How’s your guilt complex? People who are prone to guilt tend to work harder and perform better than those who are not guilt prone and are perceived to be more capable leaders.
This surprising research from Professor Francis Flynn is reported in the latest edition of the Harvard Business Review and raises some interesting challenges for how we choose people to lead.
Should we for example fill our organisations with guilt prone individuals who are hard working high performers, or should we perhaps start inducing a sense of guilt in employees so they end up working harder?
Take BP for instance. Should it check on how guilty its managers feel about the Gulf oil disaster and promote those who feel most bad about it because they would be most likely to impose tough new safety standards?
Guilt prone people apparently seem good at alleviating their negative feelings. That is they cope with them just fine, and end up working harder or smarter than other colleagues.
People who are prone to guilt tended to receive higher performance ratings from their bosses. So guilt could be a guide to promotion but it certainly feels counter intuitive.
It is tempting to dismiss this research as yet another example of lies, damn lies and research statistics. Putting it more diplomatically how convincing is this strange finding and should it become a pointer for actual action? And if you choose to ignore it altogether how guilty are you going to feel?
