This is a phenomenon we call reputation drag: the inability of people in senior positions, and this includes many parents with their grown-up offspring, to observe positive changes in the competence or behaviour of those below them. It is echoed in the work of Beverley Alimo-Metcalfe, whose studies of 360-degree feedback indicate that bosses’ appraisals are less predictive of future leadership performance than those of peers or direct reports.
Reputation drag has serious implications for coaching and for team performance. If the impact of coaching isn’t visible to the boss, then the intervention becomes undervalued and harder to sell in future coaching assignments. It risks demotivating the client, who may wonder why they should bother investing in personal change. It may also result in a deteriorating relationship between client and boss on the basis that the boss’s disappointment will be communicated and hence, by virtue of the Pygmalion effect, an increasing lack of motivation for the client.
What lies behind this failure of observation? One suggested reason from clients with whom we have shared these findings is that bosses often spend more time managing upwards and horizontally than downwards, so they see less of their direct reports in action.
In addition, once managers have formed a view about a direct report’s strengths and weaknesses, they tend to place more emphasis on data that supports it. This may be magnified if the perceived weaknesses are associated in the manager’s mind with frustration, because negative emotions tend to be easier to recall. How can the coach help?
1. Contract with the boss about identifying changes
If bosses are not looking for change they are likely to miss it, especially if it is incremental. It often happens that the client and their boss use the same words but different meanings. The client may be just as guilty in seeing and hearing only what they want or expect to. Helping them to be realistic is a key part of the process.
Make it work
Ask bosses questions such as:
- What would positive change look like?
- What hard and soft measures would apply? (If you are honest, which would you give greatest credit to?)
- What impact would it have on:
- relationships in the boss’s team?
- relationships in the client’s team?
- your ability to relax and feel confident that key tasks will be carried out well, even without your intervention?
- what others say about the client?
- How will you get a balanced picture?
- How often will you need to discuss this aspect of performance with the client, to understand their efforts?
Fatal flaws
- Failing to clarify what the client and their boss means.
- Being unrealistic.
2. Engage the whole system
How does performance depend on the behaviour of the client’s team, peers and boss? Are they able to support the changes? With the coach’s help, the client may need to contract with each stakeholder to agree when and how they will make positive and negative observations, as changes happen.
This immediacy is important: it is easy to forget to give positive feedback once the moment has passed. If they seize the opportunity, however, the incident is more likely to influence their overall perception of the client’s performance.
By contrast, research into team effectiveness suggests that while telling your boss about your achievements can boost your reputation in the short term, in the medium to long term it is what comes from other teams and managers that moulds the boss’s perception.
Make it work
- To what extent is the performance issue one that depends on the behaviour of the client’s team, peers and boss?
- What can they do to support changes?
Fatal flaws
- Clients may instinctively seek feedback from stakeholders they trust and like the most. Encourage them instead to include people who will give alternative, perhaps tougher, feedback.
3. Encourage deeper openness about goals and achieving them
Managers and executives can struggle with revealing their weaknesses to their own direct reports and peers. Yet the latter can provide a remarkable level of support. One manager, persuaded to go through his performance appraisal with his team, found they offered ways they could compensate for his weaknesses, so he could concentrate on his strengths.
Make it work
- Persuade bosses that their report really does want help as they may be guarded in their feedback.
- Support the client until mutual trust develops.
- Convince managers that openness is a better defence in the medium term, managers may be reluctant to provide ammunition to rivals.
Fatal flaws
- Impatience: it can take time to overcome the impact on direct reports of defensive behaviour by bosses.
4. Encourage feedback
Encouraging peers and subordinates to feed back changes to the client’s boss. Bosses are more likely to change their opinions with evidence from others.
5. Review with the client how they will manage reputations
It can be hard to separate personal and team reputations. Many executives dismiss reputation management as “playing politics”. Yet it is just as important for individuals as it is for companies.
Make it work
- Invite observers from other teams to sit in on the client’s team meetings. This helps to spread the word about what the team is doing and why, along with the obstacles they face.
- Set up a communication plan: who needs to know about activities?
- Build into the team business plan a strategy for supporting key objectives of the client’s peer departments.
- Generate positive stories.
Fatal flaws
- Failing to help the client incorporate reputation management into their authentic leadership style.
As a phenomenon, reputation drag in coaching is largely unexplored and some empirical studies would be useful. In the meantime, by seeking and gaining positive feedback the client can create a virtuous circle incorporating positive strategies for performance improvement.
David Clutterbuck is visiting professor of coaching and mentoring at Oxford Brookes and Sheffield Hallam universities and senior partner at mentoring programme consultancy Clutterbuck Associates (www.clutterbuckassociates.co.uk). Carol Whitaker specialises in leadership development, governance and executive coaching.
References
- B Ertam, “Mentoring programme in DHL”, paper to Turkish Institute of Personnel and Development annual conference, Oct 2007.
- G M McEvoy and R W Beatty, “Assessment centres and subordinate appraisals of managers: a seven-year examination of predictive validity”, Personnel Psychology, 42, 1989.
- JS Livingston, “Pygmalion in management”, Harvard Business Review, 81(1), Jan 2003.
- D G Ancona, “Outward bound: strategies for team survival in the organization”, Academy of Management Journal, 33, 1990; D G Ancona and DF Caldwell, “Beyond task and maintenance: defining external functions in groups”, Group and Organizational Studies, 13, 1988.
Volume 3, Issue 3