Employees help each other by offering advice, lending a hand, resolving conflicts, and celebrating each other’s achievements. Employees that receive trustworthy help from others feel an obligation to reciprocate, which strengthens work relationships. Good citizens in thriving work relationships will be motivated to find ways to perform their tasks more effectively and efficiently. Employees that help each other strengthen the bonds of trust with team members and supervisors, and we know trust has a strong effect on performance.

Unfortunately, good team relationships won’t matter much if employees aren’t given the latitude to improve their jobs. And good team relationships will struggle to develop when employees can’t help each other because they are constrained to “just worry about getting your job done.”

A study by Muammer Ozer recently published in the Journal of Applied Psychology (full citation below) showed how autonomy affected the relationship between organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and job performance. This study of 266 employees, coworkers, and supervisors showed that citizenship behavior improved work team relationships, and work team relationships had a significant effect on job performance.

Those relationships between citizenship behavior, teamwork, and performance are expected. What’s new here is the importance of autonomy in enabling this virtuous chain of behaviors. The study found that the links to performance were enhanced for those with the most job autonomy. Highly autonomous workers were better citizens, had better team relationships, and were better at translating those team relationships into improved performance.

Because autonomy matters so much to most workers, it matters to your business. Constrain your employees’ ability to help each other and work together to improve their jobs and you will likely also constrain the growth of your business. Help yourself by helping your employees help each other.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Citation: Ozer, M. (2012). A Moderated Mediation Model of the Relationship Between Organizational Citizenship Behaviors and Job Performance. Journal of Applied Psychology

Bret L. Simmons, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. Bret blogs about leadership, followership, and social media at his website Positive Organizational Behavior. You can also find Bret onTwitter,Facebook, and Linkedin.

The results show that the worst thing you can do for group performance is to set nonspecific goals. Even easy, specific goals are better for group performance than nonspecific goals. Setting specific difficult goals has the best effect on group performance. Specific goals supported by specific metrics send employees unambiguous and consistent signals about expected performance behaviors.

The most interesting finding to me was that “egocentric goals (aimed at maximizing individual performance) undermine group performance, whereas groupcentric goals (aimed at maximizing the individual contribution to the group) enhance group performance” (p. 7). Goals that force team members to compete with each other undermine group performance.  “When group performance matters, egocentric goals would best be framed as to emphasize the individual contribution to the group” (p. 8).

Select people that value collaboration over competition.  Train them in the knowledge and skills they need to work better with others. Challenge your teams to set high standards for their shared performance, and reward the members that do the most to help the team succeed. Think very carefully about the message you send by rewarding individual performance when the team fails.

Full citation: Kleingeld, A., van Mierlo, H., and Arends, L. (2011). The Effect of Goal Setting on Group Performance: A Meta-Analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology.

Bret L. Simmons, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. Bret blogs about leadership, followership, and social media at his website Positive Organizational Behavior. You can also find Bret onTwitter,Facebook, and Linkedin.

This study of 570 employees and 80 upper level managers representing 95 separate teams once again demonstrated that team potency leads to team performance. Team potency, defined as shared confidence in the team’s general capabilities (p. 1), was rated by team members with a seven-item scale (e.g. “the team I work with has above average ability”). Team performance was rated by upper level managers answering questions about both performance (e.g. “rate the overall level of performance that you observe for this team”) and citizenship behavior (e.g. “in general, the team members help others who have been absent”).

This study examined how servant leadership affected the team goal setting process and its subsequent effect on team potency and performance. The authors specifically looked at both goal clarity – how well individual team members understand team goals and their own roles in working toward meeting the team goals – and process clarity – how well team members understand the procedures for accomplishing their roles as they work on team goals. Team members self-reported on servant leadership, goal clarity, and process clarity.

The findings were fascinating. Servant leadership was found to directly affect both team potency and team performance. And goal clarity and process clarity were shown to affect team potency; however, this relationship only worked in the presence of servant leadership. According to the authors:

Our results clearly demonstrated that goal and process clarity contribute the most to the emergence of team potency when accompanied by servant leaders, whose employee-centered focus is beneficial for facilitating team confidence and effective team behaviors. In contrast, the results showed that in the absence of servant leadership, the impact of goal and process clarity on team potency was no longer positive or even became negative. (p.9)

Wow.

If your organization depends on the performance of teams to deliver remarkable results, the members on those teams need to be able to look each other in the eye and clearly believe that they can get the job done (potency). If the team members don’t clearly understand either the team goals or the procedures needed to accomplish the goals, it’s folly to expect them to believe strongly in their collective ability to perform with distinction.

Setting the proper structure for remarkable team performance is necessary but not sufficient. Never forget that your team not only needs to believe in each other, they also need to believe in you and your leadership. They need to know that you don’t just care about the goals, but that you also care about each and every one of them as individuals.

If you lead a team, the evidence clearly suggests that you need to develop your servant leadership behaviors (e.g. behaving ethically, putting employees first, empowering, helping employees grow and succeed), and then train your team members to do the same.

