The High Performing Employee & The Halo Effect

It would have been so wonderful if man had learnt how to keep his personal and professional life poles apart. And what if there ever was a switch to turn oneself off out of workplace into a different mode? Living a split personality life, would feel all so fresh and rejuvenated for a new day. Sadly the complexities of leading multiple lives is straightened out by a simple fact that however hard we try we end up intertwining our personal and professional lives, be it even by 2%. We tend up being so professional and efficient at one place that we end up messing the other largely coz of the halo effect of the supremely larger part of us. I once read a statement that goes something like ‘People who are professionally very rich, are on a personal front very poor!’

To better understand how this halo effect affects the lives of people, I borrow this piece from Gautam Ghosh’s recent post on ‘Tiger Woods and the Halo Effect’. True to Gautam’s observations many of us are enveloped by the greatness of a person’s effectiveness at something he’s meant to do, such that this high performing one may personally not be even close to being effective. Something which Gautam has defined as - a psychological shortcut that causes human beings to infer good things about a person based on a single area of achievement. How does this matter to us as organization? Nope it doesn’t to a large extent as long as we stop thinking an organization as a family setup. But the moment the mere thought of a one big happy family emerges, we tend to go beyond project deadlines, deliverables, client handling and inch closer every minute to exploring the human interactions with one another.

There may be this very generous manager who can at the drop of the hat shell out resources and capital wherever he sees a need felt. But the very next moment this unhappy and disillusioned manager may leave the organization in pretty much a mess and creating troubles for the others. Would we say we never saw this coming our way? Or maybe we never thought he could stoop so low? Or was it a simple fact that he always protected the other side with a screen of generosity and empathy for others?

These screens are so thin and transparent however we are trained to not look beyond perfection! For what may seem like a mirage may have an ugly face behind the illusion.

Coming to the point how the halo effect can create problems for us and how to deal with it. Many a times when professionally rich employees decide to job hop due to unhappy decisions, chances are certain one may expect a rebuke in hand. Whereas dealing with the issue is not an easy task, as we never know what the mind behind the smiling face is thinking. But we can walk on the lines which says ‘When everything is going all so very right, stop yourself, think, and think over again. Everything may not be that right to pursue!’

So the next time if we see a highly efficient executive working with perfection and tending to be reliable on all accounts, and one has no reason to be alarmed by her. Maybe one should check her drawers and desk to see if there lies an underneath behaviour that she is hiding. Or one can explore her speediness on the job, or the way she interacts with people who aren’t her peers.

Being a Techno Geek

The routine of a mid twenty / thirty year old at workplace is sit for those blissful 8 hours of work in front of a desktop. Not even for a minute flinch away from that insane stare and the lunch hour seems like we are missing a lot of things. 7 pm back home and after another hour we have our home desktops switched on, either for work from home purposes or merely for the fact that some of us are computoddicted!

We can imagine no task complete without a few clicks here and there and rap tap goes the keyboard. We form the brigades of employees who are completely paralysed when power failures occur.

But to imagine a whole large chunk of those employees, who have taken onto manual working all their lives. So much so even today with the advent of this revolutionary technology they still find themselves among piles of papers, innumerable files and cupboards full of 3 decades old stock of data maintenance that nobody ever would give a glance to! Layers of dust gathering on those historical data that form the base of the Organization’s inception and the well laid out building plans.

A manufacturing sector somehow tends to a clear demarcation of two genres of employees. One being the old horses that grow along with the aging organization and the other being the newbies. It’s said that it’s hard to get in-depth technical competence from the newbies when compared to the golden period of engineers of the 1970’s, 80’s and early 90’s era. Similarly it’s like taking the horse to the river but unable to force it to drink water, when the old horses suddenly find a rectangular inanimate object on their tables with a mouse. From right away dismissing the idea to initial hiccups and slow motion clicks around in vain; many ultimately end up resorting to following their old ways. Along with an explanation that 5 years more and retirement knocking their doors, these rectangular objects best lay assured at newbie desks. The hindrance seems to be pushing limits when critical data needs to be retrieved and the concerned person wishes how lucky would he be if they were a click away, rather than flipping pages amidst a land full of dust. Compiling information also feels like a Herculean task, as years need to be matched and the corresponding data needs to be fed and worked upon. Lot many things have no information, as back then nobody thought it could lead to a link in the new strategy background work or maybe the CEO wanted to see the attrition levels of the last 10 years.

What’s a predominant feature of not being techno geek for some is that their great ideas face premature death, because of the inability to present them in the sweetest and shortest way. How would a VP of the organization devote some 30 minutes to listen to a new thought if the same idea can be caught within a span of 2 minutes via a presentation? Afterall things seen visually are recalled stronger than pages of thesis work on the matter which ultimately land up in some corner of the office. Similarly being techno geek can save a lot of time in hand to do more work that could help clear out backlogs if any and give in more space to think of the innovative and untried. By and large the whole of 8 hours is consumed in doing the routine task and when does one have the time to think something new and fresh? What may form to be 6 points of a job description when examined closely may turn out to be just 2 points when computerization of the same collective is implemented! What management may think is eating up their financial resources and adding onto the weight of employees may be eventually sorted out such that the manpower count is reduced, kind courtesy disinterest in learning the technology!

So if the fear of getting redundant by introduction of technology is of prime concern, then how about the fear of getting redundant by not knowing the ways of the techno world? Why when one doesn’t shy from acquiring new machines for increase in production, is there a hesitating human in front of a rectangular inanimate object?