Executives have to make tough decisions all the time, and one of the most difficult may be how exactly to interact with their employees. The Harvard Business Review recently featured a piece on the hazards of being too friendly.
The benefits of a CEO who keeps morale high may seem obvious, but there are downsides to pleasantness, according to the piece's author, Amy Gallo. Speaking directly to the workers at a company with an overly nice manager, Gallo notes that it's difficult for subordinates to succeed without being challenged.
While these kinds of bosses might be effective on a day-to-day basis, Gallo notes that they might cause damage overall by failing to encourage employees to improve. Furthermore, they may fail to present a strong image to others, which could damage the reputation of the business overall. However, this may be hard for a company's board members to spot in advance.
The debate surrounding the proper amount of "niceness" in the workplace is not a new one. A FastCompany article that dates back to 2012 cites a 2011 study on the subjects of attitude and gender in management conducted by the University of Notre Dame. It interestingly noted that, while female workers don't generally get more pay for behaving "disagreeably," men do.
This suggests that the issue doesn't exist in a vacuum, and that whether or not a CEO candidate acts this way should be dependent on their general personality and where they are working.
The executive recruitment process can be managed so that businesses aren't struggling to get the right note of management performance in their upper ranks.
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