There’s a natural state of heightened attention to the self when we know we’re being watched, Bernstein notes. “Our practiced response become better,” he told me, “our unpracticed responses become worse.” So actions that have been drilled by the boss may well turn out better when everyone believes the boss is watching. On the other hand, for behavior that isn’t already learned—where the best response needs unselfconscious focus on the problem, and the chance to try something new without fear—being watched makes things harder. Attention that could have gone to one’s actions goes, instead, to managing the appearance of one’s actions.
The “gospel of transparency” declares that this is not a problem, because workers should stick to management’s script. But in one vast Chinese factory that Bernstein studied, workers who craftily deviated from standard procedure often improved the plant’s productivity.
People act differently when they know they are being watched. Period. Whether you are talking about the workplace, out in public, at events, etc. and the way we behave when being watched is not always in the best interests of the company or society.
There are serious ramifications to this study, in and out of the workplace.
Most managers and even former peers are under strict orders never to say anything, positive or negative, when contacted as a reference for a former coworker.Â
To paraphrase, HR and legal folks know that if the former employee doesn’t get that position, everything they say will be used against them in a future legal claim that they harmed the job prospects of a former employee unfairly.Â
So it was somewhat shocking to see the CEO of Intuit not only say this but put it in writing:
I’ve been at this blog for almost 19 years. Are you sure it’s still me writing these posts? Did I disappear and just leave it on autopilot to write posts for me long after I’m gone?
Are you sure you would know if I did?
Not everything is as it appears. We could all use a lot more skepticism, especially on topics we are already biased to believe.
You know what? This is something that, no matter how many times I’ve done presentations or been asked to write an introduction of myself for a company site, or to include in an RFP, I absolutely hate. Mostly because I’m not good at it and don’t like talking about myself. But maybe, I am going…
“Executives have often led the charge to return to in-person work — yet new research from Future Forum, Slack’s research consortium, reveals that non-executive employees are nearly twice as likely as executives to be working from the office five days a week.”
Mental Health Problems Need To Be Destigmatized In The Workplace Legal Tech: A Closer Look At 3 Summer Cases Concerning Lost Data The global shortage of privacy professionals A Seat at the Bench: Insights from the Relativity Fest 2019 Judicial Panel If You’re Not Requesting Slack Data in Ediscovery—or Preserving It—What Are You Waiting For?…
