Research: Employee surveys may miss out on uncovering toxic leadership practices
Binghamton School of Management research explores how simplistic employee surveys may overlook negative leadership practices in an organization
Standardized and overly simplistic questionnaires are only scratching the surface of what employees think of their leaders, according to new research from 黑料视频鈥檚 School of Management (SOM), and negative behavior may be slipping through the cracks.
鈥淚nstead of capturing actual leader behaviors, ratings might simply reflect whether a person likes their leader,鈥 said , a Leadership and Organization Science doctoral student who conducted the research with Assistant Professor Bryan Acton. 鈥淧eople may just generally experience more of the positive stuff and are less likely to recall specifically negative leadership behaviors, especially if they鈥檙e overall happy in their workplace.鈥
Employee questionnaires have long proven useful in most leadership studies, but the SOM researchers found participants in such surveys often rely on their long-term memory to rank harmful leadership practices. They turn to their broad perceptions of how a manager performs the job, and critical leadership missteps may be overlooked if such negative encounters are few and far between.
was part of a larger set of studies involving fellow SOM faculty and other researchers, all supported by a grant from the U.S. Army Research Institute. Li recently presented the research , which placed it on its 鈥淏est Papers鈥 list out of about 3,000 submissions.
The research uncovered a need for more critical thinking when companies assess leadership performance, Acton and Li said. Their findings could be used to help organizations and companies, even the military, make decisions about promotions or salary increases, which could affect employee turnover or whether leaders who engage in toxic management practices remain in their roles.
鈥淭here鈥檚 a big difference between how people perceive a leader to be doing and how effective that leader truly is in that role,鈥 said Acton, whose expertise centers on organizational behavior and leadership. 鈥淚f we are promoting the wrong people, keeping bad leaders in their positions and making important decisions based on an overly simplistic approach to leadership studies, that could be a problem.鈥
To uncover how memory impacts the perception of toxic versus ethical leadership practices, the SOM researchers began by soliciting feedback from 200 participants whose occupations ranged from sales, accounting, web development and engineering.
Participants were questioned about negative leadership scenarios such as 鈥渕y manager publicly belittles subordinates鈥 or 鈥渕y manager has explosive outbursts鈥 as part of the research. In response, about 10 percent reported experiencing negative sentiments toward their supervisor.
Most participants described something positive, such as saying their supervisor gives back to their community, for example.
Since they didn鈥檛 seem to dwell on any specific negative incidents, Li said, that could mean employees depended on generalized impressions of their supervisor to form their opinions.
If there鈥檚 one key takeaway for managers at companies, Acton said, it鈥檚 that analyzing individual leader behaviors and asking employees to answer more pointed questions in these surveys are more likely to allow for meaningful improvements in leadership.
鈥淲e need to think more critically about the way we measure negative forms of leadership because people are saying bad leadership is not happening,鈥 Acton said. 鈥淚f I鈥檓 perceiving the leader as good, does that mean the leader is actually doing well? We should be careful about the conclusions we draw based on a person鈥檚 perception of a leader.鈥