What do you think? Please share your thoughts in the comment section below!

Bret L. Simmons, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. Bret blogs about leadership, followership, and social media at his website Positive Organizational Behavior. You can also find Bret onTwitter,Facebook, and Linkedin.

Bret L. Simmons, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. Bret blogs about leadership, followership, and social media at his website Positive Organizational Behavior. You can also find Bret onTwitter,Facebook, and Linkedin.

…level of pay had little relation to either job or pay satisfaction. This indicates that within an organization, those who make more money are little more satisfied than those who make considerably less. Moreover, relatively well paid samples of individuals are only trivially more satisfied than relatively poorly paid samples…The results of this review – the first quantitative review to appear in the literature – suggests that earnings are only weakly satisfying to individuals even when they confine their satisfaction to an evaluation of their pay.(p. 162)

Wow. For employees, these findings suggest that if you want a good job (one you are satisfied with), then pay should not be at the top of your shopping list. Other things like interesting and autonomous work and leadership that is more relational than transactional are better predictors of job satisfaction.

For employers, the authors suggest three important implications (p. 163):

1. Don’t mistake satisfaction with motivation. Pay can be used to motivate workers, even if it cannot be used to satisfy them.

2. Having a satisfied workforce is important, but being a pay leader, by itself, is not a good strategy for improving the job satisfaction of your workforce. Look to other things like better supervision, a better work environment, and jobs designed to be engaging.

3. A policy of high pay dispersion does make sense if the most highly paid workers are the ones you want to retain.  High pay is potentially satisfying to the extent that an individual worker looks at her/his colleagues that are paid at or above market levels and perceives a significant difference.

Be careful with number three. If you are going to adopt such a policy, make sure the requirements for achieving significantly higher pay are unambiguous, available to all, and consistently applied. Nothing will poison a satisfied workforce faster than the perception of unfair and disinterested management practices.

[This post originally appeared on Positive Organizational Behavior. Find more great content at www.bretlsimmons.com]

Bret L. Simmons, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. Bret blogs about leadership, followership, and social media at his website Positive Organizational Behavior. You can also find Bret onTwitter,Facebook, and Linkedin.

Last week, Bob Sutton wrote on his blog: “most management books are based on anecdotes, the biased recollections of some famous executives, or on research that is presented as rigorous (but is not…Good to Great is a perfect example).”

In the same week, friend and LeaderLab contributor Bret Simmons tweeted that “Academic research rarely leads, sometimes informs, and usually lags leadership practice in the best organizations.”

Both of these two brilliant organizational scholars seem to be in conflict of opinion on the role of research. One is championing the researchers and applauding the few times that research breaks through to the realm of the management bookshelf while the other is criticizing the ivory tower of researchers and pointing to organizations themselves as the primary fount of organizational discovery.

And yet they are both right.

Academic research suffers from an inability to inform the organizational leader. The cause is two-fold. Solid research takes a long time to bring to the public; from the design of the study to the final presentation in a peer-reviewed journal is a process that can take years. This process also seems to turn the research into an esoteric language that only other academics can speak. So when research is published, it’s quite easy to turn to the “real-world” and find an organization already operating according to its implications (as an example, consider Atlassian and the research of Deci & Ryan – translated by Daniel Pink, of course). This can lead many to believe that academic research lags behind the practice of leading organizations.

And it does.

But it still holds significant value.

One or two organizations may already be acting in alignment with the research findings. However, the vast majority is not. When research “catches up” to the leading organizations, it is still out in front of this majority. It is then that the research findings validate the actions of these leading firms, showing the reasons why those leadership practices work and the ways they can work across all organizations.

When left alone, Sutton’s aforementioned anecdotes make for interesting reading but often leave leaders with a “that’ll never work here.” When coupled with research, those anecdotes leave one with only one conclusion:

“It must work here.”

David Burkus is the editor of LeaderLab. He speaks, consults and serves on the faculty of management at Oral Roberts University’s College of Business.

LeaderLab is partnering with organizational scholars to gather research on the importance of building ethical climates. If you have 10 minutes, please help our research by taking a brief survey.

Click Here to Help Our Research.

But I love the conclusion the study suggests about the link between employee performance and customer loyalty – a major principle of the Service-Profit Chain. One thing the authors suggest that is really interesting is that loyal customers can have an effect on how well these service employees do their job. They call this a cycle of success spiral:

..it seems that the greater the customers’ intention to return to this specific hotel or restaurant for future service, the higher the climate for service among employees, which in turn influences customers’ appraisal of employee performance. Employees and customers in these situations appear to be playing a key role in a cycle of success spirals (Heskett et al., 1997). Our results follow this line. We found that service climate and customer loyalty seem to have these positive reciprocal relationships. (p.1224)

If you expect your employees to provide impressive customer service without providing them the resources they need to make it happen (training, technology, autonomy) you are living in la-la land. Enable your employees to provide kick ass excellence; your employees will love it and so will your customers. Those delighted customers will return, which will further delight your employees.

