arrogance is bad for business

01Oct07

The meek shall indeed inherit the earth — it’s official.

Cockiness, conceit, brashness, presumption, brazenness, self-assertion, bumptiousness, flagrancy, haughtiness, brassiness, disdain. Call it what you will, arrogance isn’t just an unpleasant personality trait, it’s plain bad for business.

A landmark study, Arrogance: A Formula for Failure? co-authored by Stanley B. Silverman, Dean of the University of Akron’s Summit College, investigates the negative relationship between arrogance and performance.

In a nutshell, the more arrogant a person is, the more self-centred and less agreeable they are likely to be. This translates directly to a negative impact on an organisation’s morale and bottom line.

We’ve probably all worked with someone likewise afflicted, so Silverman and his team have usefully devised the Workplace Arrogance Scale (WARS). This diagnostic and developmental tool measures such things as whether a superior belittles his/her subordinates publicly, makes decisions that affect others without listening to their input, or, conversely, welcomes constructive feedback and takes responsibility for their own mistakes.

Silverman suggests that there might be a competitive advantage in curtailing arrogant behaviour in organisations and encouraging positive behaviours, such as humility.

The study concludes by reminding us that executives are often hired for experience, then fired for their personality. And that more research may well confirm the widely-held belief that subordinates leave managers, not companies.

Hat-tip to Improbable Research for bringing this to our attention. Improbable Research champions scientific research which makes people laugh first and think second. Improbable Research is also behind the wonderfully modest Ig Nobel Prizes, awarded annually to the most amusing, laugh-out-loud scientific endeavours. The 2007 Ig Nobel Prizes are about to be announced later this week. Come back Friday for further details of the bemused winners.

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