John
Reh wrote that “a manager who is fair does not play favorites. You don't give
anyone all the good jobs, or all the bad jobs, just because of how you feel
about them. You treat them as the unique individuals they are.” Where each
decision you make can be justified by an individual’s position, experience and
development needs.
It’s
likely that in your leadership career people will have challenged you about
some of the decisions you have made that looked like favouritism to them – at
least if you’ve worked in a culture where people can challenge the reason for
decisions that involve their peers; and where without the right communication a
simple ‘choice’ of one person over another can be perceived as favouritism,
when it actually isn’t – it’s just that the communication around the decision
is either ineffective or missing completely.
One
can approach the subject of favouritism from two perspectives. From a positive
perspective, if you have recruited the right talent to your team and where you
are involved with multifaceted projects and responsibilities that require you to
optimise a range of results both in the short-term and into the future, then
will need a range of talented individuals with differing specialist skills.
In
this scenario the effective leader picks ‘favourites’ for a task based on the
skill set and experience that they bring to that specific task or project –
hence they are favourites for the role because they have the best skills to do
this. In this type of structure ‘skills and experience’ drive the human
resource choice about who does what at any point in time – where ‘position and
personal relationships’ is subservient to skills. This is quite a modern and
proactive way of leading – it can give the perception to those on the outside
or those that are ‘title focused’ that the boss has favourites. But these
favourites are based on skill and nothing else.
From
a negative perspective you have the opposite where a ‘boss’ may have a previous
personal relationship with an employee or just like them better – and where,
even those these people have less skills or experience than others in the
department or organisation, they are chosen to perform certain tasks for the
boss; or chosen to go on trips with the boss before more deserving employees. This
can be extremely demotivating for those involved and lead to a breakdown in the
motivation and performance of others.
The
leader is often too slow to see the short and long term damage this negative
form of favouritism has on the organisation; and it actually isn’t healthy for
the favourite either, firstly they can actually start to believe they are
brighter and more experienced than they actually are; it can lead them to have
further expectations in respect of ‘favours’ from the boss, to the extent that
they can become quite arrogant, with a feeling of superiority towards those
they have to work with. They are often blind to the impact this has on those
around them – where some will get ‘close’ to them, but only hoping they will
also become ‘favourable’; where others will either distance themselves or
simply be distrusting of them going forward.
The
impact this has on the organisation is huge and creates a dysfunctional,
negative culture – which can go unseen until it is too late for the leader to
resolve.
As
Dr Anitha Ramachander states “most of the time, bosses are unaware that their
behaviour affects the work environment. Their body language, tone of voice,
facial expression could be read by employees. It is quite natural for bosses to
have trusted lieutenants in the organisation but there should be a demarcation
between trusting an individual and showing favouritism. The leaders of great
organisations have special qualities and traits that make them outstanding. It
clearly shows that those leaders do not favour any employee but recognise the
hard work and performance based on productivity and performance of the
employee.”
As
a leader once you lose the faith of those you lead then you create an unhealthy
environment which is hard to turnaround without a change in leadership. So it’s
worth thinking about how you approach you staff and ensure you do not support
favouritism for any other reason than what’s best for the organisation.
References
Ramachander,
A. (2014). Dealing with favouritism at the workplace. The Deccan Herald, 15.02.
[On-line http://www.deccanherald.com/content/173905/dealing-favouritism-workplace.html]
Reh,
J.F. (2014). Fairness is Good Management.
[On-line: http://management.about.com/od/managementskills/a/Fairness-Is-Good-Management.htm]
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