Work&Place has just published a powerful article describing how a leader’s assumptions about his or her staff drive behaviors, affect employee engagement, and produce either a healthy, productive team or an angry, frustrated one.
The article is an excerpt from an important book, Creating the high Performance Workplace: It’s not complicated to develop a culture of commitment, by Sue Bingham and Bob Dusin of HPWP Group (Indie Books International, 2018, © HPWP Group).
Here is the opening of the article:
Why is it that we tend to have more negative assumptions about people than positive? Is it because most of what we see and read in the news is negative? Is it because some of us have jobs that require us to deal with the small part of the population that lies, cheats, and steals? Have we personally had bad experiences when we were duped and now look at most strangers with a jaundiced eye? It could be any of these reasons.
But first, let’s talk about the impact our assumptions have on the way leaders behave.
Beliefs Drive Behavior
In the 1950s, Douglas McGregor, a professor at MIT Sloan School of Management, developed a philosophical view of people based on two opposing perceptions about how people behave in the workplace. His studies showed that leaders’ underlying assumptions about people drive these approaches.
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To read the entire article, and to view a six-minute video conversation with the authors, click on this link:
http://www.workandplace.com/leading-with-positive-assumptions
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Jim Ware
Managing Editor, Work&Place