Customer loyalty hits both your top line (return sales and referrals) and bottom line (e.g. less advertising and promotion costs), while employee loyalty hits your bottom line (e.g. increased productivity, lower recruitment and training costs).

All of this happens ONLY by design, not wishful thinking and exhortation.

[This post originally appeared on Positive Organizational Behavior. Find more great content at www.bretlsimmons.com]

Bret L. Simmons, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. Bret blogs about leadership, followership, and social media at his website Positive Organizational Behavior. You can also find Bret onTwitter,Facebook, and Linkedin.

We already knew the well defined, reliable, and valid concepts job satisfaction and organizational commitment are two of the best predictors of employee effectiveness. The meta-analysis in this study confirms that employee satisfaction and commitment (they call this morale) should enhance performance and reduce turnover.

This study also shows that when people perceive that illegitimate, self-serving political activities are present in the workplace, it affects their performance because it lowers their morale. Bad politics at work also stresses people out, and this study demonstrates that psychological strain resulting from a perception of organizational politics has an additional negative impact on employee effectiveness.

Leaders have to engage in politics to get things done. But the litmus test should be why they use politics.  If political tactics are used to advance causes in the organization that serve to benefit everyone equally, then they are more likely to be seen as purposeful and legitimate.

But if the perception is that leaders are using politics for their own self-interest or showing favoritism that will benefit those in their inner circle, people are not going to respond well.  Politics at work is a top and bottom line issue.

I consider this straight forward and very significant evidence-based advice.

[This post originally appeared on Positive Organizational Behavior. Find more great content at www.bretlsimmons.com]

Bret L. Simmons, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. Bret blogs about leadership, followership, and social media at his website Positive Organizational Behavior. You can also find Bret onTwitter,Facebook, and Linkedin.

David Burkus discusses the potentially faulty assumptions of Jack Welch’s favored “rank and yank” method in his post The Topgrading Dilemma.

Bret L. Simmons tells us why Leaders Invest In Their Employees.

Check out the entire Leadership Development Carnival and you’ll find other great posts from top thought leaders.

I’m very happy to say that a recent article in the Academy of Management Journal provides the best credible evidence so far for a link between psychological engagement and employee performance. The article is entitled “Job Engagement: Antecedents and Effects on Job Performance,” by Bruce Rich, Jeffrey LePine, and Eean Crawford.

This well designed study of 245 firefighters and their supervisors found that job engagement was a significant predictor of both task performance and organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). This is especially significant because job engagement was tested for its affect on performance and OCB simultaneously with job involvement, job satisfaction, and intrinsic motivation. In the presence of job engagement, these other important factors lost their significance.

The researchers defined job engagement as “a multidimensional motivational concept reflecting the simultaneous investment of an individual’s physical, cognitive, and emotional energy in active, full work performance” (p. 619). A simple way to remember this is “engagement involves investing the hands, head, and heart in active, full work performance” (p. 619).  Most importantly, this research gives us a new measure of engagement that is in my opinion the best available. This new measure of job engagement has 18 questions, 6 for each of the sub-dimensions of engagement: physical engagement (e.g. I exert my full effort to my job), emotional engagement (e.g. I feel energetic at my job), and cognitive engagement (At work, I focus a great deal of attention on my job).  Because this measure is non-proprietary, I predict we are going to see it used in a lot of research in the future, so our knowledge of a consistent conceptualization and measurement of job engagement is only going to get better.

They also identified three antecedents of job engagement: value congruence, perceived organizational support, and core self-evaluations, such that higher levels of these were associated with higher levels of job engagement. An important take-away is that the process of job engagement is heavily influenced by the selection process.  Look for employees with an internal locus of control, self-esteem (but not hubris), self-efficacy, and emotional stability. Be transparent about your organizational values and look for people that can help you enhance those values. To further enhance value congruence, provide mentoring, socialization opportunities, and management practices that align with your stated values. Finally, demonstrate support for the development of your employees by providing leadership training and meaningful developmental performance feedback. There is no recipe for engagement or performance, but these three tips are a good place to start.

This still does not prove that a company that does a better job of engaging its employees will outperform one that does not. That is very hard to establish; however, every organization should be focused like a laser on employee performance, and this research suggests that job engagement may be a significant key to performance.

And please don’t miss the fact that you can’t get engagement with wishful thinking. You get it with carefully designed selection, training, support, and performance feedback systems. If you find yourself lamenting that your employees don’t appear engaged, you are going to have to do something different.

[This post originally appeared on Positive Organizational Behavior. Find more great content at www.bretlsimmons.com]

Bret L. Simmons, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor of Management in the College of Business at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where he teaches courses in organizational behavior, leadership, and personal branding to both undergraduate and MBA students. Bret blogs about leadership, followership, and social media at his website Positive Organizational Behavior. You can also find Bret onTwitter,Facebook, and Linkedin.