I recently had a rather painful meeting with a group of friends that I all admire. I need to keep things vague to protect both the guilty and the innocent. But I was amazed — perhaps flabbergasted is a better word — to see how my friends who had taken and devoted enormous energy to their leadership roles couldn't help but defend their every move. They denied problems that seemed obvious and when they could bring themselves to actually acknowledge a glaring problem, they minimized its impact and quickly turned conversation to how minor this problem was compared to all the other truly wonderful things they were doing.
Then it hit me. Well, of course, I know why this is happening. As numerous psychology studies show, people generally have self-serving biases, are motivated to present positive and flattering self-images (to themselves and others), and the roles we play in life are so powerful that they can quickly overwhelm our ability to process information objectively and can reverse any previously critical or negative views we once had about those roles.
The lesson, of course, is that we all need to be very careful about the roles we take in life — the organizations we join and lead, the kinds of people we hang out with, and the like — because even if don't like the people and the values they represent, and perhaps just take a job because we need or want that job — odds are that we will become more (or much) like the people we are around and the values associated with the positions we hold.
In particular, I was reminded of a very old study called "The Effects of Changes in Roles on the Attitudes of Role Occupants," which was published by Seymour Lieberman in Human Relations in 1956. The study was fascinating in that Lieberman was able to gather data during a "naturally occurring experiment" where people who worked in a manufacturing company switched roles — in some cases moving from a worker to foreman and in other cases, moving from a worker to a union steward. The numbers were not large, only some 58 people changed roles. But the magnitude of the effects were quite large, especially among the new foremen. They changed their attitudes markedly, turning pro-management, pro-company, and anti-union within 6 months of taking their new jobs. For example, 70% of the new foremen reported seeing the company as a better place to work than the did when they were workers, while only 26% had no change in opinion. 74% believed that the union should have less say in setting standards than they did when they were workers. And on and on. The new union stewards also expressed stronger pro-worker and pro-union sentiments than when they had been workers, but the effects were not as pronounced.
Then, there was an interesting twist that Seymour Lieberman took advantage of; as a result of a downturn, about a third (8) of the 23 workers who had been promoted to foremen were then demoted to workers, while the other two-thirds remained foremen. The numbers here are very small, and while modern studies have replicated related findings with more rigor, it is still interesting to see that the 8 workers who returned to being workers soon developed pretty much the same anti-management and pro-union sentiments as their fellow workers; but those who remained as foreman retained their pro-company and pro-management attitudes.
I am writing about Lieberman's old study partly for sentimental reasons, as it was done at The University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research, where I hung out and sometimes worked as a doctoral student. It was was one of the first research papers I ever read about the power of roles and how they can erase and reverse opinions and attitudes that we believe are core parts of who we are and aspire to be.
My old warm memories aside, there have since been many other studies on the power of situations to overwhelm our personalities and attitudes (indeed, you could argue that the power of situations over personalities is an assumption that drives many if not most experiments done by psychologists). Again, the lesson is that we all need to be very careful of the roles we take and realize that they will probably change us more than we change them — I am not trying to be fatalistic, but this is an evidence-based statement. Sometimes this is a good thing, especially when we join a group composed of noble and skilled human-beings. But every manager and leader out there ought to be aware that no matter how self-critical and self-aware you might be, the very act of taking leadership role will likely make you defend and support your organization more vehemently than the facts likely justify. At moderate levels of reality distortion, this probably isn't a bad thing as it instills confidence in yourself and others. But the damage can be severe when you and your company are screwing-up royally, and you can't see the flaws or any good reason to make repairs.
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