ or ‘at that time’. Ask vague questions and you’ll get defensive lies.

5. Impersonation lies. This is also called ‘the transfer lie’ and occurs mostly where people take credit for others’ work. For example, statements such as ‘I doubled sales over the year’ or ‘I was responsible for a budget of over three million.’ All others in the hierarchy are forgotten in these lies. And it is often difficult to establish the facts as to who exactly was responsible for particular successes (and disasters, which are – of course – omitted).

6. Embedded lies. This is a clever subterfuge to confuse the interviewer. So, ‘I really enjoyed my time in Oxford’ could refer to a first job in the ‘city of dreaming spires’ where s/he was a mere underling. The idea is to suggest than an experience, qualification or achievement was very different from the actuality. ‘It was good fun being with the BBC’ could mean practically anything from ‘I once went to a show there’ to ‘they filmed at my school.’

7. Errors of commission or fact. This is rather childish lying. These are explicit, verifiably false claims. For example, about qualifications you don’t have, about starting up or working for companies that never existed, about skills that don’t exist. They are the most blatant form of lie.

8. Definition lies. This is the sport of lawyers and of presidents. What precisely does it mean ‘to have sex’ with someone? What is ‘a company turnaround’? What does it mean to be ‘in the latest group’? This approach involves working with a very specific and obscure definition so that for all intents and purposes you are telling the truth.

9. Proxy lies. This is where the candidates get others to lie for them. Referees are usually previous employers but they could be former teachers. Candidates may skilfully work on their referees’ poor memory, vanity or other bribes to persuade them to obfuscate.

So give up ‘bullshit bingo’. Have your ‘porkies card’ available at your next interview. Try to work out the particular ‘impression management’ preferences of every candidate in this cat-and-mouse game called ‘the interview’.

C. JOB HISTORY

You are interviewing someone for a senior position. Three candidates are on the shortlist. They are all intelligent, experienced, qualified and personable. They have been through a reasonably rigorous process: due diligence, multiple interviews, evidence-based competency analysis. It has cost a ‘pretty penny’, but you believe it is worth it to get the right person. The cost of a failure is too high for all concerned.

However, they have rather different work histories. Candidate A has really only had two jobs in his 20-year working life, 18 of those latter years in the same job. By contrast, candidate B has worked for eight different organizations over that period, staying two to three years in each. Candidate C is the intermediate: working in four organizations for roughly five years each.

On further inspection you notice that not only were the organizations different for B and C but so were the job functions. So you have evidence of ‘chopping and changing’ in candidate B vs ‘steady as you go’ in candidate C. Does this mean that C has happily left the comfort of his or her silo and has an all-round perspective of how big, complex organizations work?

What do you conclude: is this multiple job-holding an index of risk taking vs risk aversion? Or is it a turn-your-hand-to-anything generalist vs a narrow specialist? Does frequent job change measure ambition? Or does it reveal the inability to stick at anything? The question, of course, is why did they change and, more importantly, whose decision was it?

Some job candidates will tell you it’s important to stick at a job in an organization for at least two years, otherwise it looks bad on the CV; Some say three years; others, five. But why? Does it indicate that they didn’t like it or didn’t fit in? Or that they couldn’t really make a difference in that period? Or worse, that they were ‘found out’?

What if you stay in the same job, the same department and the same organization for 10 years? Is it better, or more unusual, to be promoted from within or is it an organizational policy to get senior people from outside? Maybe this all depends on the job and the sector, and, indeed, the state of the economy. In some sectors the only way you climb the greasy pole is by jumping ship regularly. And in flat organizations you are expected to stay for longer periods in the same job as there are fewer rungs on the ladder.

The answer to many of these questions lies in why people stay or leave. To be eminently employable means you have to get a job and then retain it. Many know the power and safety net of the probationary period, which gives both parties a second chance.

The question is: Does getting a job involve different skills and attributes than retaining one? How do you get a job in the first place? Easy: ability, education, experience. You are lured for your skills and also for your outlook. But how do you beat others at the job interview? How do you get to be the chosen one...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction
• Part I Building a Team
• Part II Getting the Best Out of People
• Part III The Daily Grind
• Part IV It’s All in the Delivery – Management Behaviour
• Part V Learning on the Job
• Part VI Life Beyond